Clinical Interviewing and PTSD Assessment

The manuals converge on structured PTSD assessment as a core clinical task. Across the extracts, they emphasise understanding PTSD diagnostic criteria, symptom clusters, severity, and change over time, using this to support eligibility decisions, monitoring, and interpretation of trauma-related material. Several sources also link assessment to functional impact, with attention to sleep, depression, dissociation, and broader functioning where relevant. They also converge on the use of standardised tools and formal interviews. The manuals repeatedly reference clinician-rated and self-report measures, including CAPS variants, PCL-5, and diagnostic interviews for comorbidity, alongside repeated assessment at baseline, during treatment, and follow-up. Risk-related assessment is another shared theme, especially suicide risk, safety, and distinguishing trauma-related symptoms from other psychiatric or medical conditions. The main differences are in emphasis and scope. Some manuals focus more on eligibility and exclusion, such as chronic treatment-resistant PTSD, prior treatment history, and ruling out specific comorbidities, while others place more weight on symptom monitoring across protocol phases or on psychoeducation and understanding the participant’s knowledge of PTSD. One source also highlights distinguishing expected trauma processing from destabilising psychiatric worsening, while another specifically notes the dissociative subtype and the need to distinguish non-trauma stressors and current world events from trauma-related symptoms.