Points to Keep in Mind While Writing a Psychological Report
It is a common practice among professional psychologists to write psychological report after assessing a specific individual. Each individual needs psychological assessment for a distinct reason. Some people are required to submit the reports written by a qualified psychiatrist for employment, legal and education purposes, whereas others need psychological assessment to decide the mental health services required by them. With an increasing number of people suffering from mental illness, it has becomes common among practicing psychologist to compose and submit reports on a daily basis. If you are planning to pursue a career in practicing psychology, it becomes important to familiar yourself with the techniques of composing psychological assessment reports.
Details of the Patient and Assessment: When you are composing a psychological report, you have to start by listing the personal details of the patient along with the case number and date of assessment. The information related to assessment will be useful for filing and referencing of the report. The assessment date mentioned in the report will further make it easier to add future assessment reports and sort these reports in a proper order. You also have to mention name, address and contact numbers of the facility in this section.
Need for Psychological Evaluation: This section of the report will highlight the reason for psychological assessment. You have to clearly describe why patient was subjected to the thorough psychological assessment. The information included in the psychological report also needs to be effective in clearly explaining the specific incident or circumstances that required the mental health scanning of the concerned person. You can even include the background information and history of the patient as per your knowledge. The details will be helpful for future observers to understand the specific behaviour of the individual patients.
Procedure of Assessment: Most of the psychologists determine the psychological assessment methods by observing or interviewing the patient. At the same time, the patient sometimes goes through a series of psychological tests to measure his intelligence, IQ and behaviours. So the psychological report must contain the assessment procedure used by you. If you have used some of the well-established assessment procedures, the procedures can be simply listed by their names and other details. But the lesser known assessment procedures need to be described in a elaborate and more specific manner. You have to clearly mention why you choose an assessment procedure that deviates from the standard norms.
Professional Observations and Recommendations: The final section of the psychological assessment report has to include your observations and comments on the mental status of the patient. You have to clearly mention, if you observe the patient displayed any emotion during the assessment that deviates from the norm. Also, you have to list down the results of your assessment along with relevant values, diagrams and graphs. Further, the psychological report also needs to convey your recommendation based on the information and details gathered during the assessment process. If the assessment was conducted for prescriptive reasons, you have to clearly mention your findings to indicate further mental health services required by the patient.
Sunny Jacklin keeps track of the latest development in field of psychological assessment procedures and methods. He has contributed a number of articles and blogs on writing and evaluating the psychological report.
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