Volume 4 in the DSM-5 Diagnostic Interviewing Series provides viewers with clinical interviews of clients demonstrating symptoms associated with schizophrenia, anorexia, and borderline personality disorder. Because these disorders are such serious, long-term disorders, Buckles notes the necessity of follow-up interviews, as well as input from medical personnel and family members or close associates, before confidently making these diagnoses. These interviews help viewers understand how to both attend to the client’s pace, and direct the interview to obtain the critical information necessary to formulate a tentative diagnosis. 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 two individuals and one mother-son pair who all demonstrate the life struggles and critical details necessary to understand 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 schizophrenia, anorexia, and borderline personality disorder.
• Gain skills in conducting a diagnostic interview with clients suffering from these disorders who also lack insight or the ability to self-report 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.