Discussion: Prospective patient’s apparent symptoms
Discussion: Prospective patient’s apparent symptoms
Guided Response: Review several of your colleagues’ posts. You are encouraged to post your required replies
earlier in the week to promote more meaningful interactive discourse in this discussion.
Examine your colleague’s transcript, and write an evaluation of the prospective patient’s apparent symptoms and presenting problem(s) within the context of a theoretical orientation.
Theoretical orientations are based on the personality theories you learned about in PSY615, and
are referred to as “approaches” in Abnormal and Clinical Psychology: An Introductory Textbook.
Remember that symptoms may not be explicitly mentioned by the patient, but they may be
inferred by the patient’s presenting problem(s). Summarize views of these symptoms from at
least two historical perspectives. For instance, how have these symptoms have been
conceptualized and understood, historically? Finally, suggest diagnostic manuals and handbooks
besides the DSM-5 that might be used to assess this patient.
Continue to monitor the discussion forum until 5:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time (MST) on
Day 7 of the week, and respond to anyone who replies to your initial
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
