Structured Interview

Structured interview is a specific set of questions that can be asked to any person to help diagnose an abnormal psychological disorder. Before I began my structured interview I read through the set of questions to get the flow of the interview. I also tried to imagine what a person might hold back about and made some side notes on how I would try to encourage the patient to give more information. I have not given many formal interviews such as the structured interview. If I were to become a clinician I would probably prefer the unstructured format. However I did learn several things about clinical interviews and there were things that I did and did not like. In the following paragraphs I will describe my trial experience.

I conducted both structured interviews at a coffee shop where I thought neither of us would feel uncomfortable about talking. I wanted to make the situation feel real instead of reading from a script. Therefore, both of us had read the cases and were adequately prepared to answer all questions. Before starting I also read up on the style in Comer and some from the internet. I learned that I should not deviate from the script but only try to entice further explanation of the situation, feelings or emotions. It was also a common rule for the interviewer to not share their own beliefs and opinions.

During the interview with Connie I was able to get a good picture of the past and present events that occurred to cause her emotional troubles. From my questioning I was able to identify 6 symptoms of depression. These included; depressed mood, diminished interest, weight loss, fatigue, feeling of worthlessness, and distress/dysfunction to social life. The vignette was so compelling that it made it incredibly easy to diagnose her as a major depressive. Her story seemed almost text book. I hear of women getting into a marriage and immediately realizing they made the wrong decision, but to read the story and then hear someone explain it back to me was very powerful. It was very difficult to read the story, mostly because I couldn’t understand how someone can change after marriage or how Connie did not recognize what a destructive person she married. I liked how the interview clearly identified the possible abnormalities in behavior and cognition. I also liked that the spread sheet allowed me to be judgmental of how severe the symptom was in-terms of the 1 to 3 scale. I even had to use the question mark once because I didn’t quite have enough information but thought that it could be a possible symptom. Having that question would allow me to go back later after more sessions to look at my notes about the symptom. My least favorite part of the structured interview is a tribute to my personality. I like to give people my opinion and can dwell on a particular topic while still keeping the major concept in mind. I like to teach things to people and feel like I have good logic so the structure was definitely frustrating. I believe I learned more from this interview with Connie than I did with Mr. Redland. Mostly because I had more information and Connie’s story was so powerful. She seemed more like a victim while Redland seemed weak.

The interview with Mr. Redland was much shorter and did not require much encouragement on my part. It seemed pretty clear to me that he had or still has seasonal light disorder. Redland kept coming back to the time