Clinical Assessment and Diagnosis

Catalog description

This online course will use assigned and student selected readings; instructor instructional comments (found under Content)); videos (found under Content or otherwise signaled herein); case studies, email communication; and Discussion Board Forums as the primary learning venues. The course is designed for learning about what the course title implies: mental health and psychopathology (also referred to in practice as mental health disorders; also contemporary nomenclature in practice typically uses the phrase “behavioral health”). This course covers a broad range of human behavior and feelings and presents information, theories, and diagnostics from the text, student and instructor provided learning materials, videos, and learning derived from required reading of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM5) that is the current classification and descriptive tool in use for psychotherapeutic assessments) and subsequently, application to models of intervention applicable to non-normative mental/behavioral health functioning. This course is designed such that all five dimensions of mental illness (organized dimensions of information), referred to in practice as “axes” are introduced and will lead to capabilities for assessing mental disorders and concomitant methodologies of treatment, that are linked to each of the specific axes.