8/Chapter 7: Meant to assess

Question: Compare and contrast the approach to AT assessment presented in Chapter 7 to at least 2 different approaches to assessment in mental health treatment?

Answer: 

A health assessment is conducted by a medical professional and gives an overall picture of how well you feel emotionally and how you are able to think, reason and remember.  One type of mental health assessment is a written or verbal test.  These answers are rated and scored by a mental health practitioner and generally contain 20 to 30 questions that can be answered quickly in a yes or no format and usually don’t take long to complete.  These questionnaires often focus on specific problems, how you are able to think reason or remember or how well you are able to carry out routine activities.  Specifically, a mental health test such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale is used.  The WAIS is similar to Adventure Therapy’s GRABBS model in that it reveals the overall strengths and weaknesses of the test taker.  Another similarity is that verbal comprehension can be assessed during the design and diagnosis stage of the CHANGES model, which is also seen during assessment in Adventure Therapy. Specifically, the C in Changes is Context, and as Adventure Therapists gather information about client groups they can start to get an idea of their comprehension level.  Two differences in the model are that the WAIS provides information on ones full scale IQ and working memory. 

Another type of common mental health assessment could be an interview conducted with a mental health professional. These questions may range anywhere from are you neat and clean to are you standing up straight?  This works best when the interviewee is as detailed as possible and it could be helpful to provide a journal or diary if there is one that relates to the matter.  These specific questions will measure how you think, measure or reason.  One stress for the interview assessment is that it is conducted by a mental health professional (3).  This involvement with mental health professionals in assessment is seen in Adventure Therapy as well.  Although it is computerized, one form of interview assessment is the Global Mental Health Assessment Tool- Primary Care Version or GMHAT/PC.  This tool is used to identify mental health problems.  One similarity between interviews and AT’s assessment is that both start with basic instructions giving details about how to use the program and the clients are will informed on what the process looks like.  This is similar to the readiness part of GRABBS where a group after knowing the goals is assessed to see if they are ready.  A last main difference here is that an individual’s assessment is transcribed in some fashion while with AT it is not.

One question that I am left thinking about is…

What part of AT and these other mental health practices provide the best aspect of assessment for groups or individuals?

Citation: 

Cherry, K., (2013). The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/intelligence/a/wechsler-adult-intelligence-scale.htm

Heatlhwise Staff (2011). Mental Health Assessment. Retrieved from http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/mental-health-assessment?page=2

Sharma, V., Lepping, P., Cummins, A., Copeland, J., Parhee, R., Mattram, P., (June, 2004). The Global Health Assessment Tool- Primary Care Version (GMHAT/PC). Development, reliability and validity. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1414685/ 

Gass, Michael A., Lee Gillis, and Keith C. Russell. (2012).  Adventure Therapy: Theory, Research, and Practice. New York: Routledge