"Psychotherapy: Preparing for a first session" Dr. Fieve: "If I get a new patient, typically we spend about 45 minutes, maybe 50, 60 sometimes, and I review their records, and I have a psychiatric evaluation where I begin with what the chief complaint is, and how long the chief complaint has been going on. What are the symptoms over the last 5, 10, 20 years. I also go into a family history, I take a detailed family history, sociopathy, alcohol, bipolar, unipolar depression. Any cases of suicide and people that have an outstanding achievement, and then finally I take a look at the different possibilities of diagnosis. The DSM IV Diagnosis, these are diagnostic categories that we have so we can come up with their either Bipolar 1 or Bipolar 2, maybe they're schizophrenic, maybe they got PTSD. Then I wanna know a history of drug treatments they got. I want a history of hospitalizations, I wanna know how they're functioning over the years. Above all, I want a medical exam, I want a cardiograph, a urine, a bio-chemical profile, before I start the treatment, or the first week of treatment, so I'm not treating thyroid disease with an antidepressant, so I know that the person's physically well before we start the treatment."