The psychiatric interview refers to the set of tools that a mental health worker (most times a psychiatrist or a psychologist but at times social workers or nurses) uses to complete a

psychiatric assessment A psychiatric assessment, or psychological screening, is the process of gathering information about a person within a psychiatric service, with the purpose of making a diagnosis. The assessment is usually the first stage of a treatment process, but ...

. The goals of the psychiatric interview are: *Build

rapport Rapport () is a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned are "in sync" with each other, understand each other's feelings or ideas, and communicate smoothly. The word stems from the French verb which means litera ...

. *Collect data about the patient's current difficulties, past

psychiatric history A psychiatric history is the result of a medical process where a clinician working in the field of mental health (usually a psychiatrist) systematically records the content of an interview with a patient. This is then combined with the mental sta ...

and

medical history The medical history, case history, or anamnesis (from Greek: ἀνά, ''aná'', "open", and μνήσις, ''mnesis'', "memory") of a patient is information gained by a physician by asking specific questions, either to the patient or to other peo ...

, as well as relevant developmental, interpersonal and social history. *Diagnose the

mental health Mental health encompasses emotional, psychological, and social well-being, influencing cognition, perception, and behavior. It likewise determines how an individual handles Stress (biology), stress, interpersonal relationships, and decision-maki ...

issue(s). *Understand the patient's

personality Personality is the characteristic sets of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns that are formed from biological and environmental factors, and which change over time. While there is no generally agreed-upon definition of personality, ...

structure, use of

defense mechanisms In psychoanalytic theory, a defence mechanism (American English: defense mechanism), is an unconscious psychological operation that functions to protect a person from anxiety-producing thoughts and feelings related to internal conflicts and o ...

and

coping strategies Coping refers to conscious strategies used to reduce unpleasant emotions. Coping strategies can be cognitions or behaviours and can be individual or social. Theories of coping Hundreds of coping strategies have been proposed in an attempt to ...

. *Improve the patient's

insight Insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect within a particular context. The term insight can have several related meanings: *a piece of information *the act or result of understanding the inner nature of things or of seeing intui ...

. *Create a foundation for a

therapeutic alliance A therapeutic alliance, or working alliance, is a partnership between a patient and his or her therapist that allows them to achieve goals through agreed-upon tasks. The concept of therapeutic alliance dates back to Sigmund Freud. Over the cour ...

. *Foster healing. The data collected through the psychiatric interview is mostly subjective, based on the patient's report, and many times can not be corroborated by objective measurements. As such, one the interview's goals is to collect data that is both valid and reliable. Validity refers to how the data compares to an ideal absolute truth that the interviewer needs to access and uncover. Challenges that might affect the interview validity include can be categorized as patient related factors and interviewer related factors. Patient's related factors include: *Shame: the patient might feel ashamed to discuss some of his difficulties. *Fear of being judged: while not ashamed the patient might be reluctant to discuss some of the issues that she thinks that she can be judged for. *Lack of awareness: patient might have distorted recollection of past events with significant emotional valence. *Cognitive deficits: the patient might have a memory deficit that might impair his ability to correctly recall past events. * Secondary gain: the patient decided to misrepresent fact in order to gain a certain benefit (e.g. disability benefits) or avoid a certain penalty (e.g.

insanity defense The insanity defense, also known as the mental disorder defense, is an affirmative defense by excuse in a criminal case, arguing that the defendant is not responsible for their actions due to an episodic psychiatric disease at the time of the ...

). Interviewer related factors include: *Powerful feelings of like or dislike that might affect the interviewer objectivity. *Lack of experience: the interviewer lack the skills and knowledge necessary to explore a specific area of pathology. * Diagnostic bias: the interviewer is invested in a specific psychiatric diagnosis (e.g. same patient might be diagnosed with schizophrenia by a schizophrenia researcher or bipolar disorder with psychotic features by a bipolar disorder researcher). Reliability refers to how datasets collected by different interviewers or the same interview at different times compare with one another. Ideal reliability is when a dataset will be stable irrespective of changes in specifics of the data collection. Different interview techniques have been shown to result in variations in the validity and reliability of the collected data. Open-ended question ("Tell me about your sleep.") have been shown to have better validity but less reliability than closed-ended questions("Do you have sleeping difficulties?")

References

{{Psychiatry Medical diagnosis