Assignment: Mock Individual Assessment

Assignment 2: Mock Individual Assessment (Rough Draft)

Create a mock forensic assessment report based on a patient in a selected vignette. Provide your diagnostic impressions based on the DSM-5 criteria.

For this assignment you are to:

Improve your interview and referral questions for the case vignette you selected in M1 Assignment 3.
Use the case vignette you selected in M1 Assignment 3 for this assignment.

Next, create and document a set of mock interview questions and potential referral questions to ask your client and yourself. You can determine the questions in relation to the case vignette that you choose.

You might also want to consider some of the example referral questions listed below.

Analyze all the information provided in the case vignette and begin to formulate a hypothesis as to why the individual needs referral.

Example Referral Questions:

As a forensic mental health professional, what factors need to be considered in your psychological testing for the forensic assessment report?
What behavioral observations do you make about the client by reading the case vignette?
What are your assessment options in working with the client?
What standards and accepted psychological tests might you apply to your client in forensic settings? Select from the instruments you researched in M3 Assignment 2 RA.
How will you recognize and evaluate your client’s offender behaviors associated with malingering and deception?
What theoretical orientation do you want to use in this case for your treatment recommendations?
What is the case scenario you have selected?
What is the reason for referral?
What is the purpose of the forensic assessment and report?
What is the nature of the problem presented in your selected case vignette?
What is the context in which the forensic assessment report will be used?
What is the background of your client? What are the symptoms displayed by your client and the significance they have in this case?
What is the mental status of your client? Be sure to elaborate on every major component addressed in the mental status examination.
What interview type and approach did you use with your client?
What tests are appropriate to use in your forensic assessment report? Identify one intelligence test, one objective personality test, and one projective test.
What collateral information will you use in the process of the evaluation?
How will you present your impressions of the client?
Write a Forensic Mental Health Professional Individual Assessment Report.
Use the Forensic Mental Health Professional Individual Assessment Report template (you can download the template from this link).

Assignment: Mock Individual Assessment

Assignment: Mock Individual Assessment

Evaluate and interpret the information provided to you in the case vignette that you have selected in M1 Assignment 3. Synthesize the information you collected to create a Forensic Mental Health Professional Individual Assessment Report. Your findings should be in a report format.

In a 10- to 12-page report, include only the following components:

Reason for Referral: Explain the objective of your case vignette analysis, clearly bringing out the aspects or reasons that motivated you to carry out the study.
Presentation: Create mock interview data and collateral information (you are to identify the questions to ask in the interview). Provide a synopsis of the interview. Provide data to support the mental status of your client, based on your forensic assessment report and the mental status components you have identified.
Current Life Situation and Background Information: Explain the problem provided in your selected case vignette using the interview and mental status data. How does the data relate to the background of your client and your behavioral observations?
Objective Testing: Identify the assessment instruments you would recommend to evaluate the client and explain the rationale for your recommendations. Describe the objective tests you have selected and their use. How did you apply these tests to your selected case vignette? Based on your study, what is your analysis of the symptoms displayed by your client? What ethical and multicultural issues do you need to address? You will apply what you have learned from M3 Assignment 2 RA into this section.
Provide your diagnostic impressions based on DSM-5 criteria. What is your principal diagnosis? What is your secondary diagnosis? Are there other conditions that may be the focus of clinical attention to consider?
Conclusion and Recommendations: What is your hypothesis based on the mental status examination, the interview, personality tests, and symptoms analysis? Explain your hypothesis and substantiate it, using instances from your case study. Discuss your results with conclusions and recommendations.
The final Forensic Mental Health Professional Individual Assessment Report should contain all the assigned components and the corresponding information.

Your final deliverables for this module are:

Selected case vignette
List of interview/referral questions
Assessment template
Final assessment report
Your report should be approximately of 12–15 pages.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation

Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality

Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes

I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.