To get started with effective treatment, the first step is participating in a thorough, mental health assessment. Beginning your treatment journey with a mental health assessment can ensure that you and your treating clinician have a clear understanding of the challenges at hand, any applicable diagnoses, and what treatment pathways will be most effective for addressing symptoms.
At the Center for Effective Therapy, we use the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (K-SADS) assessment, which is a gold-standard mental health assessment for children and adolescents. The K-SADS is an evidence-based psychological assessment that addresses social, emotional, and behavioral health concerns and that requires the participation of both the child and caregivers.
The assessment takes place over two days, the first day for caregivers to participate in a semi-structured interview with the clinician and to fill out clinical questionnaires, and the second day for the child to do the same thing independently.
The interviews serve as dedicated time for the assessing clinician to tailor a diagnostic interview to your family and child’s specific needs. Each interview starts off with screening questions about social, emotional and behavioral concerns, to narrow down the scope of what challenges need to be thoroughly addressed for your child. Some of the questions asked in this first section may not sound like your child, and other will be spot on. Our team reviews all the screening questions before diving deeper to ensure that we are investigating the presenting problems in a comprehensive manner. Following the initial screener, the rest of the semi-structured interview will be dedicated to collecting more information about the areas of concern that have been raised. The questions asked by the clinician are designed to get personal insight into challenges and determine if your child meets criteria for diagnoses. The interview also helps to understand the child’s insight to their own challenges and concerns, the relationship dynamics between family members, and the overall motivation to participate in treatment. All these factors become important to consider when determining what treatment approach will be most effective moving forward.
During the interview, caregivers and the child are asked separately to define what their “top problems” are with the guidance of a clinician. Having an open conversation about “top problems” helps the clinician gain insight to what caregivers' main concerns are for their child, and what the child’s own main concerns are. Sometimes the top problems will match up between family members, and other times they can be quite different. It’s important to get both perspectives, so we can tailor the treatment pathway to address the challenges that are most important to all members of the family.
Your clinician will also ask you to share your cultural background, your family’s relationship with mental health care, and any identity-related concerns that you may have. An open conversation about how your identity, race, and ethnicity have impacted your life experience can help your clinician consider these factors when thinking about diagnostics. Having open dialogue about identity and culture helps our clinical team provide culturally sensitive and responsive care that is tailored to your individual needs and that best fits with your families' values.
The questionnaires that you will fill out are selected carefully to screen for a variety of mental health concerns and to provide the assessing clinician with reliable data to use when formulating diagnostics after the assessment. Getting the questionnaires as an additional source of information can help the clinician understand how you and your child report the experience of their symptoms from different perspectives. It can also help the clinician determine the reliability of self-reports, since many of the questions asked in the interview will be addressed in some way on the questionnaires. Written questionnaires also provide an opportunity for kids to share things that they may not have been comfortable speaking out loud about. Clinicians review these questionnaires carefully and follow up diligently about any concerns reported. While some of the questionnaires used in children’s behavioral health could be vastly improved from a cultural sensitivity and identity lens, the field lags behind some common advancements, so these questionnaires are used to help inform diagnostic formulation and case conceptualization, but the challenges with these measures are acknowledged by our clinical team and considered a singular data point rather than a fully accurate portrayal of the presenting problems.
Following the assessment, our clinical team takes great care in reviewing all information from the interviews and questionnaires to diagnose the child appropriately, if applicable, and to decide on tailored treatment recommendations. Often, this process includes reviewing interview answers and questionnaires to look for consistency and discrepancies, consulting diagnostic manuals and evaluating diagnostic criteria, and even consulting with the clinical team at large to gain insight from other perspectives on treatment recommendations.
Through this case formulation process, the clinician will write a detailed report summarizing all the information from the assessment, the data from the questionnaires, any applicable diagnoses, and the individualized treatment recommendations. This report is provided at your feedback session, where caregivers have a chance to review the assessment results and what treatment will look like with the clinicians. As a result of the assessment, you will get a copy of this detailed report that is useful in communicating with pediatricians, other mental health care providers, and schools about your child’s needs and mental health profile. This report can also serve as a helpful reminder of how your child was presenting during a specific snapshot in time. Often, kids and teens will need mental health services, do better, and might need support again in the future. These reports can help document the challenges and provide helpful insight into the etiology of problems and the expected developmental trajectory they might take if unaddressed.
Want to learn more?
- Attend our FREE assessments webinar on July 25
- Read Assessment: My Child Needs Help! How Should I Get Started with Mental Health Care?
- Read Tips for Talking About Assessment: How to Discuss Mental Health with Your Child or Teen
- Contact us