Narrative therapy assessment tools

Mental health professionals use a variety of instruments to assess mental health and wellbeing. Common purposes for psychological testing include: screening for the presence or absence of common mental health conditions; making a formal diagnosis of a mental health condition; assessment of changes in symptom severity; and monitoring client outcomes across the course of therapy.

Screening measures are often questionnaires completed by clients. Screening tends are quick to administer but results are only indicative: if a positive result is found on a screening test then the screening test can be followed up by a more definitive test.

Diagnosis: Psychological assessment measures can support a qualified clinician in making a formal diagnosis of a mental health problem. Mental health assessment with the purpose of supporting a diagnosis can include the use of semi-structured diagnostic interviews and validated questionnaires. Second, the researcher codes these topic segments into one of three narrative processes. External narrative sequences are dominated by event description.

An account of a vacation itinerary would be an example of this narrative type. Internal narrative sequences focus upon emotional and experiential states. Finally, reflexive narrative sequences entail analysis and interpretation of events and internal reactions in order to understand their significance.

A n exploration of the meaning of relaxation in one's life would be classified as reflexive. For example, investigators have found that experiential therapists tend to shift discourse from external event descriptions toward internal and reflexive processes to promote self-exploration and meaning-making, while clients tend to shift into a more external process, to integrate their therapeutic insights into their daily life experiences. Likewise, narrative process assessment of various types of treatment could suggest what forms of client processing are associated with more favorable outcomes in different forms of therapy.

For example, prompting clients toward a external storytelling, communicating childhood events and experiences, seems to facilitate progress in psychodynamic therapy, whereas encouraging a more reflexive, interpretive style appears to promote more rapid gains in a cognitive treatment Angus et al. Angus, L. Schneider, P. The Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument. The Language Dynamics Group has provided The Narrative Language Measures NLM that are a set of tests that measures various dimensions of narrative language for the preschool and school age population.

These are great tools for screening, progress monitoring and intervention planning. Thanks for this post Rebecca. Your last two posts have really spoken to me as a therapist currently in a limited resources location:. My first two jobs was working as a therapist in a limited to no resources location so I think this has ingrained in me a way to find free resources and assessments. I have a list of free literacy assessments that I will be posting soon too, so keep your eye out.

Rebecca, this is awesome! Being in India and working for a NGO i have very limited resources. In fact I do not have any assessments either. This helps SO much.

I know first hand what it is like to work in a place with limited to no resources!!