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Assessments Hub

Welcome to the Assessments Hub! Explore some of the most commonly used mental health assessments available on Greenspace and learn more about why, how, and when to use them. If you ever have any additional questions, please reach out. Our implementation team is here to help.

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How to Choose Assessments

There is no right or wrong way to choose the mental health assessments you provide to clients. Many organizations have specific measures that are required for reporting, while others choose to assign a set of assessments to specific populations, programs, or groups.

What’s important is ensuring that the mental health assessments you choose are measuring what’s important to your client, so you can properly monitor and understand the challenges they’re facing.

Amber Childs Yale MBCC
350+ evidence-based assessments

The Greenspace platform has up to 350 assessments to choose from and we’ve included key information on some of our most commonly used assessments below. Looking for details on other assessments? Reach out anytime, we’re here to help!

Assessment Insights

Check out more than 40 Assessment Guides with information and insights on the most popular mental health assessments used on the Greenspace MBC Platform. Explore the categories below to find assessments you may be interested in learning more about.

Assessment Tips

1. Focusing on clinical value first is fundamental.

It’s vital to realize that data itself is not the end. It’s the process of exploring data and getting curious that makes MBC so valuable, and helps to engage clients in the process. Focusing on using assessments clinically is what leads to a higher therapeutic alliance and improved outcomes for people in care.

Assessment Tips

2. Present clients with a rationale.

If your clients have never used assessments before, it’s important that they understand the value they will provide in treatment. Having them be engaged in their treatment and giving them the tools to feel empowered in the care process will ultimately improve their likelihood of seeing positive improvement. It also ensures that you as their provider are tuned into their exact needs, so you can be on the same page throughout the course of treatment.

Assessment Tips

3. It’s about developing a shared language.

The data is just a jumping off point. Personal assessment results give clients a new way to learn about their own mental health, which can empower them to communicate and participate in ways they may not have been able to otherwise. Let the scores serve as a grounding tool for collaborative discussion with your client so you can develop a shared understanding of their experiences and work together throughout the care process.

Assessment Tips

4. Data scoring and interpretation is much simpler than it seems.

Working through this process in session with a client makes it easier to pick up on what the scores may be telling us. Initial ideas are great to bring up with your client, to explore the symptoms they’ve reported and have them add context to their responses, through their own thoughts, understanding and experiences.

Assessment Tips

5. You don’t have to be an expert.

You don’t need to know the in’s and out’s of every type of assessment to use them effectively. Decide with the client what you’re going to measure, in order to make sure you address all of the challenges they’re experiencing and what they say is important. What matters the most is getting curious about the scores they produce with the client, and using your clinical judgment to gather a better understanding of their unique experience.

Assessment Tips

6. Overall assessment(s) scores are helpful, but not as useful as digging into individual items with clients.

Two clients could have the same score on a PHQ-9 (or any assessment) but be experiencing completely different symptoms. This is why it’s important to breakdown the scores together and discuss their interpretation of assessment questions and the unique ways symptoms may be presenting for, or impacting, the client.

Assessment Tips

7. Practice, practice, practice.

Practice is the best way to build confidence in the process. For clinical leaders implementing MBC, consider running your clinics and clinicians through practice sessions using hypothetical client results (See the PHQ-9 Three Ways blog for an example of how to do this). Not only can they work on the interpretation together, but they can even work on how they will initially introduce the process to clients. This is one of the best ways to help your clinics and clinicians understand the value of MBC and how it can positively impact clinical discussions.

Assessment Tips

8. No prep necessarily needed!

You don’t have to have answers formed before you draw in your client to talk about it, you can discover them together. An interactive conversation in session can let your client see that you’re making sense of the measure in real time, based on their perspective. It can also be helpful for your process to have the client in the room to fill in any blanks or questions that might arise as you work through the scores. Talk out loud and draw in your client, using your discussion as a way of making the processing of a measure collaborative.

