Volume 1 of this comprehensive series begins with Jason Buckles and Victor Yalom reviewing the major DSM-5-TR updates and then digging deep into some of the most fundamental questions in the field of mental health: What is a mental disorder? What is a diagnosis? What are some of the dangers of diagnosing culturally normative behaviors as disorders? You’ll get clear step-by-step instructions, illustrated with short clinical demonstrations, of the various components of a diagnostic interview. And finally, you’ll see how to bring it all together, weighing the information you’ve obtained to determine what their diagnosis is, or isn’t. The many uses – and misuses – of our diagnostic system, along with important considerations introduced in the TR, are highlighted along the way.

Volume 2 provides the opportunity to watch diagnostic interviews with clients struggling with adjustment, panic, generalized anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorders—four of the more common diagnoses encountered in clinical practice. Viewers meet three individuals and one couple, all accurately portraying the life struggles and key details that demonstrate what these clusters of symptoms look like when they reach a diagnosable level. Also modeled in these vignettes are skills related to destigmatizing the symptoms and the diagnosis and introducing the notion of continuing in therapy to improve the client’s overall mental health.

Volume 3 provides viewers with clinical demonstrations of clients with major depressive, persistent depressive, bipolar I, and substance use disorders, along with the suicide risks and cultural considerations for each diagnosis. These can be complicated diagnoses, sometimes requiring input from medical professionals or significant others in the client’s life. The actual interviews demonstrate the slowed down, or revved up, presentations that often accompany these diagnoses. You’ll learn how you can stay on task while engaging the client with empathy, self-disclosure, and humor.

In Volume 4 you’ll watch skilled interviewers working with a young man who has schizophrenia, an aspiring ballerina struggling with anorexia, and a woman with all the features we associate with borderline personality disorder. You’ll see the therapists struggle with these clients—as lack of insight and psychotic thinking can often be present with these disorders—and still find a way to gather information for a working diagnosis.

Alongside the TR’s updated suicide risk and cultural consideration information, insightful commentaries by Buckles and Yalom are offered before, during and after each vignette that distill the essence of each diagnosis as well as the challenges that can arise in the diagnostic process.

New and more experienced mental health professionals with a wide variety of training backgrounds, and in settings ranging from emergency rooms to independent practice, will benefit from this engaging, nuanced and instructive series.

Diagnoses covered in this series:

PTSD

Adjustment Disorder

Generalized Anxiety

Panic Disorder

Depression

Persistent Depressive Disorder

Bipolar Disorder

Alcohol Use Disorder

Anorexia

Schizophrenia

Borderline Personality Disorder