PTSD: Assessment of Traumatic Experience & Responses

Speaker:
Eve B. Carlson, Ph.D., Research Health Science Specialist, NCPTSD Educational and Clinical Laboratory Division, VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA

Overview:
While potentially critical to a treatment plan, assessing traumatic experiences and responses can be challenging. In order to maximize clinicians' effectiveness in assessing clients' trauma exposure and posttraumatic symptoms while minimizing the effects of error from various sources, Dr. Carlson will review key elements of developing a strategy for assessing clients, including sources of information, purpose of the assessment, considerations in choosing measures and suggested domains to assess.

In addition, she will discuss challenges to assessing past trauma and current symptoms and ways to address those challenges. She will explain ways to make assessments and discussion of assessment results with clients more therapeutic. Finally, Dr. Carlson will present and describe a sample of available self-report measures and structured interviews for trauma exposure and posttraumatic symptoms.

Goals:
After the completion of this program, participants should be able to:

1. Maximize their effectiveness in assessing clients' trauma exposure and posttraumatic symptoms while minimizing the effects of error from various sources.
2. Become familiar with a range of self-report scales and structured interviews for traumatic experiences and posttraumatic symptoms.
3. Maximize the therapeutic value of their trauma assessments.

Part 1: Developing a Strategy for Approaching Assessment (16:20)

Part 2: Choosing Measures to Fit the Client (12:14)

Part 3: Assessments (23:28)

Part 4: Theraputic Assessments of Traumatized People (12:37)

Part 5: Measures: Brief, Self-report, Interview (25:21)

Part 6: Questions and Answers (11:10)