Psychological Assessment Advantages And Disadvantages

Becoming acquainted with a potential client’s history, personality and present concerns is necessary in forming a foundation for counseling interventions. This information gathering phase is referred to as assessment (Mears, 2010). While some mental health professionals will use an interview as their primary assessment tool, others will utilize testing

A clinical assessment is the process in which information is gathered about a certain person and his/her environment to make decision regarding his/hers nature, as well as their nature and if needed to asses any treatment needed of any psychological problems, if necessary. A diagnosis is the identification of any illness that a human being may have, if any. The goals of a clinical assessment and diagnosis, is to be able to identify a certain abnormality or problem in a human. The assessment or tests that they are put through evaluates any symptoms (if any), the pattern of their symptoms and are watched to observe the frequency and duration of these symptoms. Their strengths and weaknesses are also

29 face to face interviews were administered at the Clinic and one interview was conducted via conference call.

First, assessments need to be conducted encompassing family history, while delving into all (cognitive, behavioral, emotional)

Psychologists work in a vast array of areas with a myriad of clients; school children may be assessed for special services or supports in school based on individual needs, adults may self refer for various reasons including stress, marital issues, anxiety, or an infinite assortment of other potential personal reasons, or those facing the legal system may be assessed for their ability to stand trial. It is up to the psychologist to be educated in the tools available to them in their chosen field and how to best use them in the situations presented so the client is best served. In order to best select a proper assessment tool, often it is necessary to conduct an intake interview in order to obtain historical background from the

Interview: the advantage of face to face interviews is that the researcher can adapt the questions as necessary, clarify doubt and ensure that the responses are properly understood, by repeating or rephrasing the questions. The researcher can also pick up non-verbal clues from the respondent through the body language.

In Mental Health practice, the assessment of a patient is a vital part of their treatment as it is required to be aware of their ailment before a treatment plan/course is made. Therefore, risk management is a practice that involves the assessment and engagement of an individual through standard assessment tools and approaches so as to devise a means to manage an individual’s risk behaviour(s). Assessment is essential when it comes to nursing practice, as it is a major key element of knowing what care is required as well as knowing if the right form of care is delivered successfully (Combst et al., 2013). The questions that usually come to mind will be how the assessment is carried out and how will the practitioners and clients react to the outcome of this assessment. The aim of this assignment is to critically analyse the assessment tools, models and approaches utilised in mental health practice. Furthermore, a consideration will be given to the limitations of the assessment practice such as the reliability of the assessment tools. To carry out this task, a fictitious individual will be used in this report. A number of possible ailment and presenting risk behaviours are listed then an eventual analytical procedure for the individual’s assessment will be explained.

Health history provides a complete picture of the patient’s past and present health. Health history has the sequence of categories: biographical data, source of history, reason for seeking care, history of present illness, past history, family history, review of system and functional assessment (Jarvis, 2015). These information may encompass changing environmental factors that patient may perceive or experience described in concepts under RAM. Internal and external stimuli that patient may perceive may lead to seeking care in first

The patient must be questioned directly about the risks. If not possible, the family members and other care providers must be questioned for information(Balaratnasingam, 2015). In some cases when the situation is complex, experienced colleague or specialist is seek for help. The interviewer must be cam, polite, objective and creative enough to extract information from the patient. The nurse must carefully listen to the story with full empathy. This will lead to a good therapeutic relationship and will give good outcome (Balaratnasingam,

There are two model approaches to patient interviewing in the medical field. The biomedical interview approach, and the biopsychosocial interview approach. The biomedical approach focuses only on the biological effects on health and medicine. This approach is faster and sees a higher quantity of patients. According to Science The Need for a New Medical Model: A Challenge for Biomedicine, the biomedical model, “…assumes disease to be fully accounted for by deviations from the norm of measurable biological (somatic) variables” (Engel 130). The biopsychosocial approach, on the other hand, focuses not only on the biological effects, but also the psychological and social effects on health and medicine as well. This approach digs deeper into the patient’s history, uses more variables, and finds the source of the problem and solves it. According to the article Reflections on a New Medical Cosmology, the biopsychosocial approach “...gives recognition to the difficulties and distortions involved in framing qualitative issues, whether psychological or social, in quantitative terms, and so provides a separation between those appropriately…” (Greaves 82). It is often seen that because the biomedical approach does not include psychological and social factors, much information is left out, and the patient and medical professional cannot fully make a connection with each other. It is important to form a trustworthy bond with patients so that you

An initial interview occurs before determining what screening or assessments would be useful in Samuel’s case. The initial interview is the most important tool to collecting data. Not only can it collect information that client is willing to provide you, it can also provide you information via behavioral observations (Groth-Marnat, 2003). In Samuel’s case a semi-structured interview was used. Semi-structure interview style was used due to his age and his lack of interest in the process appeared to the best format to gain as much information as possible.

The assessment process is the back bone to any package of care and it is vital that it is personal and appropriate to the individual concerned. Although studies have found that there is no singular theory or understanding as to what the purpose of assessment is, there are different approaches and forms of assessment carried out in health and social care. These different approaches can sometimes result in different outcomes.

Egan (2014) clarify assesssments as counseling tools that are designed to draw out pertinent information about the client. Conversely, counselors mut consider all aspects or whole person using implicit or explicit observational skills to make an accurate provisional diagnosis. One counseling tool to use is a Mental Status Examination (MSE) to assess a client’s seven areas of functional areas, i.e. physical, intellectual, social-familial, workig, aesthetic, spritual, and emotional selves. The merit of using a MSE is that it provides the counselor a indirect but structured way to consciously think of elements within the MSE in an subjective manner. When counselors use these seven elements in either a objective and subjective manner they are essentially using a methology that can be applies across a spectrum of impairments without being biased. The foremost goal using an MSE to assess is to be able to identify abnormalites in a person’s cognitive abilities, memory capacity, distorted thought process, and patience overall neuropsycholgical status. The delta using the MSE is whether the assessor is in tune with their innate biases, prejudices, and cultrual diversity that would impede the counselor’s accurate assessment. Because MSE is an exemely subjective instructment there is an increase of potental for human error that has nothing to do with the intellectual functioning but more about simply reflecting a different cultrual

practice. Not only does the GP collect this information about the symptoms, but they also aim to understand the chronological order by which the patient has acquired these symptoms and furthermore, the severity of these symptoms. The patient’s illness history and family history is useful as in a test study from a group of “61 patients, for 76% the history led to the final diagnosis”(Peterson et al., 1992).

I confirm that I am the person stated on this form and the evidence for this assessment is authentic and conforms accurately to my own work