Identifying information
The client’s name is Kyle Jones; he is a 45-year-old man. He considers himself as Italian-American in the second generation. As a religion, the client calls “Roman Catholicism,” moreover, Mr. Jones teaches at the Catholic University. Besides, the client is right-handed. Also, the client received a doctorate in English. He has a traditional sexual orientation; moreover, he has a wife and children. He also leads a healthy lifestyle and goes in for sports.
Reason for referral
The purpose of a psychological assessment is to evaluate an individual about specific problems. These may include issues of mental health, intellectual functioning, lack of learning and school problems, special abilities, personality functioning, behavioral, emotional, and social spheres. The evaluator develops hypotheses based on information about past, current, and predicted future behavior in specific situations. Psychologists use documentary materials, projective techniques, objective interview methods and materials, and structure this information in the form of a report. The purpose of this paper is to assess the psychological state of the client, conduct an analysis based on the data received, and also find the causes of his problems.
A neurologist referred the patient to a neuropsychological assessment because of problems with thinking after a car accident that occurred on March 3rd, 2009. Even a minor trauma affects cognitive functions – the injured person experiences confusion and a decrease in mental abilities. In more severe traumas, amnesia, impaired vision, and hearing, speech, and swallowing skills can be diagnosed. Even the smallest event can affect short-term memory and cause amnesia (Chunharas, Rademaker, Brady, & Serences, 2019). In other cases, speech becomes inarticulate or even completely lost.
All these symptoms may not occur for years but they can appear at one point. Chronic headaches can accompany a person throughout his or her life after an accident. The pain can be sharp or dull, pulsating or pressing, localized, or giving away, for example, to the eyes. Attacks of pain can last from several hours to several days, intensify at moments of emotional or physical stress. Patients are experiencing severe deterioration and loss of body functions, a partial or complete loss of performance, so they suffer from apathy, irritability, and depression. That is why it is important to undergo an examination even if there is only one symptom.
Current Symptoms/Presenting Concerns
Mr. Jones has constant difficulties in generating new ideas, although, due to his profession, this is a necessary skill. There is also a decrease in concentration during the test tasks and the ability for planning. He also reports episodes of memory loss. Kennedy and Harper (2014) claim that “Mr. Jones does not recall talking to a student after class one day” (p.1). He became more reserved and shy, often does not notice what is happening around him.
In addition, Mr. Jones has a headache as well as pain in the cervical region. Moreover, he began to undergo physiotherapy to remove the pain. According to Kennedy and Harper (2014), “he has been experiencing headaches several times per day” (p.1). The client’s coordination of movements deteriorated significantly, not only while walking but also while working with hands. Such symptoms can be considered as direct indications to conduct a psychological evaluation of this client.
Psychosocial History
Educational history
Mr. Jones claims that he never had a learning problem. Learning inability is a group of neuralgic disorders associated with the peculiarities of perception and processing of information that limit the child’s abilities in a particular area. However, such problems with studying were not found at the client a young age; moreover, he studied at school quite well. After school, he graduated from college, and also received a doctorate. Considering the history of Mr. Jones’ education, a possible connection with cognitive impairment was not found.
Occupational history
For the past 30 years, Kyle Jones has been a professor at a private Catholic university. He still works full time and takes on a large amount of work. According to his students, Mr. Jones is a responsible and qualified teacher. In addition, over the past few years, he received faculty awards for the quality of teaching material (Kennedy & Harper, 2014). Apart from many of his responsibilities, he is a member of the institutional oversight board. There he reviews and selects a large number of grant applications.
Considering these facts, Mr. Jones is a highly qualified specialist in the field of teaching, he has the necessary skills and copes well with his tasks. However, after the accident, he had some problems with tasks that require memorization and a quick generation of ideas. Based on this, the accident, or rather the consequences that appeared, badly affected the professional activities of Mr. Jones.
Family analysis
The family analysis is often a critical factor in the search for a causal relationship of diseases. Considering the information about the family of a client: his mother died at the age of 41 from cancer, his father is alive, and he is 67 years old. A neurological disorder was identified in the aunt on the mother’s side, which could be a possible cause of thinking problems in other family members. The client has two brothers and two sisters, but he is the oldest of the children in the family. One of Mr. Jones’s brothers died of colon cancer a year ago, and the youngest of his sisters was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, the other brothers and sisters have no illnesses.
