How to Write A Psychotherapy Case – RANZCP By Dr Neil Jeyasingam
Dr. Neil Jeyasingam is a former research scholar of the Institute of Psychiatry (Sydney) and Institute of Psychiatry (UK) and specializes in phenomenology and personality disorders in the elderly. In public practice, he is the in–patient clinical lead for an old–age psychiatry service, as well as ECT Clinical Director. He is also the Binational New South Wales Representative for the Faculty of Old Age Psychiatry, a Foundation Accredited Member of the Royal Australian and New Zealand Psychotherapy Faculty, a Clinical Lecturer with Sydney University, and Senior Lecturer with Western Sydney University.
Author Quotes
What we need to hear from you is that you have done the therapy safely, you have done it under supervision, you have done as much as you can appropriately, you haven’t taken shortcuts, and you’ve come out of it knowing more about psychotherapy than you did at the beginning.
Changes to the frame are really significant because of the issue of boundary crossings and boundary violations…
A boundary crossing is when there is a change to the frame for the intentional purpose of improving the quality of the therapy, such as briefly discussing a favourite sporting team for example…
A boundary violation is a change to the frame which can damage the therapy, for example, the patient saying they are finding the sessions too difficult and they would like to have the sessions to be much shorter, or have increasing breaks…
Summary
Dr.Jeyasingam introduces this section with an overview of how to write your first draft. He emphasises the importance of listing the headings and sub-headings, how they should align with the college marking scheme, and provides an example of how your first page should look.
Moving on the process of writing, he explains how to approach your writing and provides a stepwise strategy to follow, with an explanation of how to cover the assessment phase and management plan.
He summarises clinical progress and reformulation and explains what standards are expected of candidates, ending this section of the presentation with a look at the Discussion.
Take Home Points
- In the assessment, cover all the events throughout the whole assessment phase, not only those in the initial referral or session.
- You are expected to comment about the supervisory relationship and your experience.
- If you have made a wrong choice, be clear, and show awareness of the risks and possible difficulties which you will discuss.
Quiz
Learn more
