Five A's Organizational Construct for Clinical Counseling
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force adopted the following terminology to describe minimal contact interventions that are provided by a variety of clinical staff in primary care settings:
Assess: Ask about/assess behavioral health risk(s) and factors affecting choice of behavior change goals/methods.
Advise: Give clear, specific, and personalized behavior change advice, including information about personal health harms/benefits.
Agree: Collaboratively select appropriate treatment goals and methods based on the patient's interest in and willingness to change the behavior.
Assist: Using behavior change techniques (self-help and/or counseling), aid the patient in achieving agreed-upon goals by acquiring the skills, confidence, and social/environmental supports for behavior change, supplemented with adjunctive medical treatments when appropriate (e.g., pharmacotherapy for tobacco dependence, contraceptive drugs/devices).
Arrange: Schedule follow-up contacts (in person or by telephone) to provide ongoing assistance/support and to adjust the treatment plan as needed, including referral to more intensive or specialized treatment.
The High Value Care Coordination (HVCC) Toolkit provides resources to facilitate more effective and patient-centered communication between primary care and subspecialist doctors.
Children and adolescents should receive the best available evidence-based mental health care based on scientific knowledge and integrated with clinical expertise in the context of patient characteristics, culture, and preferences.
Learn more about this model that combines medical and behavioral health services for the spectrum of problems that
patients bring to primary medical care.
Collection of disorder-specific chapter/handouts for distribution to patients and families. The chapters are taken from APA Publishing's popular consumer health title, Understanding Mental Disorders: Your Guide to DSM-5.
Designed to leverage the techniques of motivational interviewing (or in the case of substance use, a brief intervention) to provide you with practical skills needed to elicit accurate mental health information and create behavior change in patients.
Educational videos on topics such as disorders & disabilities, personal health & wellness, public health, health care & treatment, and health careers. Mobile friendly.
Streaming videos for teaching, training, self-study and continuing education in psychotherapy, counseling, and addiction treatment. FSU provides access to a limited number of titles covering psychotherapy theory, motivational interviewing, and treatment.