Development of a training programme in individual case formulation skills and a scale for assessing its effectiveness.

BACKGROUND

Little is known about the skills involved in clinical formulation. The individual case formulation (ICF) approach, based on functional analysis, employs clinical descriptions that are theory-free and depicts formulations constructed according to a set of basic conventions.

AIMS: We report a test of whether this method could be taught and if the quality of the resulting diagrams could be reliably rated.

METHOD: Participants (n=40) participated in a training course in formulation. A draft rating scale was refined in the course of rating formulation diagrams and basic inter-rater reliability established.

RESULTS

Results of the study support further development of the ICF approach.