I’ll be coming back to Sunday morning coffee things with Dr. Childress – 8:00 Pacific Time here on Facebook Live.
This Sunday, I’m going to talk about treatment. I’ll take an hour or so and tell you all about treatment. This is an attachment pathology, you want a treatment plan – a written treatment plan – to fix it.
Will you get one? Not from your current crop of psychologists, but from real psychologists, yes. With Outcome Measures. You absolutely 100% want Outcome Measures monitoring treatment progress on whatever the concern is.
If it’s anorexia, the Outcome Measure is weight gain (measurable). If the diagnosis is ADHD, the Outcome Measure is rating scale improvements in hyperactive behavior and inattention – there’s the Conners, there’s the CBCL, there’s the BASQ.
There is always a SUDs scale – Subjective Units of Distress – on a 1-to-10 scale… how bad is your pain? – how frequently do you argue with each other? – how severe is the anxiety? – pick a symptom to monitor, any symptom, and put it on a 1-to-10 SUDs scale as the outcome measure.
I’ve done that with the Parent-Child Relationship Scale – daily ratings by the targeted parent of the child on a 1-to-7 scale (a 7-point Likert scale) regarding three items, 1) Affection, 2) Cooperation, 3) Social Involvement.
Rate the child everyday 1-to-7 on those three items and email the three numbers – just the numbers – to the treating family therapist. Treatment goals should be to achieve normal-range ratings (ratings of 3-4-5 or higher) within a specified timeframe.
Treatment Goal 1: Within two weeks, raise all daily PC-RRS ratings by the targeted parent from 1s and 2s to ratings of 3 or higher.
That is a measurable goal within an anticipated timeframe. We then need to identify the specific Interventions to be used to achieve treatment Goal 1.
Google Mental Health Treatment Plans and read the top two returns. Look-up WikiHow Mental Heath Treatment Plans and read that. Treatment plans are everyday common in clinical psychology – they don’t exist in forensic psychology.
You should know what you SHOULD be receiving to understand the scope of what you are NOT receiving.
I’ll talk about treatment this Sunday, 8:00 am Pacific over coffee here on Facebook Live.
Craig Childress, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist, CA PSY 18857
GreatCosmicMothersUnite 