Question use in child mental health assessments and the challenges of listening to families

BackgroundThe mental health assessment is a fundamental aspect of clinical practice and central to this is the use of questions.AimsTo investigate the frequency and type of questions utilised within a child mental health assessment.MethodThe data consisted of 28 naturally occurring assessments from a UK child and adolescent mental health service. Data were analysed using quantitative and qualitative content analysis to determine frequencies and question type.ResultsResults indicated a total of 9086 questions in 41 h across the 28 clinical encounters. This equated to a mean of 3.7 questions per minute. Four types of questions were identified; yes–no interrogatives, wh-prefaced questions, declarative questions and tag questions.ConclusionsThe current format of questioning may impede the opportunity for families to fully express their particular concerns and this has implications for service delivery and training.

Download Full-text

Reliability and Construct Validity of a Child Self-Report Instrument

European Journal of Psychological Assessment ◽

10.1027/1015-5759/a000166 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 30 (1) ◽

pp. 40-47 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Rowella C. W. M. Kuijpers ◽

Roy Otten ◽

Ad A. Vermulst ◽

Rutger C. M. E. Engels

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Factor Structure ◽

Child Mental Health ◽

High Reliability ◽

Age Groups ◽

Health Assessment ◽

Self Report ◽

Primary School Children ◽

Mental Health Assessment ◽

Dsm Iv

Both clinicians and researchers agree on the value of self-report in child mental health assessment. The pictorial format of the computerized Dominic Interactive is an addition to the existing questionnaires, specifically concerning young children. Although prior studies on the Dominic Interactive reported favorable psychometric properties, the reliability was not always satisfactory for every scale, and no studies confirmed the proposed DSM-IV factor structure of the Dominic Interactive. This study examines these two psychometric aspects using a sample of 1,504 Dutch primary-school children aged 6–13 years. α was computed and compared with ω, an alternative index of reliability. CFA was conducted as was the measurement invariance at a configural, scalar, and metric level across both age and sex. The results showed that ω values were above .80, indicating good to high reliability for all scales. The DSM-IV factor structure was confirmed and proved to be identical across age groups and among both boys and girls in this sample. These findings lay the foundation for the meaningful use of the norms needed in clinical practice. They also contribute to the increasing value of the Dominic Interactive as a self-report instrument in child mental health screening.

Download Full-text

Responsibility inoculation: Constructing ‘good parent’ accounts when accessing child mental health services

Human Systems: Therapy, Culture and Attachments ◽

10.1177/2634404121999961 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 263440412199996

Author(s):

Michelle O’Reilly ◽

Nikki Kiyimba

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Child Mental Health ◽

Health Assessment ◽

Medical Intervention ◽

Best Interest ◽

Mental Health Assessment ◽

Health Assessments ◽

Discursive Positioning ◽

Normative Practices

With the prevalence of child mental health conditions rising, the role of the initial mental health assessment is crucial in determining need. Utilising a critical discursive analytic framework, we explored the ways in which parents during these mental health assessments constructed the child’s difficulties as medicalised and doctorable as opposed to systemic and familial. Through this discursive positioning, we examined the ways in which parents mitigated blame and accounted for the child’s behaviours and emotions. Parents engaged in three accounting practices to construct the child’s problems as dispositional and to mitigate against an alternative familial system interpretation. First, they drew upon normative cultural repertoires of parenting. Second, they mediated ways whereby normative practices were deviated from in the best interest of the child. Third, they rhetorically positioned overcoming systemic difficulties by illustrating cooperative parenting in separated families. Our findings have implications for how parents build a case for the need for medical intervention in assessment settings.

Download Full-text

‘I was just thinking’

Research on Children and Social Interaction ◽

10.1558/rcsi.17650 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Ian Hutchby ◽

Michelle O’Reilly ◽

Alison Drewett ◽

Victoria Stafford

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Conversation Analysis ◽

Cognitive Processing ◽

Child Mental Health ◽

Subjective Experience ◽

Health Assessment ◽

Health Issues ◽

Mental Health Assessment ◽

Mental Health Issues ◽

Health Assessments

Based on a corpus of child mental health assessment meetings, this article explores how practitioners use reports on their own cognitive processing, such as I was just thinking or I’m just wondering, in interaction with children and adolescents presenting with potential mental health issues. Using the methods of conversation analysis, the findings reveal different ways in which this device is used to encourage the child to engage with a particular topic, interpretation, or version of events from the standpoint of subjective experience; in other words, to produce feelings-talk. The analysis contributes further towards the understanding of child–adult interaction in professional arenas of action: in this case child mental health assessments.

Download Full-text