“Prodromos Diagnosis” is the name of our flagship Diagnostic and Psychoeducation programme.
We call it Prodromos because it provides a really comprehensive diagnostic assessment that helps us to understand and predict the course of treatment.
I am very proud of this programme because we have managed to bring the best gold standard research-based assessments in the real clinical world.
However, we don’t just assess. At the same time we help our patients to understand and learn about their problems. We are actively involved in psychoeducation.
There are three phases to this programme. The initial phase that relies on a clinical assessment with the participant, and ideally a close relative/friend. The psychometric phase where we conduct the majority of the assessments (questionnaires and interviews), and the final therapy formulation phase where we discuss the findings of our assessments, and create a collaborative therapy plan.
In practice we like to discuss the findings of our assessments, and to gradually formulate our treatment plan from the very beginning. We do the best we can to make this a collaborative experience, and journey for our patients.
All in all it takes approximately 15 hours to complete, and we usually do it over a month. During that month we also monitor any other critical problems (mood, sleep and/or any other problem behaviours). We may use electronic diaries and other interesting wearable technologies to monitor during the diagnostic phase (even though this is a separate diagnostic programme).
Over the last decade we have delivered this programme to hundreds of patients with mood disorders and other problems, and we have never regretted starting our treatment with this comprehensive assessment.
The final assessment report helps us to guide treatment through out and it is always a helpful treatment companion to our patients wherever they go.
It is best to engage in this programme when someone is relatively well and/or out of crisis. The report is updated also as we progress during treatment.
We provide this programme to individual patients, to practitioners (you may refer a patient), or to organisations/treatment centres.
I welcome any questions you may have about our “Prodromos Diagnosis” programme.