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Diagnosis and Appropriate Interventions for the Client and His Family

The alleviation of psychological and social problems and promotions of wellbeing and health are fundamental aspects of competent social work practice. This paper discusses the measures that should be embraced to alleviate the psychological and social problems facing the client, and promote the wellbeing and health of the client and his family. The paper accomplishes this goal by focusing on three primary areas. These areas are a description of a diagnosis appropriate for the client, description of the intervention or therapy that would be provided for the client, and description of an intervention suitable or appropriate for the client’s family.

Description of a Diagnosis Appropriate for the Client

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5) serves as the internationally acknowledged guidebook for diagnosing disorders associated with mental health. The DSM-5 consists of detailed inventory of diagnostic criteria, stipulations, and symptoms for every recognized mental health disorder. Effective diagnosis of the client’s mental disorder can be accomplished by conducting differential and rule diagnoses. Differential diagnosis involves a list of potential causes, diseases or conditions that could be resulting in a client’s symptoms (Lu, Chan, & Lam, 2017). On the other hand, rule out diagnosis involves the elimination of potential causes or illness one at any given moment by disclosing the clinical information from the client’s history, testing, or examination that is inconsistent within the diagnosis being eliminated or rule out. The presumption of the correct diagnosis is accomplished after the elimination of all the differential diagnosis.

Six steps informed by the DSM-5 will be involved in executing a correct diagnosis for the client. The first step involves ruling out factitious or malingering disorder. This cause is ruled out because the client is not purposely making up symptoms for deception or exaggerating his condition. The second step entails the elimination of substance etiology. This cause is also ruled out considering that the client lacks any history of substance abuse, and thus cannot be suffering from withdrawal symptoms. The third stage is ruling out a disorder attributed to a medical condition. This cause is also excluded considering that the client is not on any medication and does not have a history of any medical condition that can impact his mental health, apart from suffering a broken arm when he was four. The fourth step involves the establishment of the specific primary disorder. The client has a history of trauma, which is attributed to the death of her mother in a car accident when he was 12 years old and the falling and breaking of the hip by his grandmother nine months ago. The client constantly blames himself for these two events and he is afraid to go out, believing that something could occur when he does that.  The fifth stage involves the differentiation of the adjustment disorders from unspecified or residual other disorders. The client’s symptoms can be considered adjustment disorders, as his presentations is an exaggerated and unrelenting psychological reaction or response to some form of life event. The sixth step is the establishment of boundary without mental disorder. This stage is associated with the establishment of the severity of the mental health symptoms to the level of a mental health disorder (Pai, Suris, and North, 2017). The DSM-5 considers symptoms severe when they result in individual clinically significant impairment or distress in occupational and social functioning areas among others. The client’s condition can be considered severe and hence a mental disorder as it has adversely impacted his social functioning. He stays isolated and locked inside his room most of the time. Besides, the client is unable to comfortably attend school or go out. The client constantly blames himself for his mother’s death and the falling and breaking of his grandmother’s hip, and he is afraid to go out, believing that something could occur when he does that.

Description of the Intervention or Therapy that would be Provided for the Client

The most appropriate intervention for the client is the provision of trauma-informed care considering that the client suffers from mental disorder associated with trauma. Levenson (2017) defines trauma as the exposure or subjection to an unusual experience that presents a psychological or physical threat to oneself or other parties, and generates a response of fear and helplessness. Trauma experiences assume many forms, but are typically associated with an unexpected event that cannot be controlled by a person including exposure to accident, criminal victimization, family violence, war, or natural disaster. According to Levenson (2017), trauma-informed care serves as a way of service delivery by which social work professionals acknowledge the prevalence or occurrence of early adversity within the clients’ lives, perceive presenting issues as symptoms associated with maladaptive coping, and comprehend how early trauma informs the fundamental beliefs of a client concerning the word and impacts her or his psychosocial functioning throughout the lifespan. Badour, Resnick, and Kilpatrick (2017) assert that trauma-informed social work practice integrates core principles of collaboration, trust, choice, empowerment, and safety, and provided services in a way that prevents inadvertently recurring unhealthy interpersonal dynamics within the helping association or relationship. The relevance of trauma-informed practice to the client’s situation also lies in the fact that it can be incorporated into all forms of existing framework of evidence-based services across agency settings and populations, facilitates posttraumatic growth, and strengthens the therapeutic collaboration or alliance. This care should be provided within the context of the Generalist Intervention Model, which includes stages including engagement, assessment, planning, intervention, evaluation, and termination. This model assists social workers in identifying potential stressors along with other distractions to the equilibrium of clients systems at macro, mezzo, and micro levels, as a means of enabling social workers to work with clients to arrange and execute appropriate interventions that can support clients in achieving optimal social functioning.  

Description of an Intervention Suitable or Appropriate for the Client’s Family

The publication of DSM-5 extends a practice and profession-defining direction for the execution of family therapy (Pai et al., 2017). Working with families is a fundamental component of good family-centered practice for social workers. Successful execution of assessments, case management, and case planning requires effective communication between social workers or caseworkers with families, as a means strengthening parenting, and interpersonal, and problem-solving skills (Pai et al., 2017). In relation to this, the most appropriate intervention for the client’s family is social support including counseling, parent education on how to handle the client, and provision of support in acquiring and coordinating various medical, as well as early intervention services targeted at the client. Moreover, these processes should be accompanied by constant assessment of the client with his family in terms of strengths, needs, and progress accomplished.

Conclusion

This paper has effectively discussed how the wellbeing and health of the client can be accomplished by focusing on the relevant or appropriate interventions for the client and his family. Embracing the interventions and measures discussed in this paper will contribute significantly to addressing the client’s mental health disorder arising from trauma.

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