Mr. Jones has two children, a daughter of 12 years old and a son of 15 years old, their illnesses were also not mentioned. His children, like Mr. Jones himself before, are good students, and they have no problems with learning (Kennedy & Harper, 2014). Moreover, they are excellent students, and problems with any academic, emotional, or physical activity are not observed. Mr. Jones is married and lives with his 30-year-old wife and children in the house.
Medical and psychiatric history
The medical history traditionally serves as the main medical and legal document that reflects all stages of the diagnostic process: the results of the evaluation, observation, and treatment of the client. While contacting a client, it is necessary to collect and process diagnostic information, compare the obtained data with each other, and with his or her memories about the etiological and clinical features of various diseases, and then form a diagnostic report (Chunharas et al., 2019). A client received a head injury as a result of a fall on a cement floor in childhood; he did lose consciousness for a short time, but quickly regained consciousness. No harmful consequences that could affect thinking as a result of this trauma have been identified.
No other neurological aspects were observed during the study. In addition, Mr. Jones did not show suicidal tendencies as a result of long-term depression. This disorder is characterized by various emotional disorders in which people experience longing, anxiety, guilt, or apathy, which means a state when a person does not experience either negative or positive emotions. He claims that depression could appear in childhood, but an official diagnosis was not made then (Kennedy & Harper, 2014). Periods of depression last about 3-6 months, but they do not repeat from year to year.
The last time the depression occurred was when Mr. Jones met his surviving friends after a car accident that killed a driver. After that, he underwent a course of individual psychotherapy for several years, and, if he needed some medications, he contacted a psychiatrist. Now the client’s condition is calm and stable, there is no depression, although occasionally there are symptoms of a sharp deterioration in appetite and sleep disturbance. Bad habits (abuse of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs) have not been identified.
Social history
Lifestyle as a socio-psychological phenomenon is a characteristic of human behavior, in which the life of the individual and social community appears as certain integrity. The complexity and versatility of the lifestyle imply the possibility of many aspects of its study and description (Bendix, Osler, Rask, & Rod, 2016). As well as a way of life, the client’s hobby describes the psychological state of the individual. Mr. Jones shows sufficient independence in his lifestyle, financial management, and housekeeping (Kennedy & Harper, 2014). He has hobbies, such as woodworking, fishing, and golf with friends, and he also performs physical training in his life.
His or her involvement in religion also affects the social condition of the individual; the client attends church on Sundays with his family. Apart from a hobby, the client is also proud of his professional activities, or publications in books, as well as three volumes of verses. If examine the client’s interview in detail, will be noticed that he also treats his family with awe, and especially children.
He devotes enough time to his family and also appreciates the gifts received from them. After reviewing the social history of the client, it can be concluded that he does not have any individual negative habits that could have an impact on impaired coordination and thinking. However, his way of life suggests that Mr. Jones is socially active, performs physical training, and generally leads a healthy lifestyle.
Conclusion
To sum up, after conducting certain theoretical and methodological studies, the personality functioning, behavioral, emotional, and social condition of the client was analyzed. The main goal of psychological assessment methods is to obtain information about the hidden characteristics of a person that significantly affect his or her behavior in society, but are difficult to directly observe (level of intelligence, psychological, mental health, socio-psychological aspects).
In this case, evaluating the psychological state of Mr. Jones, the car accident significantly affected the problems with thinking, coordination, and attention. Moreover, as a result of the survey, it was revealed that Mr. Jones had been exposed to such psychological trauma before; he experienced an accident at school age. It was also found that the client suffered from depression for a long time as a result of this incident. Assessment of the client’s social environment did not reveal any factors influencing the problems that appeared.
References
Bendix M., Osler L., Rask L., & Rod, N. H. (2016). Stressful life events and leucocyte telomere length: Do lifestyle factors, bodily and mental health, or low grade inflammation mediate this relationship? Results from a cohort of Danish men born in 1953. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 58, 248-253. Web.
Chunharas, C., Rademaker, R. L., Brady, T. F., & Serences, J. (2019). Adaptive memory distortion in visual working memory, PsyArXiv, 1-23. Web.
Kennedy, N., & Harper, Y. (2014). ABS 300 week five final paper adult male personal injury: Case study Mr. Jones. San Diego, CA: College of Health, Ashford University.