A patient with treatment resistant depression - A personality focused assessment approach (1.5 CEs)

Abstract

Personality Focused Assessment (PFA; Blais & Smith, 2008) is a model of personality organization tailored to the needs of psychological assessment. It links personality psychology with psychological assessment. It provides a method for organizing and integrating multi-source data. This model does so via the transtheoretical model of personality, five primary structures or subdivisions of personality. These include awareness and self-regulation; thinking and information processing; affective processing and regulation; self-concept and identity, and interpersonal and social. This symposium will illustrate the utility of integrating psychological test data into a PFA framework using a single case approach. This symposium will focus on the testing data of a patient with treatment resistant depression who was referred to our testing clinic for diagnostic clarification. The first paper will provide an overview of PFA, information gleaned from the clinical interview as well as neuropsychological test findings. The second paper will examine self-report measures of psychological functioning including the Personality Assessment Inventory (Morey, 1991) and SPECTRA-Indices of Psychopathology (Blais et al., 2017). The third and fourth papers will focus on findings from performance-based measures (Thematic Apperception Test & Rorschach Inkblot Test) and associated interpretative systems (Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale-Global Rating Method, Defensive Functioning Scale, & Exner Comprehensive Scoring System). The fifth and final paper will glean clinical impressions, diagnostic considerations, and treatment recommendations. Each presentation will use PFA and the transtheoretical model of personality to organize test findings.

Chair

Michelle Stein | Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School

Discussant

Mark Blais | Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School

Goals & Objectives

1. To identify the five primary structures associated with the transtheoretical model of personality
2. To identify how to integrate multi-source data into Personality Focused Assessment 3. To increase one's competency in ways to integrate explicit and implicit data into this model.