PSYC 645 Developmental Psychology

Tips for Case Presentation 3 Assignment 

· This week, you will analyze the “Sarah” case file.

· I encourage you to use the "most up to date research" to back up the arguments in your case presentation. This means that I encourage you to rely on sources that have been published within the past 5 years. Please reevaluate your chosen sources to make sure all of your sources meet this expectation.

· You should only give each client 1 diagnosis, not 2 or 3.

· Also, I encourage you to submit at least 3 diagnostic impressions before settling on the one diagnosis that you think is applicable to the specific case study. More than 3 is fine, but please propose at least 3 in this section of your analysis.

· Please make sure in the etiology and treatment sections that you tie your recommendations not only to scholarly sources but also to specifics that you know about the client’s story. You need to clearly back up all of your arguments in this conceptualization with science. Please cite journal articles and not the textbook or DSM manual here.  I want to see that you have your hands on direct research that is up to date, that you can explain how that research was done, and describe how the intervention that was studied is relevant for the particular case study.

· When proposing psychosocial and biological treatments, it is very important that they are evidenced based and that you have dug into the research to find the most up to date treatments in these different domains for the disorder you diagnosed your client with. If these sections are too vague/not specific, the grade will reflect that.  I want to see that you can locate the most up to date treatments for clients in your write up that have been published recently in the scholarly literature. For these sections, one reference is required but more are encouraged.  Also, please cite journal articles and not the textbook or DSM manual here.  I want to see that you have your hands on wdirect research that is up to date, that you can explain how that research was done, and describe how the intervention that was studied is relevant for the particular case study.

· In treatment section, please do not talk about treating potential comorbidities, but instead focus on reviewing research that has evidence of effectiveness for your given diagnosis.

· Relatedly, I encourage you to cite multiple primary scholarly sources in your conceptualizations. Different sources offer different perspectives, and learning how to think critically and write about these different perspectives is a critical professional development skill to focus on in this course. Citing the textbook is citing someone else who has read the research. You should be reading and citing the research directly yourself!

· When talking about biological treatments, make sure you consider nutritional treatments that may have evidence as opposed to only medication treatments. Also, when talking about medications, talk about how long clients should be on medicines, can they taper off, when can that happen, what are short and long term side effects etc.

· I don’t penalize students for going over the page length for the conceptualization. If you need more space to be thorough in your presentation, then that’s fine!  I’m happy to read and grade it.