ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the clinical interview operates as a powerful assessment tool and describes how clinicians can acquire the information they need to match patients to treatments. In order to perform an individualized assessment of a patient that highlights the unique features of that person’s addiction and determines treatment needs, a clinical interview may be essential. Such an interview has the advantage, from the perspective of a biopsychosocial view of crack addiction, of permitting a search for the roots of a persona crack addiction. In addition, it allows an assessment of the level and severity of the addiction, the recent and current level of a patients psychosocial functioning, and the extent of crack-related psycho-social deterioration. Within the context of a clinical interview, therapists may obtain information on which to base a formal diagnosis of crack-cocaine abuse or dependence, and also identify mental, personality, and mood disorders using DSM-III-R criteria. Observations of patients and their responses during the interview tell a great deal about the nature of their defensive functioning and their capacity for regulating their self-esteem, affective states, aggressive and sexual impulses, and overall behavior in interpersonal relationships. In this way, therapists begin to appreciate aspects of patients’ emotional and psychological functioning that may be significant but too subtle to meet formal DSM III-R criteria.
