Imagine you’ve just met a client for the first time. You have a lot of impressions and ideas swirling in your head, but you realize you need to pull them together into a holistic view of the case that you or anyone else can make sense of. As usual for your role, you’re required to develop a biopsychosocial and treatment plan, and enter the information in a system. So you look at your notes and sit back to organize your thoughts.
Preparation
You’ll need to choose the subject of your case study, which can be someone you’ve interacted with (and won’t identify) or a fictional character, such as from a movie, book, or television show. If you haven’t already, decide on and begin building that character.
Also, you’ll use the form fields provided in the interactive activity Client Assessment and Treatment Plan to enter your information and then publish your results—which you’ll turn in as your assignment. You can explore the activity beforehand if you’d like.
Instructions
Complete a case study applying a theory that we’ve covered in class to a fictional character, such as from a popular movie, book, or television show. It can also be someone you’ve interacted with, such as a client, as long as you don’t use any identifiable information.
The case study should be concise, organized, and presented in APA style. You’ll choose one play-therapy theory as the focus. Your case study will reference at least three peer-reviewed academic sources to support your observations.
Quality case studies will be organized with level headings that address the following prompts. You’ll use the form fields provided in the interactive activity Client Assessment and Treatment Plan to enter your information and then publish your input, which you’ll turn in as your assignment:
Introduction. Briefly describe the character and current symptoms, the theory you chose, and what major themes the reader should expect from the rest of the case.
Biopsychosocial. A section in which you describe the details of the case study, addressing multiple areas of the client’s biopsychosocial world (work, family, health, mental health, cultural identities, etc.). You may choose to elaborate on any of the character’s personal information that you don’t know in order to best make your argument for use of the theory.
Theory. A section in which you analyze the play-therapy theory you’ve chosen by providing detail of the following:
the theory’s main tenets and contributors,
the theory’s view on what creates distress,
the theory’s view of what creates change,
the role of the counselor, and
the types of cases that are well suited to being addressed by this theory, and which ones might not be.
Cross-Cultural Counseling Relationships. A section in which you analyze how the theory addresses diverse clients and cross-cultural counseling relationships. Don’t just think of race or ethnicity! Also consider religion, disability, SES, education, etc.
Treatment Plan. A section in which you apply the theory to the case. This can be written in prose, but at some point you should describe a treatment plan in which there are at least two short- and two long-term goals and how you would use the theory to accomplish them. Provide two individual, group, or family counseling interventions for each short- and long-term goal (a total of eight or more).
Remember to provide enough information and support (including from scholarly articles) so anyone reading the case study will get a holistic view of the case and be confident that you’ve chosen a credible approach.
Requirements
To achieve a successful assignment experience and outcome, you are expected to meet the following requirements.
Written communication: Make sure your writing is succinct and clear, and is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
APA formatting: Resources and citations are formatted according to current APA style and formatting guidelines. Refer to the Evidence and APALinks to an external site. page on Campus for guidance.
Resources: Include a minimum of three current scholarly sources (peer-reviewed articles, books, websites, and dissertations) to support your case.
Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point.
