PSYC 300W Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Mental Disorder
Document Summary
The assigned readings examined on the topic of risk assessments. Douglas and skeem (2005) made an overview of the different types of risk assessments, discussing the derivation of the different risk factors. The other paper focused on the mechanisms of the risk assessment formulation, investigating on the key requirements for forming an effective formulation. Both articles concluded with a significant idea that the topic of risk assessment is still at an immature stage that needs further examinations. Professionals should fully adopt the structural risk assessment approach. Risk assessments are mainly divided into 3 types: actuarial, unstructured, and structured approach. The actuarial method is a statistic based assessment instrument (such as the vrag & odara), which consist of a set of risk factors generated from literature studies. The unstructured approach relies solely on the experiences of professionals or experts. Both of these types are prone to biases, which reduce their validity and reliability, yielding inaccurate results.
