Diagnosing Depressive, Bipolar, and Alcohol Use Disorders

Diagnosing Depressive, Bipolar, and Alcohol Use Disorders is organized by Psychotherapy.net.

Course Description:
Volume 3 in the DSM-5 Diagnostic Interviewing Series provides viewers with clinical interviews of clients with major depressive, persistent depressive, bipolar I, and substance use disorders. These can be complicated diagnoses, sometimes requiring input from medical professionals or significant others in the client’s life. The actual interviews demonstrate the slowed down, or revved up, presentations that often accompany these diagnoses. The interviewer is able to reveal how you can stay on task while at the same time engaging the client with empathy, self-disclosure, and humor.

As in other videos in this series, Yalom and Buckles continue to add richness and texture to the interview itself with their lively commentary, noting how diagnoses have changed over time, and the difficulties inherent in quantifying subjective terms or concepts such as functionality.
In voice-over commentary, Buckles points out how to record client accounts of their symptoms and experiences in ways that are nonjudgmental, factual, and objective. This can be very helpful to professionals learning how to record key aspects of clinical or diagnostic interviews.

Viewers meet three individuals and one couple, all accurately portraying the life struggles and important details that demonstrate what these clusters of symptoms look like when they reach a diagnosable level. Of course, the interviews are not perfect, but we learn from that as well. With humor and insight, Buckles and Yalom note the omissions and discuss what the interviewer might have done differently, or what the interviewer might do in the next session.

Also modeled in these vignettes are skills related to destigmatizing the symptoms and the diagnosis. Further, the interviewer demonstrates how to introduce the notion of continuing in therapy to address the disorder and improve the client’s overall mental health.

By watching this video, you will be able to:
• Recognize the symptoms associated with major depressive, persistent depressive, bipolar and substance use disorders.
• Gain skills in conducting a diagnostic interview with clients suffering from these disorders and the lack of insight that sometimes accompanies some of these particular disorders.
• Expand your differential diagnostic skillset, as well as your understanding of both the overlapping, and the distinguishing features, of these disorders. 

Learning Objectives:
• List the symptoms associated with Major Depressive, Persistent Depressive, Bipolar, and Substance Use disorders
• Describe skills for conducting a diagnostic interview with clients suffering from these disorders
• Prepare interview questions that facilitate differential diagnosis of these disorders