The clinical assessment of people with disabilities.

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of situations in which clinicians conduct assessments with disabled people. As such, it will be necessarily superficial in discussing arenas (such as neuropsychology or rehabilitation assessment) that have demanded significant literatures to fully elaborate. Rather, references to these areas are offered as examples of clinical assessment of people with disabilities so that assessment processes may be compared and unique issues may be explored.I will begin this chapter with some definitions. Then I will assess two broad areas, situations in which the client's-patient's disability is not the focus of the assessment and contexts in which disability assessment is the center of the evaluation process.' In this second part of the chapter, I willThe author wishes to thank Polly Stipke for her diligent work in preparing drafts of this chapter. H e also expresses his appreciation to Dr. Debra Saslawsky for her review of a n early draft of this work.'Throughout this chapter, the term "client" will be used to denote the individual who I S the focus of the clinician's interest and professional services. In some settings, notably neuropsychology and rehabilitation assessment, the term "patient" would be more appropriate as the individual is usually encountered in a medical setting. However, the term client will be used for purposes of uniformity.