Assessment tools in psychology help evaluate & understand behaviors, thoughts & emotions, supporting effective interventions.
These tools include questionnaires, behavioral checklists & more designed to measure specific psychological traits or states.
Utilizing assessment tools can enhance self-awareness & professional care by identifying areas for growth & development.
Assessment tools remain a cornerstone of many professions centering around the human mind.
Typically, these assessments invite clients to respond to questions about their mental state and subjective experiences.
Psychologists and therapists depend on these tools to make decisions about the best course of treatment for clients seeking support for their mental health. Therefore, it’s worth taking a little time to explore their variations and how to use them most effectively.
In this article, we’ll explore some of the most commonly used and reliable mental health assessments, as well as their applications at different stages of the therapeutic process. We’ll also walk through some ways you can automate and simplify the administration of these assessments.
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According to the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), a mental health assessment is:
“a conversation between [a client] and mental health professionals to help decide what kind of support [they] need.”
NHS, 2022
This discussion can cover a wide range of topics, such as relationships, family history, everyday routines, physical or mental symptoms, future goals, and more.
The discussion’s aims all center around gaining a deeper understanding of an individual’s emotional, psychological, and behavioral functioning. The more details clients are able to provide, the more precisely professionals can match them with appropriate resources and interventions.
As part of this process, practitioners will often administer standardized questionnaires. These digital or pen-and-paper self-report tools enable clients to consider their own inner experiences, which aren’t always apparent from the outside, such as ongoing sadness, racing thoughts, or difficulty falling asleep. They provide a useful method for rapidly gathering data and can be used to monitor changes over time.
Throughout this article, we’ll explore a range of mental health questionnaires such as these, starting with the following three widely used examples.
First published in 1989, the MMPI-2 is the world’s most widely used psychometric test for measuring mental health ailments that feature as forms of psychopathology (Rogers et al., 2016).
The scale features 567 true–false statements, which assess 10 clinical sub-scales (Butcher et al., 1989):
Hypochondriasis
Depression
Hysteria
Psychopathic deviate
Masculinity/Femininity
Paranoia
Psychasthenia
Schizophrenia
Hypomania
Social introversion
In addition to these 10 primary clinical scales, the MMPI-2 also contains three sub-scales to detect lying, defensiveness, and inconsistent responses.
It also features many additional content scales assessing specific cognitions, behaviors, physical experiences, and motivations, such as self-doubt, competitive drive, and gastrointestinal issues.
If you’re interested in administering this assessment yourself, you can order a copy of the test from the Pearson Assessments website.
2. Beck Anxiety Inventory
Another commonly used mental health assessment is the Beck Anxiety Inventory. This inventory is a brief self-report test used to assess the severity of symptoms of anxiety. It includes detailed scoring to help practitioners identify whether clients’ presenting symptoms of anxiety are within a normal range or severe and debilitating.
The scale comprises 21 common symptoms of anxiety. Examples include:
Hands trembling
Fear of dying
Hot/cold sweats
Respondents indicate the frequency with which each symptom has bothered them for the past month on a 4-point scale, where 0 is ‘not at all,’ and 3 is ‘severely – it bothered me a lot.’
Finally, a standard complement to the Beck Anxiety Inventory is the Beck Depression Inventory. Again, this inventory consists of 21 items and contains detailed scoring information to indicate whether symptoms are in a normal range or severe.
Respondents complete each item of the scale by selecting the statement that best reflects their current emotional state. For example, the first item and accompanying scoring are as follows:
0 – I do not feel sad.
1 – I feel sad.
2 – I am sad all the time, and I can’t snap out of it.
3 – I am so sad and unhappy that I can’t stand it.
If you’re interested, the Beck Depression Inventory with scoring information is freely available to download.
Beck's depression inventory - the depression test
Using tests for holistic mental health assessments
Regardless of which test you use, each can form part of a holistic mental assessment for clients that guides the design of subsequent therapeutic interventions.
To illustrate, consider this sample interpretive report following the administration of the MMPI-2 (Pearson Education, 2014).
