92604 Mental Health Assessment

Subject level: Postgraduate

Handbook description

This subject enables students to gain competence and confidence with appropriate assessment, monitoring, intervention and referral processes. The teaching and learning activities focus on the day-to-day realities of working with children, adolescents, adults and their families and assists students to integrate appropriate, age-specific interventions. It also provides students with the opportunity to explore and utilise specific activities and techniques in order to critically evaluate their practice, including structured methods to examine interpersonal communication and the opportunity to further enhance their ability to therapeutically engage with individuals and their families. A variety of consumer perspectives is reviewed in order to inform and assist students to examine their practice, and to implement any necessary modifications to the ways in which they relate to consumers, their families and the community in which they live. Contemporary models of professional development, such as mentorship and clinical supervision is also explored, and in conjunction with the above reflective practices, provides students with a set of strategies to critically examine their practice.

Subject objectives/outcomes

On successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:

1. critically examine a number of mental health assessment tools and techniques and their relevance for use with children, adolescents, adults and their families
2. develop skills in the identification and use of relevant mental health assessments in a range of mental health settings and contexts
3. demonstrate the ability to examine ethical and legal implications in the reporting and recording of assessment findings
4. explore various ways that the experience of mental health care may impact on the self
5. explore the use of self as a therapeutic agent and develop an awareness of the impact of self on others
6. reflect on the experience of self and others to develop a range of ongoing strategies to monitor and enhance learning and practice
7. demonstrate an understanding of the experience of consumers and develop strategies to work collaboratively in care and in the development of mental health policy and services.

Content

• Welcome and introduction to subject / overview of expectations / what is assessment
• The criminal justice system as a context for mental health practice
• Assessment considerations across the lifespan
• Introduction to reflective practices
• Introduction and overview of the work of the UTS mental health nursing professorial unit
• Discussion – should individual clinical supervision be compulsory for all mental health nurses?
• Clinical supervision/review — potential for improving mental health assessment and care
• Assessing responses to traumatic events
• Introduction to process recordings / use of Heron's six category intervention analysis
• Risk assessment in mental health
• Outcome measures in mental health: historical context / using standard measures to assess individuals and groups: opportunities of routine outcome measurement in mental health nursing
• Thinking – pervasive development disorders
• A critique of approaches to assessment of violence and suicidality (risk assessment: clinical vs actuarial)
• Consumer and carer perspectives in mental health assessment
• Children of parents with mental illness
• Review of subject and feedback