Differential Diagnosis Academy: Sharpening Your Diagnostic Skills

Description:  Do you feel insecure about your diagnoses? Thinking about expanding your practice to include psychological testing or forensic evaluation? Or maybe you’re just looking to sharpen your diagnostic skills? Want to arrive at an accurate diagnosis when working with clients with complicated symptoms presentations? Counselors are often trained in graduate school with cookie-cutter, seamless, case examples, but in the real world, clients often don't present with "textbook" presentations of symptoms that neatly fall into a particular disorder. Many symptoms of mental disorders are "overlapping," meaning that the same symptom may be listed under several disorders. How do clinical mental health counselors differentiate one disorder from another? What sources of data might you base your conclusions on? If you wanted to venture into forensic evaluations, mandated employer evaluations, bariatric surgery evaluations, and disability-related evaluations, what standards and tools should be used? This 8-hour workshop was designed to equip you with practical tools for differential diagnosis, providing an overview of guidelines for evaluation and testing, the American Psychiatric Association’s six-step process for differential diagnosis, four categories of sources of data that can be used to arrive at conclusions, and an introduction to the APA’s cross cutting symptom measures. Participants will learn to use diagnostic decision trees to arrive at a diagnosis for real case examples and will be provided with sample formats for both clinical and forensic evaluation reports. Finally, you’ll learn how to bill insurance companies and other third-party payers for more in-depth evaluation services.

CE Broker Tracking #: 20-1212740

Learning Objectives:

1. Adhere to ethical and professional standards for assessment, evaluation, and testing.

2. Write a quality clinical or forensic evaluation report.

3. Implement the APA’s 6-step differential diagnosis process.

4. Identify four categories of data that can be used to inform conclusions.

This event is sponsored by FMHCA, an NBCC-Approved Continuing Education Provider. FMHCA NBCC Provider# 2058. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified.  FMHCA is solely responsible for all aspects of the program. This course is approved by the Florida Board of Clinical Social Work, Marriage and Family Therapy and Mental Health Counseling, LMHC, LMFT, LCSW – FMHCA CE Broker #: 50-748

Dr. Aaron Norton is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with certifications in addictions, alcohol and drug counseling, rehabilitation counseling, clinical mental health counseling, trauma treatment, forensic mental health evaluation, forensic behavioral analysis, and forensic psychometry. He serves as Executive Director of the National Board of Forensic Evaluators, Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of South Dept. of Mental Health Law & Policy, Southern Regional Director, Ethics Committee Liaison, and International Counseling Task Force Chair for the American Mental Health Counselors Association, and Chair of the Government Relations Committee for the Florida Mental Health Counselors Association. He co-authored the Forensic Evaluation section of the “AMHCA Standards for the Practice of Clinical Mental Health Counseling,” authored the proposal for AMHCA’s Clinical Mental Health Specialist in Forensic Evaluation (CMHS-FE) credential, served on the expert panel that created the standards and written exam for the Florida Certification Board’s Certified Telehealth Practitioner (CTP) credential, and has been published in several journals and professional magazines. He has 20 years of experience as a psychotherapist and clinical supervisor.

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