The Use of Therapeutic Assessment with Forensic Populations: Practitioners' Perspectives

Therapeutic Assessment is a semi-structured approach to collaborative assessment developed by Stephen E. Finn and colleagues. In Therapeutic Assessment, psychological assessment is used as a therapeutic intervention (Finn, 2007; Finn & Kamphuis, 2006). The Therapeutic Assessment model differs from traditional assessment with regard to procedure and the roles of both assessor and client. Therapeutic Assessment has yet to be explored in forensic settings, wherein assessors are required to take on a number of varying and conflicting roles. In the current study, five forensic psychologists completed a semi-structured interview to identify their perspectives of Therapeutic Assessment and its utility in forensic contexts. A phenomenological qualitative analysis of the interviews was conducted to derive themes about Therapeutic Assessment, forensic psychology, and the overlap between these two domains. General themes that emerged include (a) the role and the context of the practitioner's work with the forensic population; (b) the potential of using Therapeutic Assessment's paradigm in family law settings; and (c) the increased risk of harm when using Therapeutic Assessment with forensic populations. In addition to these themes, multiple respondents discussed components of collaborative/Therapeutic Assessment that they have found useful with this population. Finally, the implications of these results are discussed.

Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration Behavior of Practitioners in the Treatment of Anxiety Disorders

Current research on the collaborative behaviors of conventional and alternative health care providers for the treatment of anxiety is lacking. While there are multiple studies looking at alternative health care integration into primary care, none of them look at anxiety specifically. The purpose of this paper is to provide a preliminary exploration of possible barriers to collaboration between conventional and alternative health care providers for the treatment of anxiety. Quantitative data on collaboration behavior patterns were obtained with an anonymous survey. Data from the surveys were analyzed using a chi-square analysis. Along with these numerical data narrative data from the survey and interviews were collected in order to assess beliefs about the barriers to collaboration from different health care providers. The results indicate that conventional providers collaborate the least with alternative providers and alternative providers collaborate the least with conventional providers. The descriptive results regarding the barriers to collaboration from the study illustrated a common theme, specifically, the lack of education of conventional providers on alternative health care practices on anxiety. This is an exploratory study: therefore it would be beneficial for future researchers to look deeper into the beliefs of health care providers on the barriers to collaboration, possibly identifying the specific barriers to collaboration for each type of healthcare provider.