Developmental Research
The Structured Clinical Interview
During a structured clinical interview, a trained research clinician asks questions about the presence of and kind of psychiatric symptoms someone has had, if and when someone has received mental health care, what medications someone has taken, and whether the treatments were helpful. When we are asking about a child, we ask the same questions of both the parent and the child. In many ways, a structured clinical interview is a lot like the experience of seeing a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician. There are, however, some differences:
- Since we are a federally-funded research center, we can take as much time as we need to finish the interview. If the history of psychiatric symptoms is long or complicated, the interview can take upwards of three hours to complete. However, the majority of the time we finish within 1½ to 2 hours.
- Since we have more time to complete this interview, we ask questions about many different symptoms that you may have. This allows us to be sure that we cover all the relevant areas in our interview.
- After an evaluation, we assign research diagnoses. Research diagnoses are similar to clinical diagnoses. Unlike clinical diagnoses, research diagnoses are non-hierarchical. In a clinical interview with a clinician in the community, if someone has the symptoms of two different disorders, the clinician might pick the most likely diagnosis and treat that diagnosis. In a research interview, if you have symptoms of two different disorders, we will give you both diagnoses, even if one explains the illness or your symptoms better than the other.
- Since this is a research center, we don’t use the results of our interview (the diagnoses) to plan treatment. However, with your permission, we will provide the results of the interview to your clinician to help in their treatment plans.
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