The Psychiatric interview / Daniel J. Carlat.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Over the course of a 40-year professional career, you will do 100,000 diagnostic interviews. The diagnostic interview is by far a tool in the arsenal of any clinician, and yet the average training program directs relatively few resources to specific training in the skills required for it. The general assumption seems to be that if you do enough interviews with different kinds of patients, you'll naturally pick up the required skills. That may be true, but it can take a long time, and the learning process can be painful. I hatched the idea for this manual one night during my first year of psychiatric residency. Starting my shift in the acute psychiatry service (APS), I noticed five patients in the waiting room; the resident who handed me the emergency room beeper said that there were two more patients in the emergency room, both in restraints. At that moment, the beeper sounded, and I called the number. "Psychiatry? This is Ellison 6. We have a patient up here who says he's depressed and suicidal. Please come and evaluate, stat." That meant that I had a total of eight diagnostic assessments to do."--Provided by publisher.