Interviewing Children and Adolescents: Skills and Strategies for Effective DSM-IV Diagnosis. - Review - book review

Adolescence, Spring, 2000

MORRISON, James, & ANDERS, Thomas F. Interviewing Children and Adolescents: Skills and Strategies for Effective DSM-IV Diagnosis. New York: The Guilford Press, 1999. 482pp. $44.00 (h).

This volume provides a complete guide to conducting an age-appropriate child or adolescent interview and formulating a clinically useful DSM-IV diagnosis. Illuminating both the art and the science of child diagnosis, the book blends advice on the interview process with information on a wide range of mental and behavioral disorders. Readers learn effective approaches to communicating with children and adolescents on a level that young people can understand; eliciting information from patients whose verbal and cognitive abilities may be limited; and recognizing how disorders may present in children of different ages. Taking readers step-by-step through the initial interview, the book describes the steps needed to establish rapport, what kind of information should be sought, and how it can be obtained. Within a detailed developmental framework, guidelines are presented for interviewing preschoolers, school-age children, and teens. Readers learn how to structure the evaluation for best results using such techniqu es as directive and nondirective questioning, art activities, play, and family interviews. Verbatim excerpts from six actual interviews, including an infant interview with a mother and child, demonstrate how seasoned clinicians tailor their evaluations to the child's developmental level and personality, engage hard-to-reach clients, and zero in on clinically relevant data. The components of an effective written report are also reviewed. Diagnostic information is then provided about twenty-eight mental and behavioral disorders that are usually first diagnosed in childhood, as well as thirty-two "adult" disorders as they may be encountered in children. The authors translate complicated DSM-IV criteria into straightforward, readable prose, highlighting differences in presentation that can be expected at different developmental stages. Special features include forty-five detailed case vignettes, pointers for interviewing specific disorders, and quick-reference tables and charts to facilitate rapid differential di agnosis.