Daisy Arabella ONLY

Psychosocial Assessment and Research Outline

Demographics of Character

Name

Gender

Ethnicity

Age

Reason and Source of Referral:

You may need to imagine that the character comes to you for an assessment/therapy at a certain point in their timeline. You can choose when would be a good point for them to come in and seek your counsel (at what point in the plot?). This section is short, just a few sentences. Focus also on whether the character chose to come to you or has to come to you.

Strengths:

List the character’s strengths. Everyone always has a few strengths, a few factors that increase their resiliency. List aspects of their lives, minds, personalities, or social support that may help them get through the difficult times, or learn to cope with their disorders.

Family Background/Key Life Events:

Go into detail here about all relevant (so you believe) aspects of this person’s upbringing, genetic inheritance, social life, traumas, choices, etc., that may impact their current functioning.

Presenting Problems:

This is more detail on what crisis may have brought them in, specifically at this point in their lives. What symptoms are they currently experiencing (today, this week)?

Education/Occupational Status and History:

Chronicle their school and work history, focusing mostly on how it does or does not reflect the reason they have come to see you.

Health Status/History:

List any current or past health problems that may influence their diagnosis or prognosis in therapy.

Mental Illness/Psychological History:

Have they been previously hospitalization? If so, why, when? Have they sought or been required to attend therapy before? If so, why, where, when? This information may influence your idea about what is really going on with this character. However, you may disagree with previous diagnoses, after you finish the full psychosocial assessment process.

Symptom List:

This is where you list the primary symptoms, past, ongoing, or present, that could be the basis for a psychiatric diagnosis for the character. After organizing the symptoms into appropriate diagnostic groupings (because some characters may have more than one disorder), take a stab at suggesting what their diagnosis may be.

Research Support:

Based on the major diagnostic category you determined from the symptom list above, find a minimum of four peer-reviewed journal articles (in the last ten years or more recent) that discuss either the causes of the disorder of your character, or possible treatments for the disorder of your character. This section should be 3-5 pages. Discuss the research and what you learn from the journal articles in this section, citing the articles as needed in APA style. You may also reference the textbook in this section.

Recommendations:

Now that you have completed a thorough psychosocial assessment and read research on your character’s possible disorder, you are in a position to make a few recommendations about treatment. Write one paragraph here, making sure it is based on all that you wrote about above.