Quality Screening for Mental Health Care

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is John Bosworth. I'm a licensed mental health counselor in St. Pete, Florida. I'd like to talk to you a little bit about quality screening for mental health care. There's a many different ways that we can go about getting diagnosis or mental health screening, or psycho social, or mental health evaluations. Most of the time you would like to go to a licensed mental health professional, a licensed mental health counselor or a licensed clinical social worker. A clinical psychologist. But preferably somebody that specializes in psychometrics. And by psychometrics what I mean is there's usually a battery of tests or screening devices that the mental health professional will use in order to help get a, probably a more clear, broad picture of your personality, and if there are any types of depression or anxiety related issues. Some of the quick self-help kind of tools that you can use that are easily screened by a mental health professional are the Beck Depression inventory, the Reynolds Depression screener. There's the full scale instruments like the MMPI and the personality assessment inventory. Most professionals will give, and use, a broad range of instruments to get a better diagnostic picture, and to be able to give you a better diagnosis. Some of these, some of these testing instruments and some of the evaluations can be done on the community level, through community mental health care facilities. They can be done at universities if you're a student. They can be done on a private pay, through a private pay practitioner. And, but the most important thing is to find somebody qualified in psychometrics, and make sure that they give a pretty broad background, and use a couple different testing instruments in order to kind of clarify what might be the best course of treatment for you, if they happen to find any type of mental health problem or issue, that they think they can help out with. My name is John Bosworth, and we're looking at quality screening for mental health care."