Mood Assessment Tools

Mood assessment tools are multiple choice written exams with questions that focus on specific symptoms and mental conditions. A variety of mood assessment tools exist, each targeting specific possible symptoms and each designed as a specialized diagnostic aid to help psychologists determine the impact of your mental conditions on your daily life.

Range of Answers

• Mood assessment tools utilize a range of answers in order to assess your mood and any potential issues that may affect it. The range refers to how often you feel a specific symptom and the severity. A range of answers may include "never," "rarely," "sometimes," "often" and "all the time." The reason these phrases are used is to assess your perception of your symptoms. If you are asked how often you notice sleep problems, an answer of "often" shows that it is a repetitive issue in your life, but also that it is having a significant impact on your life, based on your perception.

Interpretable

• Mood assessment tools are meant to assist your therapist in your diagnosis. You need to speak with a therapist who can interpret the results of a mood assessment tool. Individual tests can point to areas of concern or potential issues, but should not be used as a home diagnosis tool. This is especially true when attempting to diagnose triggered mental issues, such as post traumatic stress disorder. PTSD requires a trigger, somewhere in your past, that activates the symptoms that affect not just your mood but other daily functions. Your doctor may have to spend several sessions discussing possible triggers or events in your life that were particularly traumatic before you discover which is the focus of your condition.

Willing Participation

• Mood assessment tools require you to be a willing and active patient during the process. An unwilling patient can purposely select the wrong answers or overstress certain symptoms for attention. An individual who does not take the test seriously can easily score dangerously high on every category, making the need for professional interpretation even more significant. Also, you cannot take a mood assessment test for someone else because all of the questions require an individual perception of the impact that a symptom has on your life.

Overall Score

• Each answer is given a numerical value. Once you finish your test, these values are added together to form an overall score. This overall score reveals the severity that your mood has on your daily life. Let your therapist review your score and determine a proper course of action.