Clinical interviews provide opportunities to ask follow-up questions, to clarify items and responses, and to use clinical judgment in making the final ratings. Although some of these tasks can be accomplished with self-report measures, most are best accomplished with a structured interview.
Over the past several decades, considerable progress has been made in the development and empirical evaluation of assessment instruments for measuring trauma exposure and PTSD as well as related syndromes, such as acute stress disorder. 1,2 Disorders comorbid with PTSD include depression, substance abuse, other anxiety disorders, and a range of physical complaints. In addition, trauma survivors often experience guilt, dissociation, alterations in personality, difficulty with affect regulation, and marked impairment in ability for intimacy and attachment. The symptoms of PTSD are divided into 3 symptom clusters: reexperiencing, avoidance, and hyperarousal. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a chronic and debilitating mental condition that develops in response to catastrophic life events, such as military combat, sexual assault, and natural disasters.