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Article And Supporting Literature : The Clinical Assessment And Clinical Judgment

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Article 1 and Supporting Literature

For the first article, I wanted to focus on the clinical portion of the risk assessments and how that fits into the actual assessment. The particular article I chose depicts presents three different possibilities for risk assessments: structural clinical judgment, actuarial assessment and clinical judgment (Murray, J & Thomson, M 2010). In the past clinicians relied on their personal experiences and other events that led them to be the experts they are, and now, most individuals will use their personal experiences and the standardized risk assessments to actually supplement their findings and make a professional decision. The purpose of this article is to focus on the three main ways an individual
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Overall, the author describes, in detail, the assessments and clinical judgment role within that process. Also, the author presents the need to research these assessments more so that they can be improved for the better (Murray, J & Thomson, M 2010). A fantastic supporting article that I have found also shows the importance of the clinical opinion along with the risk assessments themselves. The author breaks it down in simpler terms as the first as article was a bit more difficult to understand. In the first section, according to the article, the assessments focus on three major areas: the actual, the attempted and the threatened physical harm (Criminal Justice Editors, n.d). It also explains the stages in which one may need or get an assessment for example, during sentencing, pre-trial or release from prison. As we talked about in the first article, the clinical psychologist will base their expert opinion professional experience as well as education. Actuarial judgments are not based on professional experience but on information gathered from statistics and other information. This type of assessment may be very time consuming and strict while clinical judgments may be to “fluid”, or based on one’s opinion more than science. A big problem with this approach is that it may be ok to generalize a group but
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