Assessment Tests for Counseling

Mental health is quite different from the medical health field. There is no blood test to indicate bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. However, there are assessments that counselors sometimes use to indicate mental illness, personality type, career interests and substance abuse. Counselors must be qualified to conduct the tests they are providing to their clients. Qualifications are based upon the provider's degree and training. For example, only licensed psychologists may conduct IQ tests, but any mental health therapist with adequate training may conduct interest inventories. .

Intelligence Tests

• Intelligence tests are primarily used to test for mental retardation and learning disabilities as defined by Etienne Benson. They are most utilized by school psychologists or psychologists who contract with school districts to conduct their testing. Intelligence tests generally provide an intelligence quotient, or IQ, score. This score indicates a general level of intellectual functioning. An average score is 100 and below 70 is in the mental retardation range. Test components vary but sub-tests may include verbal reasoning, short-term memory and abstract reasoning.

Career Tests

• Career testing is commonly conducted by school and college counselors. Career tests typically consist of work readiness tests, occupational awareness assessments and interest inventories. These tests determine the subject's knowledge of the occupations available in the current workforce, knowledge of necessary work skills and tasks for each occupation and knowledge about general work skills. They also explore a myriad of work interests and identify the interests that the subject finds the most appealing. Some tests use these interests to identify occupations closely associated with them.

Personality Tests

• Personality tests typically require advanced training to conduct. Hood and Johnson identify the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory - 2 (MMPI-2) as a commonly used personality test that is typically used to determine psychopathology. Other personality tests are projective, meaning that they use ambiguous stimuli to make inferences about a subject's personality. Commonly used projective tests are the Rorschach Ink Blot Test, House-Tree-Person Test and sentence completion tests. These tests are used in conjunction with other test results to indicate a subject's thought processes and interpretation of facts and events.

Substance Abuse Tests

• Substance abuse tests are important in the field of counseling since many psychological problems occur as a result of drugs or alcohol. In addition, drugs and alcohol are often used by clients to self-medicate, thus compounding their psychological problems. Substance abuse tests can be subjective or objective, meaning they may or may not result in a standardized score. Due to the nature of alcohol and drug addiction, it may also be beneficial to repeat testing or wait to test until a rapport is developed with the client to ensure more accurate results.

Standardized Psychopathology Tests

• Psychopathology can be determined through a general assessment of symptoms, however there are also standardized assessments to determine the presence of mental illness. Hood and Johnson list many assessments available to diagnose such areas as depression, anger, eating disorders and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorders. As with any assessment, test results should be used cautiously and in conjunction with an assessment interview before diagnosing mental illness.