Test Preparation and Test Taking

There's more to effective exam prep than cramming lots of information into your head. This is especially true for the LCSW exam, which tests not only your understanding of social work essentials, but your ability to use them flexibly in various contexts.

A vignette may offer an easily identifiable set of symptoms, but don't be surprised if the question takes a sudden turn. Instead of asking, "What is the BEST diagnosis?"--the question you were prepared to answer with easy--you might be thrown a curve: "How would a social worker using cognitive behavioral therapy MOST likely respond?"

You've got to be smart and flexible and focused in your exam-taking. So it's wise to be smart, flexible, and focused in your exam prep. Combine approaches to learning. Take lots of practice tests. And stay calm.

That's some of the advice offered at studygs.net. Take a look at the test preparation and test taking suggestions there. Not all apply to the social work exam. A lot of them are common sense. Most of them should be helpful.

Into the DSM - Histrionic Personality Disorder

Let's visit Cluster B personality disorders. You know ones. The dramatic, emotional, erratic group: antisocial, borderline, narcissistic, and, today's spotlight item, histrionic personality disorder.

Personality disorders--as opposed to just personality--involve patterns of beliefs and behaviors that severely impair those diagnosed with them. A full 10-15%  of people meet criteria for a personality disorder. That's a whole lot of people suffering, and often making others suffer, with long-standing, difficult-to-treat conditions.

Those with histrionic personality disorder seek attention more-or-less constantly, exhibiting extremes of feeling and behavior. Focus is often on excessive flirting, attention to looks, and severe reactions when attention isn't given.

Five of the following must be present to make a diagnosis:

• When not receiving attention, feels less valued.
• Inappropriate flirting and seduction.
• Mood lability (quickly changing feelings).
• Attracts attention via physical appearance.
• Vague, detail-lacking style of speech.
• Extreme displays of feeling (aka "drama").
• Easily swayed by others and by fads.
• Rapid attachments with overestimated depth. 

There's a fair amount of overlap with BPD, but it's not the same thing. For the LCSW exam look for flirting, looks-focus, and attention-seeking as signs that a fictional, vignette client is possibly meeting criteria for histrionic PD. 

For more detail, plus a mnemonic (PRAISE.ME) to help remember criteria, take a look at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histrionic_personality_disorder

Theories and Methods - Play Therapy

Play therapy is what it sounds like. Instead of talk being the currency of treatment, clients and therapist engage in play, exploring thoughts, feelings, and conflicts through playing.

The hive mind at Wikipedia adds:

Play therapy is a method of meeting and responding to the mental health needs of children and is extensively acknowledged by experts as an effective and suitable intervention in dealing with children’s brain development. It is generally employed with children aged 3 through 11 and provides a way for them to express their experiences and feelings through a natural, self-guided, self-healing process. As children’s experiences and knowledge are often communicated through play, it becomes an important vehicle for them to know and accept themselves and others.

Find more about how play therapy works and about its origins via this article at Good Therapy.

Will play therapy be on the LCSW exam? You never know. If you've glanced at the above articles, you'll be more than prepared to face a test question if it does. Good luck!

LCSW Exam Study Guides

It's nice to have some help as you're preparing to pass the licensing exam. Maybe lots of help. It's a big exam with potential content spanning just about everything you've learned in school and in social work practice. But there's no need to get overwhelmed. And there's no reason to do it all by yourself. Many, many social workers have travelled this road before you. They've passed the exam. And they've left their wisdom all over the net, on flash card sites, on blogs like this one, and have gone to work creating practice tests--based upon their experience--for various exam companies. Google will get you to lots of those.

Study guides are also easily tracked down via Internet search. Here are two that come up early have the advantage of being completely free: This (semi-outdated) pdf from University of Missouri-St. Louis. And this free (with sign up) study guide from Social Work Test Prep. Those should keep you busy for a while. If you find others that are great, post for others in comments. Passing the social work licensing exam is a team sport.

The Code of Ethics - Responsibilities to the Broader Society

Knowing the NASW Code of Ethics means knowing the entire NASW Code of Ethics. To be prepared for the clinical social work exam, it's wise to dig past the micro practice principles in the code and continue all the way through to item #6, "Social Workers' Ethical Responsibilities to the Broader Society." That includes four subsections: social welfare, public participation, public emergencies, and social and political action. Here are those sections with details:

Social Welfare
Social workers should promote the general welfare of society, from local to global levels, and the development of people, their communities, and their environments. Social workers should advocate for living conditions conducive to the fulfillment of basic human needs and should promote social, economic, political, and cultural values and institutions that are compatible with the realization of social justice.

Public Participation
Social workers should facilitate informed participation by the public in shaping social policies and institutions.

Public Emergencies
Social workers should provide appropriate professional services in public emergencies to the greatest extent possible.

Social and Political Action
This one's got several paragraphs--we covered it in an earlier post.  As it says there, it shouldn't take you by surprise to see this material appear on the exam. Public participation and political action have been on the rise, and social workers have either been a part of it or have wrestled with whether or not to be a part of it. That, of course, includes exam writers. What are they most likely to create questions about? Whatever's on their mind.

Read the entire NASW Code of Ethics here. Then read it again. This is important stuff--for the exam and beyond. Enjoy!

ASWB Exam Outline Changes

If you didn't know, you wouldn't notice, but the Association of Social Work Boards (the ASWB)--the people who write and administer the social work licensing exam--have made some changes. The minor tweaks to the old exam content outlines kicked in with the new year (2018).

The more with-it exam prep companies have adjusted their offerings to fit the new guidelines (SWTP, for example). But if you're prepping using older material, don't sweat it. The outline changes are minimal. Some areas of the exam are being stressed a little bit more, others a little bit less. And some of the areas in the outline have been merged or renamed. No matter. You still have to study all the content areas (which is what you're doing when you take a practice test, review your old social work notes, or run through the posts in this blog). If one area comprises 17% instead of 19% of the exam, does that mean you study it 2% less? If you're able to gauge such things...then, maybe. But, really, no.

If you want to know the details of the changes, the ASWB has spelled them out with nice graphs on their site: https://www.aswb.org/exam-candidates/about-the-exams/exam-development/2018-exam-blueprints/how-are-the-exams-changing/

For everyone else, just know that something changed a little and it doesn't really matter.

As you were. Prepping and, soon, passing the LCSW exam. Good luck!

NASW Code of Ethics Changes

To pass the licensing exam, you have to have a good grasp on the NASW Code of Ethics. And to pass it after January 1st, 2018, you have to know the new version of the code.

Here it is.

What's changed? Not an enormous amount, but enough to warrant some determined review. The main areas that have been updated relate to tech. There are new guidelines for Internet searches, social media, and the like. You can just read the code and see if you notice the changes. Or, maybe better, turn to an expert or two for their run-down: Here's Alan Barsky enumerating the changes. And here's Fredrik Reamer in Social Work Today doing the same.

There's also a new ASWB content outline (find it at aswb.org). Professional values and ethics, once 18% of the exam, has gotten a meager boost to 19%. That's nearly one in five questions you'll face that will be rooted in the code. It's very much worth your while to get it known. Happy reading, happy testing. Good luck!