For his clients Charles Huson uses breathing techniques, imagery and progressive relaxation as his three basic methods of anxiety reduction. Anxiety Mapping is also done by the client to record every event that causes anxiety, including the day and time, possible trigger, biophysical reactions and thoughts. Cognitive restructuring is used to divert the person’s thought processes more constructively, for instance by getting the client to ask themselves, “Is this the most intelligent thing I can do to control the behaviour?”

Psychological Assessment Report
Charles has developed a very clear and informative Psychological Assessment Report format over 20 years of experience that he uses to report back to referring doctors or lawyers. Doctors talk about ‘patients’ whereas lawyers talk about ‘clients’, so it is important to use the relevant terminology as well as never saying anything insulting in the report about the patient/client.

His recommended format includes a cover page with headings
Report On:
Report To:
Report From:
Date of Assessment:

The second page starts off
Dear Dr……
The Situation:
Presentation:
Medication:
and then details information under the following headings: Psychometric Assessment Results; Life Impact; Family of Origin; Current Circumstances; Previous Injuries or Previous Contributing Factors; Conclusions and Diagnosis; Treatment Goals; & Concluding Statements including thanking the referring party and saying he/she will be kept informed of developments. The report is usually about 6 pages long.

It was brought to Charles’ attention that a hypnotherapist, who is not also a registered psychologist or doctor is unlikely to get referrals from doctors, Workcover or the TAC, so the majority or hypnotherapists are not likely to need to produce psychological assessment reports. Although he concurred we are in a difficult situation regarding referrals, he suggested we should send reports of our ‘patients’ to their usual GP as a possible way of generating future referrals from that doctor.

Although we are not trained to offer diagnoses, Charles stated there is no legislation to stop us and suggested the wording, “In my opinion, X has ….”  based on the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual (DSM) and the results of the psychometric tests.

Charles Huson presented a very informative seminar, which was particularly relevant to psychologists trained in hypnotherapy, but also interesting for the rest of us in exposing us to useful, easy to apply diagnostic tools for anxiety and depression.