Gathering Collateral Information

Each assignment in this course will help you prepare your Final Paper. For all assignments, you will use the movie character or historical figure that you used in your Week Two assignment and selected in your Week One journal. (Alan Turing)

After gathering your patient's history, it is considered good practice to contact people who interact with the patient on a regular basis and/or are related to the patient. These people often provide valuable insights into the patient's behavior(s) and mindset. Typically, the gathered information provides a context for the patient's environment.

For this assignment, you will write another section of your Final Paper.  View the complete instructions for the Final Paper in the link within Week Five of your online course or the "Components of Course Evaluation" section of this guide.   Your assignment this week must cover the following section of your psychological report and include the heading as listed:

Collateral Within this section, you will interpret specific collateral information as it relates to your patient's abnormal behavior and behavior patterns. You will also integrate information and knowledge regarding the patient's culture in your evaluation of the maladaptive behavior as reported by the collateral sources.

Typically, this section within a psychological report seeks to answer the following questions (further elaboration within this section is encouraged where possible):

• What do other people have to say about the patient's behavior?
• Are there any commonalities between the collateral sources' reports?
• Do the collateral sources have any psychological issues that might exacerbate the patient's problems?
• Are there any police reports?
• Are there any personality testing or intelligence testing reports available?

Your assignment should be a minimum of one page and include sufficient depth and detail to support and inform your diagnostic impression. A title page is not necessary; however, a reference page must be included. A cursory or surface level investigation of the patient's interpersonal relationships will not provide enough information for your diagnostic impression. If no collateral information is available, create collateral information on your own to inform your diagnostic impression.

Any sources used in the paper must be cited and referenced in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.