PSY 626 SNHU Substance Use Dependence Psychological Assessment Report Everything needed is attached including Rubric, the two essays needed to expand on, a

PSY 626 SNHU Substance Use Dependence Psychological Assessment Report Everything needed is attached including Rubric, the two essays needed to expand on, and milestone two example as to how it needs to be written. Please take information from both essays to put together this one.

Instructions

For this milestone, take your case report from PSY 622 and prepare a psychological assessment report that demonstrates use of objective testing data. How do classic and contemporary psychology theories support the claims you have made in your diagnostic consultation?

Make sure your assessment report accounts for the many possible avenues for gathering evidence in legal situations. You will likely rely on memory in some way, so make sure to discuss any limitations that you will bring to your assessment report. If possible, include measures that you learned about in your previous courses as protective mechanisms against the use of memory. Also, make sure you explain why you are using the assessments you selected. This information is often very important should the report be used in a legal proceeding.

Note: Do not simply cut and paste your assessment choices from PSY 622. Incorporate the feedback given to you in that course and expand or change your assessment choices in order to best fit the current scenario. Remember you were hired by a law firm to create the final report.

Consider this: How reliable is your memory?

Imagine you’re in court as a defendant. It’s June 20th. The prosecutor asks you what you did on June 6th. You’re asked to account for every minute of the day – your whereabouts, your behaviors, who you were with, how long you were with them…It’s difficult to remember days that aren’t significant to you. While the date in question isn’t significant to you, it’s significant to the prosecutor. What if you were on trial for a murder you didn’t commit? How could you prove you didn’t commit it when you can’t remember what you did that day? Lapse in memory can seem like a tactic for the guilty. Guilty parties often suffer from situational “amnesia” regarding days, environments, or individuals associated with the crime. One of the best examples I can think of that represents this phenomena is the interview of young medical student, Philip Markoff – the Craigslist Killer – to Boston PD Detectives.

The detective interviewing Markoff asks him if he’s ever been to any hotels in downtown Boston. Markoff says “yes” but cannot remember the last time he was at any hotels in the area [where the crimes took place]. After probing, he says he may have walked through a hotel at some point that year. Detectives asked what hotel it may have been, he couldn’t recall. They asked if he might have walked through the lobby of one of the hotels without really remembering. He responded “maybe…I don’t remember.” Detectives present Markoff with a photograph of him walking through lobby of one of the hotels in downtown Boston around the date and time the last victim was murdered. Detectives ask Markoff to explain where he may have been going or what he may have been doing. Markoff states that he may have gone to a Cheesecake Factory restaurant at some point, but he can’t recall for sure when or if that was where he was going. Detectives say, “no specific memory, huh?” Markoff replies, “I don’t really remember.” Detectives move past the date of the potential dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and say, “what would have brought you in there to walk through it?” [the lobby]. He responds, “I don’t remember.” So, “you have no clear memory of being there in the last couple of weeks?”, detectives ask Markoff. “I don’t remember, no….no clear memory,” he responded. The entire Markoff interview is maddening. His “loss of memory” in such an exaggerated manner suggests probable culpability, but what if he was innocent?

