The charecter for the paper is Elsa from Frozen and her diagnosis is Anxiety and Major depressive disorder.
The assignment for the term paper is to choose one CHILD character from a movie or a book, present the character’s personal history and current interpersonal relationships as they form the basis for a psychological diagnosis, and discuss possible treatment and long-term psychological outcome for the character. It is expected that you will use references (including, but not solely, the textbook) to support your choice of diagnosis and treatment. Term papers will be considered late (one letter grade reduction per day) if not turned in by 11:59 PM on July 1st. All character choices must be approved by the instructor. Your choice must be emailed on or before June 17th at 11:59 PM.
Information on the Paper Structure:
You must choose a child character who is 17 years of age or younger for this assignment. Chosen characters must be fictional and not friends, relatives or celebrity cases.
The key pieces of your term paper include…
- The central component of your paper is to diagnose your character with at least one childhood psychological disorder.
- You should explicitly state DSM-5 criteria in your paper, and clearly identify which criteria your character meets (e.g., which symptoms do they show? Which symptoms don’t they have? How long has this been going on?). Importantly, most disorders require that the symptoms occur during the same window of time (e.g., during the same 2-week period for depression).
- Your paper and argument will be strengthened if you include specific examples from your book/movie/show that illustrate your character’s symptoms.
- A strong diagnosis will also include differential diagnosis. In other words, can you rule out a different diagnosis? For example, if you’re diagnosing your character with Major Depressive Disorder, how do you know they shouldn’t be diagnosed with Persistent Depressive Disorder (i.e., dysthymia) instead? If your character has trouble concentrating, how do you know they have ADHD and not anxiety?
- A final note about childhood diagnoses: Make sure that your primary diagnosis is something that can be diagnosed in childhood (i.e., not a personality disorder).
- After you’ve made a strong case for your diagnosis, you should discuss a treatment plan for your character. What would you recommend for next steps?
- Make this as specific as possible. It’s not enough to just say you recommend individual therapy. What type of therapy do you think this character would benefit from? Do they need Cognitive Behavior Therapy? Parent Management Training?
- Your recommended treatment should be empirically supported, and you should clearly justify why you’re recommending this treatment.
- Finally, your paper should include a discussion of your character’s long term psychological outcome (i.e., their prognosis).
- What do you think will happen to your character if they complete your treatment plan? What will happen if they don’t? Is this disorder lifelong?
- The outcome itself doesn’t need to be demonstrated in your book/movie/show. You can speculate about, or make up, how you think your character will turn out.
- It’s important to individualize this discussion based on the circumstances of your character’s life. Are there any additional risk factors that worsen their prognosis? What about any protective factors that may help them overcome their difficulties?
- This is an important place in your paper to incorporate outside research.
- Throughout your paper, make sure to discuss any extenuating circumstances or factors that you think are important to consider when diagnosing or treating this character.
Paper Format
The term paper can take one of the following formats including, but not limited to, the following:
(a) Presentation of the character, diagnosis, treatment, and long term psychological outcome from the perspective of one or more paradigms (psychodynamic, family systems, biological, humanistic, etc.).
(b) Presentation of the character, diagnosis, treatment, and long term psychological outcome in the form of an assessment report (The report should have specific sections for Referral Question, Background and History, Behavior Observations and Test Results, Diagnosis and Recommendations for Treatment). **Note: For this format, you can make up the test results so that they show the pattern you would expect for a given disorder and for the character in question.
(c) Presentation of the character, diagnosis, treatment, and long term psychological outcome that addresses long-term continuity issues (including risk and resilience). For example, if you discuss a case of child ADHD, what does research on continuity say about likely outcomes? Are there any factors in place that would promote resilience? What are they?
(d) Presentation of the character, diagnosis, treatment, and long term psychological outcome in the form of a dialogue between two mental health professionals or two researchers who disagree about the case.
(e) Presentation of the character, diagnosis, treatment, and long term psychological outcome from the perspective and experience of a family member (the character’s mother or husband, for example).
The above list of formats is not exhaustive. Creative alternatives are welcome however, your paper should be writtenn in APA format. If you are unsure about the acceptability of an alternative format that you have chosen, feel free to discuss it with me. Ultimately, I hope this is something you can have fun with!
Additional Writing Pragmatics
- Please write in APA format. This includes citations for the references in the text (Author, year) and a reference page listing articles or books that you used in writing the paper (the reference page does not count towards your page limit). If you’re unfamiliar with APA style, you can learn more about it here: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/in_text_citations_the_basics.html (Links to an external site.)
Another note about APA style – you don’t need to format your entire paper in APA (e.g., you don’t need to include a title page or abstract). I just ask that you put your citations page in APA style, and that your in-text citations follow APA guidelines.
- Please avoid using block quotes in your paper. Instead, you should rephrase any long quotes in your own words. It’s okay to use short quotes (i.e., less than 2 lines of text), but I often find that long block quotes interrupt the flow of a paper, and give you less space for thoughtful analysis, which ultimately is what you’ll be graded on.
- You should avoid using contractions in your final paper.
- For your references, please cite reputable This includes peer-reviewed journal articles and official websites for research organizations like the Center for Disease Control. A helpful hint is that the website should end in .org, .edu, or .gov for you to cite it. Please do not cite personal blogs or non-reputable websites.