Mental Health Facility Assessment Tools

Mental health assessment tools aid psychologists and psychiatrists in assessing, diagnosing and determining treatment plans for patients. A mental health facility may be part of a hospital or a separate facility designed to house and secure, if necessary, mental health patients while they undergo treatment on an inpatient basis; outpatients are generally seen in mental health clinics, private practices or mental health outpatient sections of hospitals. Assessment tools may be actual tools, such as standardized tests that help diagnose or assess patients, or less-formal tools such as interview techniques. Additionally, psychiatrists, which are medical doctors, may provide medical assessments for mental health facilities such as heart rate, blood work and neurological evaluations.

Mental Status Exam and Interview

• The Mental Status Exam is an assessment approach psychologists take when first meeting a new patient; the results are used for comparison later to determine progress and efficacy of treatment. The MSE is often followed or accompanied by a semi-informal interview in which the psychologist gathers necessary information for diagnosing the patient. A diagnosis is necessary in order to admit the patient and develop a treatment plan. The MSE includes physical appearance and mannerisms as well as psychological and behavioral observations; the information gained from an MSE and initial interview generally is insufficient for a solid diagnosis but helps the psychologist decide what the next step will be. For example, if the MSE and interview show signs that depression is present, the psychologist can select the next assessment tools to target depression in an effort to either confirm or rule out the possible diagnosis.

Personality Testing

• Personality testing tools provide insight into a patient's behavior, thought patterns and also serve to rule out malingering. The most commonly used personality test is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory - 2, though some professionals use another popular personality test known as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. The personality tests are made up of many different individual tests that provide different information to the diagnosing professional. Completing the full test is extremely time consuming, however, so many professionals simply use portions of the MMPI-2 or WAIS and combine the results with other findings from other tools.

Risk Assessment

• Risk assessment is used in different ways throughout the psychology and psychiatry communities. In forensics, risk assessment is the term applied to assessment of an individual in an effort to determine the likelihood he will re-offend once released from incarceration. In a mental health facility, risk assessment may seek to determine if a patient is a suicide risk or a violence risk, the goal being the safety of the patient as well as everyone that encounters the patient such as doctors, nurses, orderlies and other patients. Risk assessment tools in forensic testing are often standard testing tools such as the Historical Clinical Risk Scheme, the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide or the Domestic Violence Screening Inventory. In clinical settings such as a mental health facility, risk assessment is more often determined through interaction with the patient in therapy or other sessions.

Medical and Neurological Assessments

• Monitoring patient health is a high priority once the patient is admitted to a mental health facility. Blood work determines if the patient is already taking medication, or using substances such as drugs or alcohol, and also helps determine the patient's overall health for medication prescribing and treatment planning. Heart rate, blood pressure and other typical medical exam testing establishes the patient's current state of health and whether certain treatment approaches will be safe or dangerous. Neurological testing may include MRIs, fMRIs, CT scans and other expensive processes that assist the medical doctor or psychiatrist in establishing underlying conditions, mental health diagnoses and any safety issues certain medications or lack of medications may present.