Human memory is not as reliable as we would like to believe. Consider controversial topics such as testimony based on “repressed memory” or eyewitness report from the memory of a child. This week you will be asked to describe how you would account for memory errors when creating reports for others. How would you account for the memory errors of others? PSY 626 Final Project Milestone Two Guidelines and Rubric
Prompt: For this milestone, take your case report from PSY 622 and develop a psychological assessment report. This milestone should fulfill Part VI of the final
project:
VI. Psychological Assessment Report
A. Prepare a psychological assessment report that demonstrates use of objective testing data.
B. How do classic and contemporary psychology theories support the claims you have made in your diagnostic consultation?
Make sure your assessment report accounts for the many possible avenues for gathering evidence in legal situations. You will likely rely on memory in some way,
so make sure to discuss any limitations that you will bring to your assessment report. If possible, include measures that you learned about in your previous
courses as protective mechanisms against the use of memory. Also, make sure you explain why you are using the assessments you selected. This information is
often very important should the report be used in a legal proceeding.
Note: Do not simply cut and paste your assessment choices from PSY 622. Incorporate the feedback given to you in that course and expand or change your
assessment choices in order to best fit the current scenario. Remember you were hired by a law firm to create the final report.
Guidelines for Submission: You should submit a well-developed psychological assessment report for the case study client from PSY 622. Your paper must be
submitted as a 2–3 page Microsoft Word document with double spacing, 12-point Times New Roman font, one-inch margins, and sources cited in APA format.
Critical Elements
Exemplary (100%)
Proficient (90%)
Psychological
Meets “Proficient” criteria and
Prepares a comprehensive
Assessment Report: uses industry-specific language to psychological assessment report
Report
establish expertise
that demonstrates use of
objective testing data
Psychological
Meets “Proficient” criteria and
Convincingly supports claims with
Assessment Report: discussion draws insightful
classic and contemporary
Theories
connections between theories and psychology theories
the practice of forensic
psychology
Psychological
Meets “Proficient” criteria and
Comprehensively articulates
Assessment Report: cites specific, relevant examples
qualifications to discuss
Qualifications
to establish a robust context for
psychological assessment
the discussion
Needs Improvement (70%)
Prepares a diagnostic consultation
report but with gaps in detail, or
does not demonstrate use of
objective testing data
Supports claims with classic or
contemporary psychology
theories, but not both; or support
is unconvincing or insufficient in
other ways
Articulates qualifications but with
gaps in details that may lead to
inadmissibility in court
Not Evident (0%)
Does not prepare a diagnostic
consultation report
Value
17
Does not support claims
17
Does not articulate professional
qualifications
17
Psychological
Assessment Report:
Test and
Assessment
Selection
Meets “Proficient” criteria and
cites specific studies establishing
the professional criteria for each
assessment choice
Comprehensively explains all tests
and assessment choices, including
the strengths and weaknesses of
each choice
Psychological
Meets “Proficient” criteria and
Discusses ethical standards of
Assessment Report: uses industry-specific language to psychological assessment and
Ethical Standards establish expertise
shows a full understanding of
those ethics
Articulation of
Submission is free of errors
Submission has no major errors
Response
related to citations, grammar,
related to citations, grammar,
spelling, syntax, and organization spelling, syntax, or organization
and is presented in a professional
and easy-to-read format
Discusses why tests and
assessments were selected, but
does not clarify strengths and
weaknesses of choices and leaves
gaps in the details of those
choices
Discusses ethical standards of
assessment but does not show full
clarity and understanding of those
ethics
Submission has major errors
related to citations, grammar,
spelling, syntax, or organization
that negatively impact readability
and articulation of main ideas
Does not discuss why tests and
assessment choices were made
17
Does not discuss ethical standards
of psychological assessment
17
Submission has critical errors
related to citations, grammar,
spelling, syntax, or organization
that prevent understanding of
ideas
Earned Total
15
100%
Forensic Psychological Evaluation
(Confidential)
Name: Angela A. (Female)
Date of Birth: N/A
Age: N/A
Referred by: H. Lecture, M.D.
Date of Examination: January 1, 2012
Place of Examination: Office of Forensic Assessments
Date of Report: January 5, 2012
Examiner: F. Hagerthy, PhD.
Reason for Referral
