This highly practical volume provides a complete guide to conducting an age-appropriate child or adolescent interview and formulating a clinically useful DSM-IV diagnosis. Illuminating both the art and the science of child diagnosis, the book blends astute advice on the interview process with crucial information on a wide range of mental and behavioral disorders. Readers learn effective approaches to communicating with children and adolescents on a level they can understand; eliciting information from patients whose verbal and cognitive abilities may be limited; and recognizing how disorders may present in children of different ages.

This highly practical volume provides a complete guide to conducting an age-appropriate child or adolescent interview and formulating a clinically useful DSM-IV diagnosis. Illuminating both the art and the science of child diagnosis, the book blends astute advice on the interview process with crucial information on a wide range of mental and behavioral disorders. Readers learn effective approaches to communicating with children and adolescents on a level they can understand; eliciting information from patients whose verbal and cognitive abilities may be limited; and recognizing how disorders may present in children of different ages.