The psychiatric interview refers to the set of tools that a mental health worker (most times a psychiatrist or a psychologist but at times social workers or nurses) uses to complete a psychiatric assessment

Psychiatric assessment

A psychiatric assessment, or psychological screening, is a process of way of gathering information about a person within a psychiatric service, with the purpose of making a diagnosis. The assessment is usually the first stage of a treatment process, but psychiatric assessments may also be used for...

.

The goals of the psychiatric interview are:

• Build rapport
  Rapport
  Rapport is a term used to describe, in common terms, the relationship of two or more people who are in sync or on the same wavelength because they feel similar and/or relate well to each other....
  
  .
• Collect data about the patient's current difficulties, past psychiatric history
  Psychiatric history
  A psychiatric history is the result of a medical process where a clinician working in the field of mental health systematically records the content of an interview with a patient...
  
   and medical history
  Medical history
  The medical history or anamnesis of a patient is information gained by a physician by asking specific questions, either of the patient or of other people who know the person and can give suitable information , with the aim of obtaining information useful in formulating a diagnosis and providing...
  
  , as well as relevant developmental, interpersonal and social history.
• Diagnose the mental health
  Mental health
  Mental health describes either a level of cognitive or emotional well-being or an absence of a mental disorder. From perspectives of the discipline of positive psychology or holism mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life and procure a balance between life activities and...
  
   issue(s).
• Understand the patient's personality
  Personality psychology
  Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and individual differences. Its areas of focus include:* Constructing a coherent picture of the individual and his or her major psychological processes...
  
   structure, use of defense mechanisms and coping strategies
  Coping Strategies
  Coping Strategies is treatment designed for posttraumatic stress disorder within United States Armed Forces personnel and their families by the charitable organization Patriot Outreach...
  
  .
• Improve the patient's insight
  Insight
  Insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect in a specific context. Insight can be used with several related meanings:*a piece of information...
  
  .
• Create a foundation for a therapeutic alliance.
• Foster healing.

The data collected through the psychiatric interview is mostly subjective, based on the patient's report, and many times can not be corroborated by objective measurements. As such, one the interview's goals is to collect data that is both valid and reliable.

Validity

Validity

In logic, argument is valid if and only if its conclusion is entailed by its premises, a formula is valid if and only if it is true under every interpretation, and an argument form is valid if and only if every argument of that logical form is valid....

 refers to how the data compares to an ideal absolute truth that the interviewer needs to access and uncover. Challenges that might affect the interview validity include can be categorized as patient related factors and interviewer related factors. Patient's related factors include:

• Shame: the patient might feel ashamed to discuss some of his difficulties.
• Fear of being judged: while not ashamed the patient might be reluctant to discuss some of the issues that she thinks that she can be judged for.
• Lack of awareness: patient might have distorted recollection of past events with significant emotional valence.
• Cognitive deficits: the patient might have a memory deficit that might impair his ability to correctly recall past events.
• Secondary gain: the patient decided to misrepresent fact in order to gain a certain benefit (e.g. disability benefits) or avoid a certain penalty (e.g. insanity defense).

Interviewer related factors include:

• Powerful feelings of like or dislike that might affect the interviewer objectivity.
• Lack of experience: the interviewer lack the skills and knowledge necessary to explore a specific area of pathology.
• Diagnostic bias: the interviewer is invested in a specific psychiatric diagnosis (e.g. same patient might be diagnosed with schizophrenia by a schizophrenia researcher or bipolar disorder with psychotic features by a bipolar disorder researcher).

Reliability

Reliability

In general, reliability is the ability of a person or system to perform and maintain its functions in routine circumstances, as well as hostile or unexpected circumstances.Reliability may refer to:...

refers to how datasets collected by different interviewers or the same interview at different times compare with one another. Ideal reliability is when a dataset will be stable irrespective of changes in specifics of the data collection.

Different interview techniques have been shown to result in variations in the validity and reliability of the collected data. Open-ended question ("Tell me about your sleep.") been shown to have better validity but less reliability than closed-ended questions("Do you have sleeping difficulties?")