The present assessment is to determine, in relation to child protective services (CPS), if Ms. A
has the mental capacity to safely be reunited and raise her children, as she has a significant
history of child neglect.
Procedures
•
•
•
•
Clinical Interview
CPS Referral Information
Symptom Assessment-45 (SA-45)
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2ed. (MMPI-2)
Qualifications
The SA-45 and the MMPI-2 are both well-accepted assessments in the field of
psychology that have been clinically proven and peer reviewed to have reliability and validity
(McCord, 2018; Davison, Bershadsky, Silversmith, Maruish, & Kane, 1997). Both assessments
have standards controlling the technique’s operation as shown through their use of scales that
measure an individual’s symptoms (McCord, 2018; Davison et al., 1997). The MMPI-2 has a
technical manual that supplies reliability estimates and standard errors of measurement for all the
scales supported by normative samples and various well-explained clinical samples (McCord,
2018). For the SA-45 scales any T scores of 70-80 are overall considered clinically significant,
while lower T scores of 60-65 may permit further investigation, showing the overall error rate of
the scores (Davison et al., 1997).
Test and Assessment Selection
The MMPI-2 has extensive research on its detailed validity and effectiveness for over 70
years (Butcher, 2015). It has shown to be the most accepted and effective instrument for
assessing parents in custody evaluations and detecting potential child abuse (Butcher, 2015).
How the MMPI-2 works is through the use of clinical scales where it aids in measuring
personality traits, which are correlated to mental illnesses (Butcher, 2015). However, the MMPI2 was not established to be a definitive means of diagnosing individuals with being psychotic at
the time of their offense (Butcher, 2015). It was made to measure potential personality traits that
are more likely to be connected with different mental illnesses and suggest the possibility of an
individual having a mental illness (Bucther, 2015).
The SA-45 was utilized to objectively assess psychiatric symptomology and aids
clinicians in coming to a diagnosis and creating treatment plans (Maruish, 2004). The assessment
SA-45 is a shorter version of the Symptom Checklist-90, which is a widely used psychiatric selfreport measure that has proven reliability and validity (Slavin-Mulford, Perkey, Blais, Stein, &
Sinclair, 2015). It was originally created for psychiatric inpatients but can also be used for nonpatient assessment and treatment outcomes (Maruish, 2004). Due to how brief the SA-45 is it
does not include all psychiatric symptomology, in turn limiting its ability to detect accurately
upon all possible symptoms an individual may display (Maruish, 2004). Thus, the SA-45 should
alone be used as one source of information and be paired with another psychological test as well
as with the patients interview information including collateral information (Maruish, 2004). This
is to verify any impressions about the absence or presence of psychological symptoms and to the
extent an individual is experiencing them (Maruish, 2004).
Overall, the SA-45 is only an assessment to strengthen another assessments findings and
alone is not a definitive testing method. Lastly, in conducting a clinical interview it assists the
psychologist to determine if what was observed, such as behavior, during interview and an
individual’s past history aligns with the assessment results. Much of the clinical interview is
based on a psychologist’s memory of what they observed which could potentially leave room for
memory errors to occur. How this was resolved was by the psychologist properly recording
information from the interview via note taking and auto recording. Ms. A signed a consent form
stating that she agreed to and understood that she would be auto recorded for the clinical
interview.
Test Results
Examining Ms. A’s MMPI-2 test score results, several areas were found to be clinically
significant including Psychopathic Deviance, Hysteria, Paranoia, Schizophrenia, and
Hypomania. What Ms. A scored on these areas suggest that Ms. A has signs of these conditions.
Further results from Ms. A’s MMPI-2 test showed that she accentuated herself and her life to be
seen in a positive light. This can be due to Ms. A either making conscious or unconscious
exaggerations of herself and life. Lastly, Ms. A has shown in her results that she lacks impulse
control and has issues with interpersonal relationships as well as alienation. Due to Ms. A’s
scores, it also shows that she displays angry, emotionally shallow, impulsive, and unpredictable
behaviors as well as being socially nonconforming. Furthermore, Ms. A displays tendencies of
disregarding social rules and authority figures. All other scores obtained from the MMPI-2 in the
symptom scales need further investigation as they were below clinical significance. In regards to
the SA-45, Ms. A’s scores were inconclusive and need to be further examined.