The assessment results for this example patient, Karen, point toward a likely diagnosis of schizophrenia or major affective disorder as well as potential challenges in the therapeutic process. Namely, several of her responses suggest that she may possess little faith in her ability to improve her mental health and a lack of trust that may impact her relationship with a therapist.
It is subsequently suggested that she may benefit from minimal face-to-face contact and brief, periodic visits with a mental health professional.
Information such as this can form part of a holistic assessment, which monitors Karen’s ongoing engagement with therapeutic interventions (or lack thereof) and determines her likelihood of seeing positive improvements to her mental health.
It might even inform a therapist’s hypothesis that Karen could benefit from therapy of particular duration, such as solution-focused brief therapy, or specific modes of delivery, such as teletherapy or blended modes of treatment.
Next, we’ll consider some of these different delivery modes as well as blended technology’s uses for facilitating ongoing mental health assessment.
3 Types of Mental Health Tests
Although questionnaires typically serve as the basis for mental health assessment, the process can involve other types of tests, too.
Practitioners may use behavioral checklists, observations, interviews, or even physiological data to obtain information, depending on the circumstances (Goldstein et al., 2019).
For instance, they could watch a client’s interactions with others or evaluate their posture, facial expressions, or speech patterns. Lab tests or neuroimaging may also be used in more clinical settings.
Let’s look at examples of some of the most recognized non-questionnaire-based tests used in mental health settings.
Behavioral checklists – The Child Behavior Checklist
Behavioral checklists are standardized forms that ask observers—typically parents, teachers, or other caregivers—to score an individual’s behavior on a variety of predetermined items.
These checklists are particularly useful for evaluating children or people who might not be able to accurately self-report. They also facilitate consistent decision-making and long-term monitoring by converting subjective observations into quantifiable data.
The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), a well-known example, collects information from caregivers regarding children’s emotional and behavioral functioning in a variety of areas, including social withdrawal, aggression, and anxiety (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001).
Example items on the checklist include (Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment, n.d.):
Observational assessments involve watching a client’s behavior in a controlled environment, usually with the aid of pre-established coding schemes.
This approach records clients’ actions in real time, such as how they strike up a conversation, react to stimuli, or play, rather than depending on what they claim to experience and can be especially helpful for groups like young children or people who have trouble communicating.
One prominent example is the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), which guides the client through particular tasks to enable clinicians to observe social and communicative behaviors (Lord et al., 2000).
The gold standard for autism assessment, the ADOS involves completing a series of structured tasks taking between 30–60 minutes, each of which provides a series of opportunities for the subject to show social and communication behaviors relevant to the diagnosis of autism.
Example tasks, which vary depending on age, include:
Structured interviews are systematized tools that guide clinicians through a mental health assessment. To guarantee thoroughness and consistency across assessments, these interviews consist of pre-formulated questions or conversation prompts that adhere to diagnostic criteria found in manuals such as the DSM-5.
One of the most popular of these instruments is the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 (SCID-5; First et al., 2015). It simplifies difficult diagnostic choices into manageable modules that physicians can follow step-by-step.
Examples of prompts from the SCID-5 include (American Psychiatric Association Publishing, n.d.):
Alcohol use in the past 12 months to screen for substance use disorders
Experiences of persistent sadness and anxiety to screen for mood disorders
Social and occupational functioning, ranging from needing considerable external support to superior functioning in a wide range of activities
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3 Mental Health Assessment Tools Used By Professionals
So far, we’ve looked at the MMPI-2 and the Beck Inventories as examples of reliable and widely used psychological tests for assessing mental health. We’ve also considered how we might administer these tests efficiently as part of a one-off or ongoing assessment.
Let’s now consider three more freely available tests for assessing experiences reflective of one’s mental health.
But before we dive in, a quick note. These assessments are not designed to be self-administered. Rather, they should be administered by licensed practitioners and only within the bounds of your professional expertise.
Dissociation is a common characteristic of a range of mental health disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder (Hariri et al., 2015). Therefore, when clients show signs of dissociation, it may be wise to administer an assessment.
One widely used test assessing dissociation is the Brief Dissociative Experiences Scale.
This measure consists of eight items assessing the frequency with which a client has experienced various dissociative symptoms over the past seven days.
