About Mental Health Assessment
Assessing mental health is only possible through a process of studying all the details of a person’s state of mind before coming to a definite conclusion. Why this is so is because practitioners of mental health care spend a lot of time and effort to gather all possible information regarding the disorder of a patient. The diagnosis itself will not take longer than a few minutes but the process of reaching that is tedious and takes a long time and exhaustive effort.
Whether it is a diagnosis or prognosis, all the details need to be fleshed out before reaching an accurate conclusion. This is done by paying attention to the minutest detail, recording them, and monitoring the mental condition of the patient during the process. The person’s entire history, commencing from his birth, childhood, upbringing, the family circumstances and childhood traumas, are all uncovered during a psychiatric assessment. If done haphazardly, the doctor may omit crucial information that could have a bearing on the outcome of the assessment.
Current patterns of behavior, thought process, mood swings, reasoning ability, power of memory and ability to articulate are also details that are taken into account during the process of evaluation. Other pathological tests such as blood, urine and other laboratory tests are also conducted.
Preparation – The assessment is preceded by some detailed groundwork by recording the symptoms of the disorder in a case diary or journal. During the process of work, progress made or relapses thus recorded help in the study. This gives a lucid picture of the patient’s mental condition during the process. Where the patient is a child, the parent is also included in the process and is expected to maintain a similar diary or journal to record observations of abnormal or subnormal behavior. This helps the doctor to do his job in a more efficient way.
If a diagnosis has already been made, and the patient is under some medication for the control of the symptoms, any changes in the symptoms must also be recorded.
Interview – No psychiatric appraisal is possible without a personal interview. Mental illnesses rarely manifest in overt behavior through observable symptoms. It is therefore vital that a dialogue takes place during the process of psychoanalysis and assessment of behavior patterns of a patient.
A number of personal interviews give the doctor opportunities to observe at first hand, the information that the patient can offer. This enables the doctor to gather relevant details, clarify ambiguities and to discard any established impressions.
Questions – Three types of questions are used in the interview - closed questions, open questions and choice questions.
Apart from presenting the doctor with an opportunity to collect information about him, the interview offers the patient with an opportunity to present his side. This is beneficial as it enables the patient to articulate suppressed thoughts, which could be terrifying.
Physical Examination – It is quite common to carry out neurological and cardiovascular examinations during the clinical procedures for assessing the mental health of a patient. Age, other disorders, current treatments for other ailments and substance abuse or dependency can be detected with such examinations, which are useful in the treatment.
Summary of the findings – Merely examining and evaluating the patient thus will not be adequate for the management of mental health. A summary of all the findings and prescribing a course of treatment and therapy is what will get the patient prepared for treatment and recovery.
