Pop quiz time! A social worker is doing an intake assessment at an inpatient psychiatric unit with a 45 year-old male client, who states he is Godzilla. The client has no known history of substance abuse, which resulted negative during toxicology. Medical rule out for any other neurological conditions is also negative. What is the… Read More Magical Thinking: Delusions, Reality, and Treatment.

In a world of ZocDoc reviews, where “Yelp for people” is even considered a debate, and where more practitioners are turning to an online presence for marketing, it becomes increasingly more challenging for clinicians to clarify boundaries beyond the consultation room. At the very least, maintaining the “analytic anonymity” that the early psychoanalysts encouraged their… Read More Social Media, Texting, Boundaries, and the Consultation Room

Our clients most often come to us at their most vulnerable state when we first meet them. One of the toughest calls for social workers is determining when and how to make a suicide assessment. What is the short answer for the exam and practice? Always.  Assessment is an ongoing process during engagement, treatment, and… Read More Suicide Assessment:  Assessing through the Grays by Balancing Risk and Protective Factors

For those social workers trained under the older DSM IV-TR, the changes in the DSM-5 can seem like an overwhelming roadblock to preparing for the licensing exam. The DSM-5 brings with it many changes, and many of the posts on this blog will address each change piece by piece. Before looking at the “meat and… Read More DSM-IV TR versus DSM-5: Turned on its Axes

Summer is coming to an end, and what an eventful summer it has been, both in the United States and in the social work world: With marriage equality legalized in all 50 States for just over a month, what will this mean for social workers in practice, most who are already working with LGBT individuals?… Read More The Genderbread Person: Gender, Sexuality, the DSM, and the Social Work Exam

Back when I was in college, one of the very first things I did was join the crew team. Now, as a city guy, I had no experience of ever rowing in high school nor working knowledge of  the dynamics that went into the sport. Still, college was a time for trying new things (among… Read More Against the Current: Active Listening and the OARS Approach

The end of May is here, and with it, many newly minted social workers will have already walked down the aisle to join the ranks of the profession (unless, like some of us, you owed the registrar money, or in my case, library books –but the affordability of a graduate school education is a story for… Read More The Graduate: Termination and Social Work School

Parallel Process I’m not a big fan of self-disclosure (well okay, it depends!), but one of the most startling things in my years as a still very much novice therapist is the concept of parallel process. What happens when a client is going through a similar issue a therapist is? Can the therapist help, or… Read More Love, Attachment, and Parallel Process