On Tuesday last BBC News at Ten reported a Serious case review of the murder of 2 year old Ayeeshia-Jayne Smith at the hands of her mother, which concluded that social workers failure to identify significant psychological disorder played a pivotal role in the child’s death. Would CBT practitioners have been any better at identifying such disorder? It is not an academic question, the mother or her then partner could have come a CBT practitioners way as a referral from Social Services because of ‘issues with anger’.
The social workers had focussed largely on the supposedly supportive relationship between the mother and child, but there were concerns, a Risk Assessment meeting was held the day before the murder! But had they screened the parents for say borderline personality disorder and if positive done a more detailed examination, using reliable diagnostic criteria, their approach would have arguably been more balanced, resulting in earlier action. The diffiiculty is that for social workers and CBT practitioners staying in their comfort/ ideological zone of relationships is easier.
Existing risk assessment procedures, represent an expert consensus and to my knowledge there is no empirical evidence that they predict outcome. Agencies promote them but it is more a matter of them covering their back.
The 7 Minute Interview contains the following Screen for BPD and its’ psychometric prpoerties were discussed in an earlier post.
| 11. | Yes | No | Don’t know |
| Do you have a lot of sudden changes of mood, usually lasting for no more than a few hours? | |||
| Do you often have temper outbursts or get so angry you lose control? | |||
| Is this something with which you would like help? |