Example items from the scale are:
I find myself staring into space and thinking of nothing.
People, objects, or the world around me seem strange or unreal.
When I am alone, I talk out loud to myself.
All items are presented on 5-point scales, where 0 is ‘not at all,’ and 4 is ‘more than once a day.’
A full copy of the scale and scoring information can be downloaded from the American Psychiatric Association website.
Misophonia – Amsterdam Misophonia Scale
Misophonia is defined as
“a relatively unexplored chronic condition in which a person experiences autonomic arousal (analogous to an involuntary ‘fight-or-flight’ response) to certain innocuous or repetitive sounds such as chewing, pen clicking, and lip smacking.”
Edelstein et al., 2013
The experience of misophonia can compel someone to avoid situations that may trigger this autonomic arousal, potentially making it difficult to work and socialize. Misophonic experiences have the potential to negatively impact mental health and quality of life.
One tool for assessing the experience of misophonia is the Amsterdam Misophonia Scale (Schröder et al., 2013).
This scale comprises six items assessing different features of misophonic experiences, including their frequency and the extent to which they disrupt a patient’s day-to-day functioning.
Example items from the scale are:
How much of your time is occupied by misophonic sounds?
How much distress do the misophonic sounds cause you?
How much effort do you make to resist the (thoughts about the) misophonic sounds?
Intolerance of Uncertainty – Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale Short Form
The inability to tolerate uncertainty can have direct deleterious effects on mental wellbeing (Satici et al., 2022). Therefore, how a client tolerates uncertainty may sometimes be a relevant focus for assessment.
The Short Form Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale (Carleton et al., 2007) is one of the most commonly used scales for assessing uncertainty intolerance and its effects on mental health.
This scale consists of 12 items asking respondents to indicate the extent to which they agree with a list of statements.
Example items from the scale are:
Unforeseen events upset me greatly.
I can’t stand being taken by surprise.
The smallest doubt can stop me from acting.
All items are presented on 5-point scales, where 1 is ‘not at all characteristic of me,’ and 5 is ‘entirely characteristic of me.’
So far, we have explored some examples of tools to assess symptoms of specific mental health conditions.
However, there are also questions and exercises that may flag the potential need for these more specific diagnoses. This may require practitioners to ask a series of general therapy questions before diving in for a deeper analysis of specific symptoms.
To help, here are seven useful questions you might ask your clients early in the therapeutic process or session (adapted from Aidala et al., 2002).
Note that these questions could invite a combination of open-ended responses and numerical responses on Likert scales.
How have things been going for you in terms of your mood or feelings?
Were there any periods when you were very sad or depressed?
How about any times when you were very nervous, frightened, or worried about things?
Were there times when you were so active or hyper that you couldn’t slow down?
Depending on when symptoms of ill mental health started presenting (or in cases where an event triggered them), you may find it helpful to anchor the mental health questions in specific timeframes, such as in the following examples:
During the last month, was there a time when you had little interest or pleasure in doing things? If so, how often did you feel that way?
Over the last week, how often have you had trouble falling or staying asleep? What about sleeping too much?
In the last four weeks, have you had an anxiety attack (i.e., sudden feelings of fear or panic)?
In addition to the above questions, here are three worksheets that can support you in exploring your clients’ mental health.
1. Preventing Mental Health Relapse
When clients are undertaking therapy for mental health conditions, there are likely to be times when they fall back into old or unhelpful habits.
The Preventing Mental Health Relapse worksheet is designed to help your clients track the symptoms of mental illness, recognize early signs that they may be ‘relapsing’ (e.g., falling into a depressive spell), and plan adaptive strategies to help them cope.
2. Self-Care Checkup
Whether we have a mental illness or not, all of us need to take time out for ourselves to maintain good mental health.
The Self-Care Checkup worksheet lists a wide range of self-care activities and invites your clients to consider which ones they typically engage in. In doing so, the worksheet encourages clients to assess the frequency and quality of their self-care across the emotional, physical, social, professional, and spiritual domains of their life.
3. Understanding Mental Health Stigma
It is not uncommon for therapy clients to experience embarrassment or shame at needing support for their mental health. Likewise, others in their life may hold a stigmatizing view about mental illness or attending therapy.
