Assignment: Psychopathology for Social Work Practice
This is a list of questions and multiple choice responses to study for the final exam.
Short answer (2-3 sentences in most cases):
1. Consider how a mental health diagnosis could be beneficial to a client. What might be potential harm from a diagnosis?
2. Why is it important for clinicians, medical doctors, legal professionals, and so on to use a common diagnostic language?
3. Explain why it is an ethical responsibility for clinicians to be knowledgeable about diagnosis.
4. Give examples of how you might utilize a diagnosis when formulating a treatment plan.
5. Describe how medical conditions can be relevant to a mental health diagnosis.
6. Describe how psychosocial and environmental considerations are now included in DSM-5.
7. Discuss the difference between use of subtypes, specifiers, and severity.
8. Explain how provisional diagnoses can be made.
9. Discuss the use of other specified or unspecified disorders.
10. Identify a diagnosis from any category that makes you personally feel uncomfortable, and explore where these feelings come from and how you might go about working with a client who has this diagnosis.
Multiple Choice (place an X beside the best choice):
1.The most significant change in the DSM-5 is the return to the single axis diagnosis. This was done for the following reason:
a. to remove the underserved status and misguided belief that personality disorders were largely untreatable by placing them with other mental disorders
b. to make our jobs easier by un-complicating the way we write a diagnosis
c. to conform to the ICD-10 guidelines
2. Which of the following best describes criteria for diagnosing a psychological disorder?
a. clinical significance
b. distress
c. behavior is illegal
d. both a. and b.
3. provisional diagnosis is used in which of the following situations?
a. when authorization for reimbursement cannot be obtained
b. when we suspect the client or patient is malingering
c. when not enough information is available to make a firm diagnosis, but there is presumption that the full criteria will be met
4. The process of systematically ruling out alternative diagnoses is called:
a. case consultation
b. differential diagnosis
c. making a principal diagnosis
d. none of the above
5. A structured interview:
a. involves a series of open-ended questions
b. consists of a standardized series of questions with predetermined wording and order
c. is the best way to keep a client on track during a difficult interview
d. both b and c
6. Delusions are:
a. perception-like experiences that occur without external stimulus
b. fixed beliefs
c. a persistent fear of a specific object, activity, or situation out of proportion to the actual danger posed by the specific object or situation
7. Which of the following are common types of delusions?
a. manic, hypomanic, or hyper manic
b. grandiose, persecutory, or erotomanic
c. flat, blunted, or expansive
8. The main difference between a sign and a symptom is:
a. a symptom is what we observe and a sign is what the patient reports
b. a sign is what we observe and a symptom is what the patient reports
c. a symptom can dissipate over time, but a sign does not
9. The main difference between an obsession and a compulsion is:
a. a compulsion is a behavior and an obsession is a thought
b. a compulsion is a thought and an obsession is a behavior
c. an obsession is easier to control than a compulsion is
10. Prodrome is:
a. a robot that can be programmed to complete biopsychosocial assessments
b. a cluster of symptoms
c. an early sign or symptom of a disorder
11. Which of the following is not a feeding and eating disorder?
a. bulimia nervosa
b. pica
c. obesity
d. rumination disorder.