Tag Archives: Psychologist in Training

Deciding Who is the Client

FullSizeRender (49)I was contacted recently by the mother of a 10-year-old girl who has been showing symptoms of anxiety. The mom said her father died two months ago and the whole family has been affected by his death. She asked if I can see her 10-year-old daughter weekly and also see the family (including mom, dad, and older brother) every few weeks to help them through their period of grieving. I’m not sure how to respond to her request.

This situation illustrates one of the first questions we face in beginning with a new case: “who is my client?” or “what is the unit of treatment?”. You need to define the unit of treatment in order to decide who will participate in therapy sessions and how you define your therapeutic relationship with one or more members of the family. Chapter 9 of my book is devoted to the topic of treatment planning, which includes decisions about the therapeutic frame and structure, the client’s goals for change, and the therapeutic interventions that will facilitate that change.

When a child is involved in the initial request for therapy, your client may be the individual child with the parents participating in collateral sessions or may be the family. Your decision about the unit of treatment will affect how you structure the sessions, in terms of who participates and how frequently, but more importantly it will affect your treatment goals and interventions. Let’s look at how you might make this decision, assuming that you have experience in conducting both individual child and family therapy.

The first step is to recognize that you can take time to reach a decision about how to approach this case. You can respond to mom’s request by telling her that you would be open to seeing both her daughter alone and the family together, but that you would need to learn more about them in order to recommend the best way to work with them. All cases begin with an initial assessment, but the complexity of this situation make it preferable to explicitly begin with several sessions of assessment. This would give you a chance to meet with the family in different combinations, gaining information and making observations about them individually, as a unit, and in different subgroups. I would recommend one or two individual sessions with the daughter, one or two sessions with the parents individually and/or together, one family session, and possibly an individual session with the older brother. At that point, you would be able to determine the best way to proceed.

As I mentioned above, answering the question “who is my client?” primarily refers to how you define your relationship with the family. If you decide that the 10-year-old daughter is your client, your treatment goals and interventions will be focused on her symptoms and you will hold sessions with her parents and possibly the whole family in order to facilitate her progress. If you decide that the family is your client, you will develop treatment goals for the family as a whole and any individual sessions with the daughter or other family members would be in the service of helping the family grieve and reach some resolution of their loss. Your interventions would be oriented toward strengthening and improving the communication patterns and relational dynamics within the family rather than being targeted toward the symptoms or behaviors of any individual in the family.

Answering the question “who is my client” is an important step at the beginning of treatment. It deserves time and attention in order to make sure you will be successful in addressing the presenting symptoms and issues. If you’re interested in reading more about this and related issues, click here to order from Amazon or here to order from Routledge.

Sources of Information for Assessment

I have had two therapy sessions with a 24-year-old woman who was hospitalized six months ago for suicidal ideation. She has been stable since then and wants to use therapy to understand what led to her suicidal thoughts. She has given me permission to talk with her psychiatrist and her parents with whom she lives, and she suggested I contact the hospital to get their report of her stay. I usually like to keep the therapy between me and the client, but in this case I think information from these other sources might help.

I agree that it might be necessary to expand beyond your client’s self report of history and symptoms in order to insure your client’s safety while she explores her past suicidal ideation. This question addresses the decisions inherent in conducting an initial assessment, which is discussed in Chapter 6 of my book. I’ll review whether and how to include information from other mental health providers, family members, and treatment records, after discussing the sources of information that come from your client sessions.

Therapy usually begins with a conversation between you and the client in which she tells you what difficulties are leading her to seek help. The initial phase of establishing a therapeutic alliance overlaps with doing an assessment of the client, so you develop a comprehensive picture of her life and circumstances that will guide your treatment approach. Your therapy sessions provide two sources of information about the client: her self-report and your observations. In the first two sessions, she has probably told you about her current concerns and symptoms, living circumstances, and relevant events from the past including her hospitalization. Whether you have been consciously aware of it or not, you are also observing her and noticing the nonverbal aspects of her presentation that are congruent or incongruent with her verbal presentation. Another aspect of the therapy sessions is the impact of the sessions on your own emotional state.

Client self-report and therapist observations are usually the primary source of assessment information, and sometimes are the only source. In this case, I would suggest expanding the client’s self-report by using one or more assessment measures. The Crpss-Cutting Symptoms Measure, contained in the Assessment section of the DSM- 5, is free and can be downloaded at https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm/educational-resources/assessment-measures. Your agency may have other measures that are relevant to her presenting issues or you can find assessment tools at http://www.integration.samhsa.gov/clinical-practice/screening-tools. It may be useful to compare the client’s narrative report in session with her self report on an objective assessment measure. Your treatment approach will be different if her scores on objective measures indicate greater risk than she has reported to you in the first two sessions.

In terms of the other sources you mention, consulting with her psychiatrist seems essential so that you can develop a collaborative relationship as treatment providers. As your client explores the sources of her suicidal ideation, her symptoms may temporarily increase and her medication needs may change. The psychiatrist can also share the client’s treatment history and response, which you can compare with your client’s report. Talking with your client’s parents is more complicated and needs further evaluation. I recommend postponing that conversation until you know more about your client’s current relationship with her parents, past events in the family, and general family dynamics. Over time you will begin to make inferences about these issues as you hear more about her perspective on their interactions. I would begin this exploration by asking what she expects her parents would tell you and how she would feel about you hearing that from them.

Last, your client has suggested that you read the hospital record. This may contain useful historical and clinical information, so I would recommend requesting it. Be aware that it may be more difficult to obtain a hospital record than to talk with the psychiatrist, depending on the procedures in place there. The discharge summary is the most useful clinical document, so you can ask for that rather than for the full record which will include notes from each nursing shift during her stay that are less relevant to her current status.

Combining these sources of information will result in a comprehensive assessment, which is especially important in cases with elevated risk. Supplementing the therapy sessions with self-report measures, information from another provider, treatment records, and possibly family members will enable you to be clearer in your treatment approach. Your overall goal will be to respond to the client’s desire to understand her past suicidal ideation while helping her maintain physical and emotional safety.  If you’re interested in reading more about this and related issues, click here to order from Amazon or here to order from Routledge.