Welcome! This seminar will introduce you to clinical interviewing and ethical issues in the practice of psychology. I will teach you about conducting clinical interviews and writing reports on your interviews. You will receive at least two 30 minute sessions of supervision from a second-year student that will be recorded for me to review. Also, I will teach you about the APA Ethical Principles and we will apply them to our work.

Requirements.
Clinical Interviews. You will conduct two biopsychosocial background interviews with volunteers and write reports of the interviews by Monday, November 29. The interviews can be part of your work for your Intellectual Assessment (PSYC 810) course or you can interview two undergraduates recruited through Experimetrix. The interviews need to occur between October 18 and November 29.

Supervision. You will participate in at least two videotaped supervision sessions with a second-year student on two biopsychosocial interviews with volunteers from your Intellectual Assessment course or undergraduate volunteers from the GMU experimetrix research site. You will give your supervisor a written report from each interview.

Grading:

A = Uniformly excellent work and completion of all requirements.
A- = Very good work on each dimension and completion of all requirements.
B+ = Above average work on each dimension and completion of all requirements.
B = Substandard work on one dimension and completion of all requirements.
C = Substandard work on more than one dimension and completion of all requirements.
F = Failure to complete all requirements.

Honor Code. All students will follow the GMU Honor Code in this course. You can look at two websites to get more information: http://mason.gmu.edu/%7Emontecin/plagiarism.htm and http://www.gmu.edu/departments/unilife/honorcode.html

Week 1: (Oct. 18) Introduction to clinical interviewing
Week 2: (Oct. 25) The Assessment Interview (Trull, Chapter 6, pp. 141-172)
Week 3: (Nov. 1) Obtaining Information (Morrison, Chapter 1-8, pp. 7-82)
Week 4: (Nov. 8) Sensitive subjects and resistance (Morrison, Chapter 9, pp. 83-98; Chapter 16-17, pp.173-199)
Week 5: (Nov. 15) Ethical Principles and Decision Making (Steinman et al., Chapter 3, pp. 17-21; Chapter 12, pp. 91-125) APA Ethical Principles
Week 6: (Nov. 22) Reviewing interviews
Week 7: (Nov. 29) Reviewing interviews
Week 8: (Dec. 6) Summarizing progress and planning for the future

Readings from:

APA Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct.

Morrison, J. (1995). The first interview. New York: Guilford.

Stienman, S. O., Richardson, N. F., & McEnroe, T. (1998). The ethical decision-making manual for helping professionals. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Trull, T. J. (2005). Clinical psychology (7th edition). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.