How to Give a Mental Health Assessment

As a healthcare provider, being able to give the right kind of medical treatment for your patients is very important as this proves your credibility and gives you your satisfaction as a healthcare provider. When a patient comes in for a check-up, the first step of every professional is to give them a healthcare assessment wherein they will conduct a short examination of their condition.

This is the same for patients with mental problems or issues. When a person comes in for an initial check-up, instead of the usual weight, height and regular questions about medical history and background, the health assessment for mental patients is quite different.

In the beginning, there will be minor questions about physical health but what you’ll be focusing most is on asking for the recent emotions of the patient, usually that of the previous two weeks. How they felt, if they were up or down, if they had a reason to be down, if they were taking anything, if they were sleeping right or if any major events at home had happened to cause the mental breakdown will be other questions that need responding to. These kinds of symptoms will be your basis in diagnosing whatever the patient might be feeling.

After the recent emotions have been described, the next part of the mental healthcare assessment would be to find what the condition is. This may involve physiological issues, such as a part of the brain not functioning properly, or more on psychological issues, depending on the results of the patient’s symptoms. Aside from knowing the recent emotional state of a patient, also important are the tests that are usually asked of the patient at the initial check-up.

The first mental test that you should be giving your patient is the general psychological test wherein you’ll be able to figure out a more specific diagnosis of your patient’s condition. The first test should involve hallucinations, emotional instability and depressive or manic behavior in the past two weeks. When the test is done, you should be able to narrow down the list of psychological cases for your patient.

Since not everyone has the same case, you should be prepared with tests in different conditions. After the general psychological test, the next step for your mental health assessment would be taking the test based on specific mental cases. In most cases, the general test might not narrow down the diagnosis to only one mental condition so this part of assessment may take a while.

These tests may be differ from among health professionals, based on self-research, which is why before making a mental assessment test, you should be prepared with references and updates from medical journals. There are many tests available online for mental assessments. Research is a must because psychology research is fast evolving and new breakthroughs can provide enlightenment on special and unfamiliar cases. Lastly, a mental health provider, you must be sensitive to your patient’s feelings and be open minded on many cases.