Health professionals spend a lot of their time assessing people and they need guides or methods to do it.
The Formal Approach
Traditionally, Formal Assessment has permitted the health professional to identify or diagnose a person’s problem, measure the extent to which the person is affected, and specify the best course of action.
In recent times, however, the whole process of assessment has become more collaborative. Health and Mental professionals now use evaluation as an important means of communicating with the person who is seeking help; and working together with this person to choose the best available options to attend to the problems identifed.
This process is no different in the area of mental health.
Certainly, the mental health evaluation provides a means by which the health professional can measure the mental health of a person. This includes evaluating what it is that the person is experiencing and how these episodes are affecting them. At the same time, having a comprehensive mental health assessment also provides health and mental professionals with an opportunity to connect with the person who has come to them for a guide or help, and begin the process of building a therapeutic relationship.
There are a lot of reasons why all health professionals need to know and be familiar with the process of taking a Mental Health Assessment:
- Such familiarity improves communication between health professionals.
- Knowledge of the process of the mental health assessment will permit health professionals to describe the process to their patients and help them with their fears, concerns or anxieties.
- There may be several times when there are no specialists in mental health available to take the mental health assessment. So, it will be the responsibility of the non specialist professional to work with the people who has mental health problems and specify the most appropriate way forward.
To learn more, you can go to Betterhelp.
Approaches to make an assessment
There isn’t a ‘onesizeftsall’ way for health professionals to lead a health assessments. This is due to each person and situation is different. Even more, although a mental health assessment has a special focus — to measure the level of people’s mental health — it is however important to take into account all aspects of a person’s being. We will review the person’s behavioural in differente areas such as:
- Cultural
- Occupational
- Mental
- Financial
- Environmental
- Emotional
- Recreational
- Sexual
- Biological
- Functional
- Educational
- Social
- Spiritual
- Physical
The Biopsychosocial Approach
This method is a integrated way in which we can evaluate the many different aspects of a person’s being. It represents an alternative approach to the Biological Models. The focus in Biological Models are limited to the aspects of illness and biological problems.
In constrast, the Biopsychosocial Method takes into account the whole person’s being and considers the psychological, biological, and social dimensions. The Approach Biopsychosocial is credited to the work of the George Engel – American psychiatrist in 1977, who developed it as an alternative to the biomedical way.
