Assessment and Case Formulation of Alcohol-Induced Psychosis


Alcohol-related to psychosis, found to be consistent with alcohol dependency, alcohol, intoxication, and alcohol withdrawal. According to the Diagnostic and statistical manual (5th Edition), the psychosis due to alcohol use, without any other mental illness, diagnosed as substance-induced disorders (Hendricks, 2017). According to the recent data around 3-4 per cent alcoholic abusers
experience psychosis. Alcoholic hallucinosis and alcoholic paranoia are two uncommon types of alcoholic induced psychotic disorder (Hendricks, 2017). These types have been seen in patients who have years of heavy and severe drinking.The current case study provides an understanding of the assessment of alcohol-induced psychosis. Furthermore, the case formulation has also been generated to describe the predisposing, precipitating and maintaining factors of the client's problems, that would assist in making clinical decisions regarding the management or intervention plan.
Case
    The client was 52 years old man with weak physic; he was wearing a hospital dress. The client was referred by the psychologist of PIMH for the assessment and management of suicidal idealisation, drug abuse, hallucination, and hopelessness. 
Assessment
    Before the implementation of assessment modalities, the history of the client has been taken, which indicated the client has a conflicting inclination towards women, soldiers, teachers and family. The assessment of the client was done through.
    Behavioural Observation
    Clinical Interview
    Reinforce identification
    Thematic Apperception Test
    The subjective Rating scale for delusions
             Behavioural observation. Behavioural Observation was carried out to assess the client interest, abilities and appearance, his verbal and non- verbal cues.
    Behavioural Observation is a systematic way of recording the observable responses of behaviour (Pellering, 2014).
 The rationale of Behavioral Observation was to assess the client nonverbal behaviour, her posture gesture, hygienic condition and how he communicates with others without verbal communication. The client was observed during the session, in the playground and pairs.
 The client was a middle-aged man with weak physic. He sat anxiously on a chair and continuously rubbing of touching his feet. The content of his speech was not relevant; he was giving extra details for each question and denying the use of drugs and their harms as well.
    Among hospital fellow, he was not observed to be social. While he was sitting between them, but not talking to them and after some time he went to a corner and sat here the rest time.
   The findings of the observation showed that he was not social and hopeless about his future.
            Clinical interview.  The clinical interview was carried out to assess the client problem and conflicting issues which lead toward drug abuse, suicidal idealisation and hallucination.
    A clinical Interview is the main tool of gathering information from client, parents, and other informants (Raynold 2014). Clinical Interview was done to assess the client own insight about his illness and problems which was very helpful to understand his problems. The client had no insight about the harms of a drug; rather it’s a source of energy for the client.
        Reinforcer identification. The reinforce identification was used to assess the reinforce of the client.
    Reinforcement is a process in which the occurrence of behaviour is followed by a consequence that increases the future probability of behaviour (Millitenberger, 1997).
        The reinforcer of the client was an appreciation for being a nobleman. As the client always said that prayers are the only source of success and he always advises everyone for that. So when at this point appreciation was given to him he feels good and talks in more energetic ways.
        The secondary reinforcer of the client was his future. When the client stops taking part in the discussion, so the only thing which energetic he was a discussion about his future successful life.
        Thematic Apperception Test. TAT was used to assess the hidden conflict about family, women teacher and soldiers. TAT is a projective test design to let a person respond to ambiguous stimuli, reveal the hidden and internal emotions (Harvard, 1943).
        Card 1. The client was shown the first card, in which a child was sitting on a chair and reading a book which was lying on the table when the client was asked to make a story about that picture what you can see in this picture.
 The client said a child was sitting sad and alone, he was thinking about his future, he wanted to study, but no one is helped him. He was looking at a map to discover the border of Pakistan. He wanted to become an energetic man; he was finding a way to get energy.
  The client was looking at his childhood in that picture; he told the same story which happened in his childhood. Three conflicts were being assessed through interpretation; the first one was his loneliness, ambition about the study, and victimisation of Pakistani soldiers.
 One more thing was observed that he had a cognitive error as he generalised all his story to other people and he had been an ambitious person, but no desire could be fulfilled by him. The client explained the border of Pakistan by saying that he had been pay duty on the border of Pakistan, had worked with the soldiers, they teased the client a lot by giving him an excess of work.
        Card 2, 9MB. After observing his conflict towards soldiers, the client was shown the card of soldiers.
        According to a client, it was a picture of English film; all more solid was lying on the floor to deceive Pakistan, Pakistani people will think that they die when they come near to them, they will suddenly attack to them. It was reported by the client that they have decided how to control Muslims and their way of living.
        The client was overly affected by politics and soldiers.  He often talks about them and claimed that he was in touch with them.
        Card 3, 12 M. The client was shown a card of women and men. The client sad that women were thought to deceive the man, and the man n the picture was trying to keep happy her kid's mother and siblings.
