The Clinical Interview

"This book goes beyond nuts and bolts to capture the art and soul of clinical interviewing. It offers a treasure chest of practical tips for clinicians to increase effectiveness, build collaboration and empathy, avoid power struggles, and in general create a therapeutic alliance with patients in health settings. The sample dialogues provide excellent illustrations of techniques. Bravo!"

Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW, author of Helping the Suicidal Person: Tips and Techniques for Professionals

"Drs. Simpson and McDowell and their contributors have done a superb job presenting the keys to good clinical interviewing. The book is illuminated with the pleasure of engaging with patients as people and achieving better outcomes in the process. The unique format of 60 brief chapters, each one on a different technique, is highly accessible: there are an abundance of practical and well-organized pearls and tips, each with sample dialogue and a brief review of supporting theory and literature. Useful for quick reference or sustained study, the eclectic approach will benefit any healthcare practitioner, beginner to expert, medical or psychiatric, practicing ambulatory or acute care. The book’s themes are familiar—therapeutic alliance, collaboration with the patient, intertwining treatment with evaluation, promoting change—but I learned some new things reading it. It is heartening to see this aspect of medicine remain so creative and alive."

Jon S. Berlin, MD, clinical professor in psychiatry, Medical College of Wisconsin

"The Clinical Interview is a highly practical and user-friendly guide to the clinical application of evidence-based psychotherapeutic techniques to enrich the patient-clinician encounter. When patients feel heard, history taking is smooth, troubling thoughts and feelings are easier to elicit, and treatment planning becomes a team approach. Drs. Simpson and McDowell elegantly display a variety of psychotherapeutic approaches thorough the use of patient vignettes. This book will be a valuable tool to clinicians at all levels of experience."

Jagoda Pasic, MD, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Washington

"Even the best clinician will walk out of the occasional clinical encounter thinking, 'Well, that could have gone better,' but still being unsure just what we could have done differently with our interviewing technique or brief interventions. The Clinical Interview gives readers a quick refresher of basic and advanced approaches to common and complex scenarios. It reads easily with brief and digestible tutorials which can be read quickly between clinical encounters or absorbed at length. A worthy addition to the library of any mental health clinician, new or experienced."

Jack Rozel, MD, MSL, President, American Association for Emergency Psychiatry, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh

"In this eminently practical and insightful book, written in plain English, Drs. Simpson, McDowell, and their colleagues offer helpful strategies and techniques that address key aspects of the clinical interview. These wise guiding principles and techniques will assist clinicians at all levels—from novices through experts—learn, reflect on, and call upon a huge variety of important ‘tricks of the trade,’ helpful for building and maintaining better alliances, treatment plans, and therapeutic interactions."

Joel Yager, MD, Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado School of Medicine

"This book provides guidance to a wide range of providers who deal with patients that run the spectrum from mundane to difficult. This textbook is a recommended read for all."

Leslie S. Zun, MD, MBA, Medical Director, Lake County Health Department, Chairman and Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine and Psychiatry, RFUMS/Chicago Medical School

"The Clinical Interview is a terrific compilation of top experts providing a kaleidoscopic study of varied aspects of psychiatry’s backbone, the clinical interview. The well-structured format of individual concepts should make this an inviting read, and an invaluable resource, for students and seasoned professionals alike."

Scott Zeller, MD, University of California, Riverside, Editor of Emergency Psychiatry: Principles and Practice and The Diagnosis and Management of Agitation