Psychological Assessments

Psychological Assessments are important for assessing problems, goals, and diagnosis. As such, these tasks are essential for therapy. Having quick executables and references would be a boon for psychotherapeutic interventions. I want to emphasize that these assessments require training, so they are conducted in a more human, personable way. Only use these executables if you are a practitioner, training to be one, or have been approved to perform these in research. If you are interested in this field, you can still read about, learn about, and play around with them; don’t use them to diagnose or treat. So, say you’re an RA in college, and you think your student has depression. Please don't use the tasks here; instead, speak with your supervisor for advice and, if helpful, encourage them to visit the campus counseling center. And in your free time or school work, try the tasks out. It is important to gatekeep these tasks so that qualified people can use them, but you can still totally play with them to learn how to become qualified

Mental Status Examination: This is for assessment during an intake. I included a place where you can take notes, which is important for references and providing evidence.

PHQ-9: This is a commonly used assessment tool that can screen for depression and the severity of depression. It’s commonly used in research as well.

Columbia Suicide Risk Assessment: A task designed to evaluate the risk of suicide. Ask the questions verbatim, and I included a basic outline for safety planning in the sidebar.

GAD-7: A seven-question inventory for anxiety screening.

Hare Psychopathy Checklist: This is a simple list that you would fill out during and after an interview to assess whether the individual exhibits characteristics of Antisocial Personality Disorder.

STABLE: This is an assessment that is commonly used in the evaluation of sex offenders when they are about to have a parole hearing.

CAGE: These are four questions you can ask to evaluate substance abuse patterns. It is a screening questionnaire, so if they score highly, you will need to move to a more comprehensive assessment, such as the MAST. Although that can be said about all of these tasks. No one task or questionnaire will give you a complete assessment of a person for treatment or forensic evaluations, but you probably already knew that.

Young Mania Rating: This is often used in hospital settings after someone has experienced or is currently experiencing a manic episode.

MAST-AD: This is a commonly used psychometric scale to screen for drug and alcohol abuse.

URICA: This scale measures where someone is in the stages of change in the psychotherapeutic process. This can help measure where your client is in their psychotherapeutic development, particularly regarding how they feel about their problem.

MSI-BPD: This is a screening tool for Borderline Personality Disorder.

DAST-10 and DAST-28: These are psychometric instruments that are used to screen for Substance use. I used the DAST-28 for my Master’s Thesis because I found it very in-depth for screening.

NEO-120: This is a shortened version of the OCEAN personality assessment. The OCEAN, or Big Five, Personality traits are among the most valid ways to assess personality, so creating an executable file for them was essential.

Need for Cognitive Scale: This tool measures a person’s natural tendency to explore difficult mental topics and their desire for mental challenges. Coming Soon.

PANSS: This is a screening tool that assesses the positive, negative, and general symptoms of schizophrenia. It is similar to the Young Mania Rating Scale as it is performed while interviewing, it is not something the person you are assessing can fill out. Coming Soon.