ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the value and clinical utility of conducting psychological testing in a residential/hospital-based setting and the ways it can guide treatment conceptualization and intervention. It review previous applications of psychological testing in residential and hospital-based settings and then present a case of an evaluation conducted at the Austen Riggs Center (ARC) with a patient admitted because of psychotic symptoms. The ARC is an open psychiatric hospital and residential treatment center in Massachusetts. It is an open hospital because patients are not restricted by locks or privilege systems but instead are given the task of managing their safety and symptoms in a competent, collaborative manner. Psychologists are often called upon in residential treatment to provide diagnostic clarifications and to assist psychiatrists with dilemmas. Psychological testing can facilitate treatment teams’ recommendations for how the patient might engage in the milieu by outlining the patient’s relative strengths, vulnerabilities, relational patterns, and areas of conflict.
