“I am deeply honoured to be identified with some of the most outstanding psychologists in the world, and frankly, am stunned to find my name uttered in the same breath” (p. 728)
Ira Turkat
From:
Turkat, I.D. (2012) Case formulation — the heart of the matter. The Psychologist, 25, 728-729.
Comment:
I made the above statement in response to the 50,000 member British Psychological Society identifying me along with Drs. Hans Eysenck, Monte Shapiro and Vic Meyer as ”influential clinicians” who pioneered the creation of case formulation decades ago.
Today, all psychologists and psychiatrists are familiar with case formulation and its use in everyday clinical practice, no better exemplified by its utilization in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) – – the authoritative source for diagnosing psychiatric problems, and by the British Psychological Society’s issuance in 2011 of Guidelines on the use of case formulation for all practicing psychologists to follow.
When I introduced the term case formulation as uniquely defined by specific mandatory criteria into the behavioral literature and taught its approach, it was at a time when psychologists seemed focused on treatment techniques without first fully understanding the complexity of the very problems they were dealing with. Such lack of understanding has direct implications for treatment design and clinical outcome. Fortunately, the importance of case formulation is now well entrenched in the everyday clinical practice of today’s psychiatrists and psychologists.
On a personal level, it is extremely gratifying to see one’s work having succeeded in generating an important impact on the field over the decades, and hence – – withstanding the test of time read more
The two psychologists who had the greatest impact on my thinking were Dr. Henry “Hank” Adams and Dr. Vic Meyer, to whom I will always be grateful.
For an historical account of the impact of case formulation, the reader may find my 2014 article helpful, reproduced here:
*Copyright (2014) by the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. Reprinted by permission of the publisher