The Understanding Mental Health Stigma worksheet explores some dangers of mental health stigma and makes recommendations for how we might reduce misunderstanding around mental illness. In particular, this worksheet may serve as a handy communication aid for clients looking to start a constructive conversation about mental health with others in their life.
3 Tools for Online Psychology Assessments
Given that psychological assessments are often a standard part of the diagnosis and treatment process for clients, clinicians must have effective methods for conducting them.
This process is now easier than ever before thanks to technology. It is now simpler to incorporate evidence-based tools into routine practice using a variety of online platforms that enable practitioners to swiftly and securely distribute, score, and interpret assessments.
Here are three examples below, each of which complies with HIPAA regulations, guaranteeing that private client data is completely safeguarded.
PARiConnect
PARiConnect is a leading digital platform for psychological assessment, widely adopted by clinicians for its speed, security, and usability. With more than 80 tests available, including numerous gold-standard tools, PARiConnect makes it easy for practitioners to administer, score, and interpret exams.
The platform provides flexible administration options to fit your workflow, whether you’re administering assessments in person, via email, or by entering responses from paper forms.
PsyPack
PsyPack is a comprehensive online psychometric testing tool made especially for mental health practitioners. With complete device compatibility and a vast library of standardized tests, the software enables practitioners to conduct tests remotely or in-clinic.
Its speed is its most notable feature; tests can be finished and reported on in less than two minutes, and it includes built-in graphing, outcome reporting, and automatic scoring.
Quenza
Quenza is a digital platform designed to help coaches and therapists extend their impact beyond the therapy room. Quenza allows professionals to provide clients with growth-oriented tasks, assessments, and customized exercises outside of sessions, which is where real change frequently occurs.
Features of the app include a library of pre-made science-based exercises, automated programs, customizable homework assignments, and a secure client portal.
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At PositivePsychology.com, we love exploring the nuances of psychological measurement. While this article focuses on mental health, it only scratches the surface of what’s available in the research.
For a deeper dive, explore our detailed reviews of assessments across a range of psychological concepts below.
If you’re looking for more tools to help assess your clients’ mental health and wellbeing, be sure to check out the following free assessment tools from our blog.
Perfectionist Beliefs ‘Flexibility’ Self-Assessment This short assessment presents a series of questions to help clients identify areas where their thinking is rigid and instances when they might benefit from relaxing perfectionist tendencies.
Self-Care Check-In This self-assessment uses ratings and reflection questions to help clients determine how they can better meet their self-care needs.
Thoughts and Feelings: Struggle or Acceptance? This 15-item questionnaire will help you quickly assess the extent to which a client adopts an attitude of acceptance when facing unavoidable discomfort and challenges.
Codependency Questionnaire This questionnaire, adapted from research, presents 20 statements assessing a client’s tendency to display symptoms of codependency.
It’s clear that assessment tools are critical for mental health professionals to do their work.
Thankfully, researchers and practitioners have designed a vast array of tools and tests to assess everything from the common experience of anxiety to the lesser known disturbances associated with misophonia.
Further, clinicians are becoming increasingly creative in their application of these tools. Rather than the standard pre/post-assessments that once dominated therapeutic practice, modern technologies are making it easier to conduct ongoing assessments involving repeated measurements across time.
If you’re a mental health practitioner, we hope this article has inspired you to consider how you might better use the tools at your disposal to assess your clients’ mental health.
And if it has, let us know what you’re planning to do differently in the comments. We’d love to hear from you.
What is the most widely used mental health assessment tool?
One of the most widely used mental health assessment tools is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2). This tool assesses various psychological conditions through a set of 567 true-false questions, measuring clinical scales like depression, paranoia, and social introversion.
What are mental health screening tools?
Mental health screening tools are standardized questionnaires or checklists used to identify signs of mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, or PTSD. They help clinicians diagnose and plan treatment strategies.
What are the tools used to assess mental status?
Common tools for assessing mental status include the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), each used to measure cognitive abilities, mood disorders, and overall psychological functioning.
Achenbach, T.M., & Rescorla, L.A. (2001). Manual for the ASEBA School-Age Forms & Profiles. University of Vermont, Research Center for Children, Youth, & Families.