The client had an affair with women who left her due to lack of financial support from the client, later on, he was divorced by her wife. After these two incidents, that client developed the schema that all women are wicked, and then he started blaming all women for her all failure as he thinks that her aunt was responsible for her drug addiction.
        It was also revealed that the client had been disturbed due to wife and mother disputes. 
        Card 4, 7 BM. A card of two male was shown to the client, according to the client they were father-son in relation. They were thinking about a battle which was about to start in Pakistan. The father and son were making a plan to save Pakistan from British attack.
        The client was overly involved or affected by politics, but the exact phenomena could not be examined.
        Subjective ratings of Beliefs. The subjective rating scale was used to take his belief about his family and social circle. Subjective rating scales are measurement tools for assessing the sequence or rating of phenomena (Splieger, 2013).
Table 2
The subjective rating of the client about his enemies are listed below
Beliefs    Subjective Rating (1-10)
Mother enemy     8
Teacher enemy     10
Aunt black magic    10
Misconceptions about female     10
        Qualitative Interpretation. According to the client he was not supported by his family, he was working from childhood, his mother used him for money in spite of cold, and she used to send him for work. He rated his mother as her enemy at eight numbers out of 10.
        According to the client, his teacher did not support him in the study; rather he used to send him for paying duty on the border of Pakistan. It was reported by the client that his failure in educational and occupational life purely disturbed by his teacher. He rated him on 10 out of 10 number as an enemy of his failure.
        It was reported by the client that he got to indulge in drugs due to the black magic which was used by her aunt. She was jealous of all men. She was responsible for her divorce.  He rated her at 10 out of 10 numbers as an enemy of her marital life.
Case Formulation
The formulation was done according to the bio, psycho, social model. According to the bio model, the maternal cousin of the client was suffering from psychiatric problems. The literature suggests that the genetic susceptibility in developing psychosis or bipolar disorder among family members(Owen, Craddock, & Jablensky, 2007). The recent data provide evidence regarding genotype and psychopathology (Owen, Craddock, & Jablensky, 2007).
    According to the social model, the client belongs to low socioeconomic status, and he has eight siblings, so the basic needs of the child were not fulfilled, which left a negative impact on client’s mind. Consequently, the client had to start his job in early childhood, which created a feeling of helpless in the client, or it was a triggering factor of the problem. A study showed that three social factors associated with drug abuse; socioeconomic status (SES), homelessness and incarceration, and SES is often conceptualised as a root cause of drug abuse (Mental health service, 2007). Higher of siblings, lack of support from family and educational issues also disappointed the client, and he started feeling negative about his family. The studies provide substantial data, which indicates the higher number of children causes emotional and psychological distress among siblings due to deprivation of needs (Karmaus, & Botezan, 2002). Another triggering factor was client divorced, and his girlfriend also made him socially isolated, and he started cursing women by saying that ‘’all women are wicked and they just love money’’. The latest studies reported that the divorcee, unhealthy marital and romantic relationship with spouses distort the thinking pattern and leads to isolation, low self-esteem and substance abuse. Then the only comfort for was client was his elder sister but after her death and later on, parents death made him feel like he was alone in the world and became the victim of automatic negative thoughts and hallucination of persecution. The death of the beloved becomes a trauma for the patient that leads to drug abuse and psychosis. Then he overly started abusing drugs, which affected his social functioning. Literature suggested that the death of a family member is an important factor that leads to distorted thinking and unhealthy health habit, such and smoking and drug dependency (Hemovich, & Crano, 2009).
    According to psycho model as the client has eight siblings, so he was not attended appropriately and being neglected by parents who created low self-esteem and feeling of hopelessness among the client. All these were a risk factor for the problems of the client. According to a recent study, the deprivation and lack of support are the negative predictors of self-esteem and drug abuse (Hemovich, & Crano, 2009). The client was discharged twice after getting recovery but readmitted due to relapses. The client was being criticised for all his failures and psychopath was became a tag for him. The tag of disability and mental are the radical taboos of every society. The prejudices against the mental health patients are mandatory to reduce for the better mental, physical health of the patients (Shakespeare, 2013). The protective factors are client own insight about his failure and believe in the Grace of God., as he knows everything is possible if prayers should be regularly offered. The client acceptance for his illness will be helpful in his management plan. Jacob (2016) concluded that insight predicts positive outcomes and mental health.
Diagnosis. 305.00 (F10.20) Alchololic use disorder, moderate. Other factors; V61.03 (Z63.5) disruption of a family by separation or divorce, V62.3 (Z55.9) Academic and educational problem.
Prognosis
    The client hygienic condition and self-care was appropriate, but he was mentally weak, and over Burdon with stressors, he was unable to face the stressful situation that causes his relapses, so it could be hypothesised that the client prognosis was poor.