Assessment Tips

9. Choosing assessments.

The assessments you choose can vary depending on your programs and your clients individual needs. It can be helpful to choose a set of assessments across your clinic, so you can get a high-level view of your organization. You may also want to customize assessments to specific clients in order to address their unique needs. What matter is that you find the ones that work best for your practice and will offer you the most valuable insights, so you can better support the people you care for.

Assessment Tips

10. A little measurement goes a long way.

As Dr. Elizabeth Connors said, “A little measurement routine in psychotherapy can actually have a relatively big impact”. Measurement-Based Care is shown to promote faster symptom reduction, higher therapeutic alliance, and a greater overall improvement in patient outcomes. Greenspace makes it easy with customizable, automated delivery schedules and objective clinical insight dashboards.

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After introducing Greenspace to our clients, we found that they were empowered by the ability to track their own progress. I’ve learned that encouraging clients to participate in their own tracking provides additional self-awareness, which is key in the recovery process.

Naomi Richter

Director of Care

The Greenspace platform is intuitive, versatile, and frankly a game-changer when it comes to embracing measurement-based care. Their assessment repository is impressive, and the option to add new instruments reflects Greenspace’s interest in accommodating existing clinic preferences and workflows with minimal interruption.

Damion J. Grasso, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, CT Licensed Clinical Psychologist, UConn Health
Greenestone Centre for Recovery
therapist using assessments in treatment
Case Study: Greenestone

Using MBC to Empower Clients and Build Recovery Capital

GreeneStone Centre for Recovery demonstrates the profound impact that MBC has on people’s mental health and addiction recovery when used as a “self-empowerment” tool.

Learn More
Case Study: Homewood Health

Simplifying MBC for Clients & Service Providers

Homewood Health leverages MBC to streamline and simplify their data collection process, so they can better track client progress over time.

Learn More

Have Assessment Questions?

Categories
How should I approach discussing different types of assessment results with clients?

Dr. Amber Childs discusses her experience of sharing assessment results in an adolescent intensive outpatient program and how the results can help promote collaboration in session.

How do I introduce the measures to clients to get them to engage?

Dr. Jessica Barber explains the importance of explaining the value of MBC to clients at the start of treatment. Breaking down the measures and outlining the ways that they will be used collaboratively helps clients understand how MBC will benefit them and better engages them in the process.

This video was created through an educational partnership between Greenspace and the Yale Measurement-Based Care Collaborative. To view more content from our partnership, visit the Yale MBC Collaborative Knowledge Hub.

Can I practice MBC if I’m not familiar with many assessments?

Dr. Amber Childs explains that extensive knowledge of assessments is not important compared to the work you do to get curious, collaborate and discuss results together with clients.

What is the ideal frequency for assessments?

Most assessments have a recommended frequency set by the author, so that is always a good place to start when adding an assessment for a client. From there, you can decide to increase or decrease the frequency based on your clients specific needs. In the video below, Dr. Connors shares some insight into the current research and industry best practices around determining assessment frequency.

How do I practice using assessments with clients?

Dr. Jessica Barber shared with us an excellent exercise you can do with fellow clinicians to practice reading and getting curious about assessment scores. Try it for yourself:

This video was created through an educational partnership between Greenspace and the Yale Measurement-Based Care Collaborative. To view more content from our partnership, visit the Yale MBC Collaborative Knowledge Hub.

How vital is it to discuss assessment results in session with clients?

Dr. Elizabeth Connors shares the importance of using assessments to empower clients and foster shared decision making in treatment.

How can I talk to clients about shifts in their assessment results?

Dr. Elizabeth Connors offers some tips for discussing symptom score changes in session and how to make the most of the discussion with your client to help enhance therapeutic alliance and improve outcomes.

MEASUREMENT-BASED CARE

Interested in learning how Greenspace can simplify and enhance your measurement practice?

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Data used to monitor symptoms over time