Présentation de l’Entretien Semi-structuré Multiregistres

Abstract

Whereas instruments are available to diagnose various psychiatric disorders and to rate their severity, there is a lack of instruments to assess the phenomenology of these disorders, i.e., a set of mental phenomena that compose subjective experience. Our objective is to present a new type of psychopathological interview, aimed to study the phenomenology of mental activity. In developing the Assess_Mind, we tried to integrate within one single instrument the qualities of unstructured clinical interviews, such as openness to unexpected information, and the qualities of structured interviews, such as adequate psychometric properties. The basic principle of the Assess_Mind is to explore various “registers” of mental activity: affects, fears, desires, memories, and associations of ideas. This exploration is based on open, but standardized, questions. A rigorously defined algorithm for interviewing indicates which question is to be asked, dependent on the responses of the patient and on the chronological progression of the interview. After the interview is completed, a rating module comprising specific scales allows to assess clinical information that has been collected. We expect that the Assess_Mind will contribute to help clinicians to perform initial assessments of patients and to follow the course of their clinical state.