Assessment Report
The SA-45, MMPI-2, and clinical interview were used as means to assess if Ms. A is
mentally capable of safely and appropriately fulfilling her role as a parent. The present
assessments search for symptoms and personality traits that can indicate mental impairment and
illness as well as their severity. Ms. A has clinically significant scores on the MMPI-2 suggesting
she has mild forms of mania and exhibits uncontrollable emotions which can become heightened
in a group setting. Also Ms. A’s test result suggest she has paranoid ideations and could
potentially have schizophrenia due to the personality traits she tested positive for correlating to
those with this particular mental illness.
There were also indications that Ms. A has defiance towards following rules set for her.
These indications present some concern about Ms. A obtaining custody of her children and
following guidelines from the court. Ms. A’s emotional, mental, and behavioral states are
unstable and can become worse when Ms. A is under the influence of illegal substances.
Therefore, the safest situation for her children would to be placed with a responsible adult until
Ms. A becomes stable and does not engage in substance use. The SA-45 results, that would have
displayed the risk of physical child abuse, hostility, and psychiatric difficulties, were
inconclusive. However, this could be explained by the MMPI-2 where Ms. A accentuated herself
and her life to be seen in a positive light, so she could have falsely reported on the SA-45 scales
due to this.
Other information gathered from Ms. A’s clinical interview through observation was that
she displayed average intelligence, but showed signs of having mild psychomotor retardation.
This should be assessed further as well to determine its affects on Ms. A’s daily functioning.
Other noted information was that Ms. A has a substance abuse problem, which could potentially
exacerbate the traits mentioned above. This becomes concerning if Ms. A is unsupervised with
her children as she has displayed her emotions are unstable through the MMPI-2; as well as the
records from CPS that states Ms. A’s neglect towards her children. Also, due to her criminal
history and the MMPI-2 displaying that she has defiant behavior towards authority suggests that
Ms. A may engage in future criminal behavior. This can affect Ms. A’s children’s development
severely if she raises them because of the likelihood of instability they could face due to their
mothers deviant behaviors.
In addition, Ms. A reported her parents also suffering from substance abuse, although Ms.
A denied any child abuse/family violence in her childhood, she may be reporting inaccurately.
Whether this be due to memory error or unwillingness to share such information further
examination of Ms. A’s past should be looked into, as this would explain her inability to cope in
a healthy manner with daily stressors. Lastly, Ms. A’s behavioral, emotional, and substance
abuse issues can greatly affect her children with negative outcomes such as them developing all
the problems their mother has.
Supporting Theories
Theories that support the present report are based on classical attachment theory of John
Bowlby and the contemporary Big Five personality trait theory. Attachment theory explains how
as one grows they start to form attachment to their caretakers (Robbins & Zack, 2007). Children
who have healthy relationships growing up end up with successful social and emotional
development (Robbins & Zack, 2007). However, when an individual does not form healthy
attachments they can develop behavioral, emotional, and mental issues (Robbins & Zack, 2007).
Ms. A has demonstrated that her childhood upbringing was not healthy due to her parents being
substance abusers, which has had obvious affects on her due to her mental, behavioral, and
parenting problems. With Ms. A’s children, they are at risk of developing these issues if she
raises them, as she has already shown prior she has been neglectful to her children. Ms. A’s
children need to be with a stable adult whom which they can form a healthy attachment with to
lessen the affects of possibility developing future issues.
A contemporary theory to support the present risk assessments is the Big Five personality
trait theory. This theory examines personality traits and measures how much a person has of a
certain trait, which could potentially detect signs of mental illness (DeYoung, Carey, Krueger, &
Ross, 2016). These theories provide support to the assessments as they take into consideration
that a personality trait can trigger an emotional and behavioral response. In addition, these
theories demonstrate how important a healthy upbringing is, as it greatly affects an individual’s
personality.
Ethical Standards
The American Psychological Association’s ethical code 9.01 Bases of Assessment
(2018) enjoins that ample information is present to build the basis for the recommendations of
an assessment, such as the present one. The present test data and interview information given
