What does mental illness look like?
Diagnosing mental illness is not as definitive as identifying a cancerous tumor. It is more like diagnosing diabetes - a matter of severity. To get a diagnosis of a mental health disorder, a person must have patterns of disruptions of thinking, behaviors, and/or moods to the degree that it has a significant negative impact on the their daily functioning and relationships.
An accurate diagnosis can be very helpful for a person or their family members to make sense of why they feel or do what they do. It can also help clinicians and doctors find the best treatments. At Wellspring, we work hard not to label people, because we believe that we are all on the spectrum of mental health versus mental illness, ranging from emotional athletes, to normal dysfunction, to severe patterns of dysfunction in need of professional support.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (n.d.) supports this spectrum notion, which estimates that one in five U.S. adults experience one or more mental illness annually. Furthermore, many of the individuals who could benefit from professional mental health services, do not receive the appropriate treatment due to under- or mis-diagnoses (Reeves et al., 2011). Therefore, it is important that individuals receive proper assessments to screen for potential mental health disorders.
Assessments are useful tools for mental health professionals to determine the extent of any mental health disorders affecting a person, to measure progress, and to develop appropriate treatment plans. There are various types of assessments used in therapy. Therapists use Screening Tests to identify if a person is experiencing a mental health disorder, such as the Beck’s Depression Inventory II (Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996) that evaluates the level of depression a client is experiencing. Second, Self-Reference assessments are tools aimed to track progress during counseling treatments. These can be questionnaires or quantitative measures used over time to track decreasing levels of negative behaviors, cognition, and/or emotions. Lastly, Inventory assessments are used to identify personality types. A commonly used inventory is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (The Myers and Briggs foundation, n.d.) to identify various characteristics of a person, including how a person is energized or how a person processes information.
The need for accurate assessments is important. Undiagnosed mental health disorders can be harmful not only to the individual, but to their loved ones. For example, a parent who has an undiagnosed Bipolar disorder may be excused by family and friends as a person with a ‘bad temper’. This is potentially harmful for the well-being of his or her children when the children experience the parent’s extreme behaviors (e.g., lashing out, punching walls, verbal abuse, etc.). Studies have shown that children growing up with such parents are in danger of developing mental health disorders themselves.
If you are curious, here are a few assessments for you to review.
Personality tests, such as the Enneagram
Contributing author Christopher Cheung, PhD, Wellspring Therapist
Contributing author Christopher Cheung, PhD, Wellspring Therapist
This week's episode:
Listen in as Tova Kreps, LCSW, and Chris Cheung, PhD, discuss how clinicians identify and assess mental illness.
References
Beck, A.T., Steer, R.A., & Brown, G. (1996). Beck Depression Inventory-II [Database record]. APA PsycTests. doi: 10.1037/t00742-000.
The Myers & Briggs Foundation (2014). Myers-Briggs type indicator. Retrieved on October 8, 2020, from http://www.myersbriggs.org/
National Alliance on Mental Illness (n.d.) Mental health conditions. Retrieved October 8, 2020, from https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-Conditions
Reeves, W.C., Strine, T.W., Pratt, L.A, Thompson, W., Ahluwalia, I., Dhingra, S.S., McKnight-Eily, L.R., Harrison, L., D’Angelo, D.V., Williams, L., Morrow, B., Gould, D., & Safran, M.A. (2011). Mental illness surveillance among adults in the United States. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 60, 1-30.