Butcher, J. N., Dahlstrom, W. G., Graham, J. R., Tellegen, A., & Kaemmer, B. (1989). Manual for administration and scoring: MMPI-2. University of Minnesota Press.
Carleton, R. N., Norton, M. P. J., & Asmundson, G. J. (2007). Fearing the unknown: A short version of the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 21(1), 105–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2006.03.014
Edelstein, M., Brang, D., Rouw, R., & Ramachandran, V. S. (2013). Misophonia: Physiological investigations and case descriptions. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 296. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00296
First, M. B., Williams, J. B. W., Karg, R. S., & Spitzer, R. L. (2015). Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 Disorders, Clinician Version (SCID-5-CV). American Psychiatric Association Publishing.
Goldstein, G., Allen, D. N., & Deluca, J. (2019). Historical perspective. In G. Goldstein, D. N. Allen, D. N., & J. Deluca (Eds.), Handbook of psychological assessment (4th ed.). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-802203-0.00001-8
Hariri, A. G., Gulec, M. Y., Orengul, F. F. C., Sumbul, E. A., Elbay, R. Y., & Gulec, H. (2015). Dissociation in bipolar disorder: Relationships between clinical variables and childhood trauma. Journal of Affective Disorders, 184, 104–110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2015.05.023
Lord, C., Risi, S., Lambrecht, L., Cook, E. H., Leventhal, B. L., DiLavore, P. C., … & Rutter, M. (2000). The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule—Generic: A standard measure of social and communication deficits associated with the spectrum of autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 30, 205–223.
Rogers, R., Robinson, E. V., & Jackson, R. L. (2016). Forensic psychiatry and forensic psychology: Malingering and related response styles. In J. Payne-James & R. W. Byard (Eds.), Encyclopedia of forensic and legal medicine (2nd ed., pp. 627–633). Elsevier.
Satici, B., Saricali, M., Satici, S. A., & Griffiths, M. D. (2022). Intolerance of uncertainty and mental wellbeing: Serial mediation by rumination and fear of COVID-19. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 20(5), 2731–2742. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-020-00305-0
Nicole is a behavioral scientist and consultant based in Perth, Western Australia. Her research interests lie at the intersection between wellbeing, industrial psychology, and spirituality, and her work appears in several top business journals, including the Journal of Organizational Behavior. With a focus on harmonious work-life integration, Nicole’s work blends scientific knowledge with systems thinking to elevate individuals and transform work cultures.
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What our readers think
clive wilson
on July 29, 2024 at 05:40
I am a counselor and missionary in Colombia and with great joy I serve the people of that country who have great difficulties finding mental health and professional counselors. Your resources here are proving very handy for me to use in preparing myself for my next trip. Thank you so very much for making all this available here online.
Nicole Celestine, Ph.D.
on August 4, 2022 at 04:41
Hi Gisela,
You can find a directory of licensed therapists here (and note that you can change the country setting in the top-right corner). You’ll also find there are a range of filters to help you drill down to the type of support you need: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists
Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge with us. Love your resources and they are definitely will be utalised to make a difference in many who are needing care and support in improving their mental health well-being. All the best with your ongoing research. Take care and stay safe.
Assessment tools remain a cornerstone of many professions centering around the human mind.
Although questionnaires typically serve as the basis for mental health assessment, the process can involve other types of tests, too.
What our readers think
I am a counselor and missionary in Colombia and with great joy I serve the people of that country who have great difficulties finding mental health and professional counselors. Your resources here are proving very handy for me to use in preparing myself for my next trip. Thank you so very much for making all this available here online.
Clive Wilson
Need a professional mental evaluation with MRI for my son who was born with mental disability.
Hi Gisela,
You can find a directory of licensed therapists here (and note that you can change the country setting in the top-right corner). You’ll also find there are a range of filters to help you drill down to the type of support you need: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists
I hope this helps.
– Nicole | Community Manager
Hi Nicole,
Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge with us. Love your resources and they are definitely will be utalised to make a difference in many who are needing care and support in improving their mental health well-being. All the best with your ongoing research. Take care and stay safe.