oduction
Ability is a term that is used commonly both is daily talk and in discussions among psychologists, teachers and other specialists. Frequently, it is used to characterize traits and performance of people in life, as in words like athletic ability, musical ability, and cognitive ability(Whiston, 2017).Cognitive ability is multidimensional. Cognitive ability influences our daily performance and relations with other people. Therefore, it is important that cognitive ability, and in particular mental health state of every individual be well known to them. This essay discusses tools that can be used for mental health assessment and screening. One of these tools is depression symptoms observing. This involves measuring the emotional, social and behavioral development in an individual.
PART 1
Expectations for Assessment
The symptoms are observed and screened for validity and reliability. Another tool for assessment is test for cognitive distortions. It tries to relate how what we think influences how we act and what we feel(Whiston, 2017). There are certain attributes, that when an individual experience them, they (the individual) could be up for a very serious mental problem. Some of these traits and experiences could be observed by other people while others can only be measured by self-completion and reporting. Some of these symptoms include catastrophizing and negative filtering of events among others.
Assessment
An assessment is a test that has variables and is expected to provide valid results that are measurable. Depression symptoms observation is one of the major assessment tools. It aims at measuring what as well as how much an individual is thinking and how that thinking will influence their decision making, how they act, what they feel as well as what they believe. It also involves observing others symptoms and reactions such as anger and anxiety and how they are affected or exaggerated by our thinking patterns.
Depression testing involves an individual recognizing their personal thoughts at different time spans a relating them to their mood or actions. In short, this method needs to be self-completed(Whiston, 2017). A list of mental distortions in given to an individual to explore and test whether they could be facing any of them. In other words, a person could think in a way that their emotions affect their view of reality, which is a mental problem. Their thoughts focus on their emotions rather than what is real. Consider a student at a college in Washington D.C who tends to think that everyone hates them and does not speak to other students. The student has developed a mind reading character as he/she tends to think that he/she knows what other people are thinking without sufficient evidence. In turn this could affect their character, performance and their relation with other people. Emotions, actions, thoughts and reality are measured and contrasted. Factors that are considered are such as, what was I thinking about a certain issue that I was anxious over? What did I think was going to be the outcome and what was the actual outcome? Did I put unnecessary pressure on myself?
Cognitive distortions are matters that involve reasoning. How having poor reasoning can affect our interpretation of matters and anticipation of events. There are things we tend to predict or foretell in a negative manner due to our negative thinking. This could lead to serious mental illness or even suicide (Whiston, 2017) Majority of people have cognitive distortions even though they do not know it! Therefore, cognitive dislocations can be self-tested and recorded and prevented or curbed.
The assessment is supposed to provide a full reflection of how our thoughts and actions relate and how they differ or are similar to realityT (Carroll, 2015) his assessment can be used as a self-test for an individual, or corroboratively by a counselor and the client. In this way it will help improve mental health and prevent mental health related issues such as suicide, substance abuse and depression these assessments could be a little defective since some people have their thoughts and actions controlled by other people, events or substance use and are not timely. The time frame of the assessment is also a key issue, that is, it is supposed to yield positive results in a short period of time.
Assessment review
Performance on study of cognitive distortions correlates observations on how wise or intelligent an individual is. Validity and reliability of the assessment is a key issue, in that it should be able to give accurate and consistent results over a given period. Is the assessment able to produce relevant results when on an individual more than once? To acquire reliability the test
is performed more than once on the same individual. For example, is I test my mood and thoughts two times at different times of the day; do I achieve some kind of consistency? If the test is able to give the same results over different times, the assessment is considered reliable. Validity involves correctness. Does the test give correct results regarding a link between how we think and how we act? For example, if two individuals with similar emotions take the test, do they come to the same conclusion? Validity in decided on individual basis. An individual determines whether they got accurate results from the assessment. The assessment questionnaire indicates that if an individual is in a bad mood, they will predict future events the wrong way, is that the actual outcomes?
PART 2
Key test measurement constructs of reliability and validity
Results of the assessment are interpreted in terms on individuals. Paper based questionnaires
Could be used to collect and measure results (Gladding & Newsome 2017)For example, the questionnaire is filled by an individual, and we expect to observe their character outcome over a period of time, observations regarding the name of the client and their actions could be tabulated.
Results of this test can be correlated with other test that measure mental health condition. For examples test for cognitive distortions could be related to community participation test for a
Individual who is a drug addict? In short, we are determining whether the result of depression symptoms test did reflect on how people perform their daily activities.
Depression symptoms testing are effective in mental health counseling. Mental health counselor relies a lot on the cognitive attributes and thinking of the target individual to predict the mental health state on individuals. Some visible depression symptoms help specialists predict the mental health condition in an individual (Whiston, 2018) For example, if a person experiences negative filters and negative mind set, the symptoms could be used to predict mental health signs and substance abuse.
The depression testing and cognitive distortions diagnosis is clear on its application of measurement concepts. The methods used to measure, validate, and record results are clear .
This method can be used as a self-completion method or used collaboratively by both the client and the mental health counselor. Therefore, there assessment methods could be very effective and could be used by anyone especially adults.
Conclusion
Assessment testing through depression testing is very effective and could be used across a number of individuals. Mental health counseling contributes a major part in boosting the states of our psychological an emotional issues in individuals. Mental problems arise from difficulties experienced with reasoning. As noted, an assessment was conducted to examine the relationship between thoughts and actions. The assessment results portrayed the causes of depression among individuals. On the same note, solutions to these problems are discussed. Therefore, individuals ought to carry out personal assessments. These assessments will bolster sanity in individuals thereby reducing social challenges witnessed in the society.
References
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