by the client serves as a way to ratify the meeting of this standard. However, the accuracy and
validity may be strengthened with collecting additional previous mental health and childhood
history records not given at the time of this evaluation. Records of Ms. A’s past mental health
would help in understanding what treatment she may have received for her substance abuse
and other psychological issues not mentioned during the interview.
Other records in regards to Ms. A’s childhood past would aid in finding out if she
experienced any childhood abuse that could now be influencing her parenting skills. In
accordance with the Specialty Guidelines for Forensic Psychology from the American
Psychological Association (2018) ethical code 10.02, Selection and Use of Assessment
Procedures includes considering and seeking factors that could affect test results. Therefore,
due to Ms. A’s SA-45 assessment results being inconclusive, further examination into factors
that could have influenced her results should be conducted.
Additional ethical factors within the present case is the American Psychological
Association’s ethical code 3.04, Avoiding Harm (2018), stating that “Psychologists take
reasonable steps to avoid harming their clients/patients, students, supervisees, research
participants, organizational clients, and others with whom they work, and to minimize harm
where it is foreseeable and unavoidable”. As Ms. A is abusive towards her child and uses illegal
substances, the recommendations above will aid to impede any foreseeable harm from coming to
Ms. A and her child. Lastly, the American Psychological Association’s ethical code 9.03
Informed Consent in Assessment (2018) conveys that test results are mandated by law or the
government to be released to them when there is a criminal investigation, such as with Ms. A’s
case of child abuse and neglect.
References
American Psychological Association. (2018). Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of
Conduct. American Psychological Association.
American Psychological Association. (2018). Specialty guidelines of forensic psychology.
American Psychological Association.
Davison, L. M., Bershadsky, B., Silversmith, D. B.J., Maruish, E. M., Kane, L. R. (1997).
Development of a brief, multidimensional, self-report instrument for treatment
outcomes assessment in psychiatric settings: Preliminary findings. Psychological
Assessment Resources, Inc., 4(3), 259-364.
DeYoung, C. G., Carey, B. E., Krueger, R. F., & Ross, S. R. (2016). Ten aspects of the Big Five
in the personality inventory for DSM-5. American Psychological Association, 7(2), 113123. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/per0000170.
Maruish, M. E. (2004). The use of psychological testing of treatment planning and
outcomes assessment. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 3(3), 43-78.
McCord, M. D. (2018). Overview of the MMPI-2-RF history, development, and psychometric
considerations. American Psychological Association, 7-17.
Robbins, P., & Zack, J. M. (2007) Attachment theory and cognitive science: Commentary
on Fonagy and Target. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 55(2), 457467.
Slavin-Mulford, J., Perkey, H., Blais, M., Stein, M., & Sinclair, S. J. (2015). External validity of
the symptom assessment-45 questionnaire (SA-45) in a clinical sample. Elsevier Inc., 58,
205-212. DOI: 10.1016/j.comppsych.2014.12.007.
Running head: FINAL PROJECT
1
Treatment Evaluation Methods for Violent and Non-Violent offenders and Trauma Victims
Samantha F. Panizo Baiocchi
Southern New Hampshire University
May 06, 2020
FINAL PROJECT
2
Psychologists are often assigned the task of offering treatment to offenders and
trauma victims in the form of therapy to enable the offenders to change their ways and the
victims to get through the ordeal. The offenders are either: violent, for instance, rapists and
murderers or non-violent that include participation in the fraud, bribery, and tax crimes.
Legal and Ethical Considerations
Ethical Concerns
There are various ethical concerns that psychologists face while issuing treatment
across these three groups. In the case of violent offenders, most of them are incarcerated as they
pose a danger to the community from their violent nature and therefore contained in correctional
facilities. One of the ethical issues is that the correctional facilities tend to disagree with
psychological values and principles (“NCJRS Abstract – National Criminal Justice Reference
Service”, 2020). One of the guiding principles of psychology being the establishment of trust
relations between those incarcerated and the psychologists to guarantee openness in the treatment
program (“General Principles”, 2020). However, the correctional facilities tend to emphasize on
the control in the management of the offenders rather than trust and thus leading to
disagreements at times with the psychologists discussed (“NCJRS Abstract – National Criminal
Justice Reference Service”, 2020). Another ethical concern arising is the issu…
Purchase answer to see full
attachment