Why use a screener?
Our anxiety and mental health screener assist in making decisions for best psychotherapy treatment approach to improve your mental health and wellbeing. Our psychologists explore a few common responses that we hear from individuals in the initial psychotherapy consultation. When clients are asked what brings you here today, often this results in the following responses:
> “Oh, I have been putting it off for some time now”
> “I thought it would get better”
> “the [main concern] comes and goes”
> “I thought I could do it on my own”
How can an anxiety or other mental health screener help when you’ve been putting seeing a psychologist?
Research indicates that most people will experience a mental health condition at some stage in their life, be it symptoms of anxiety, low mood, insomnia, excessive worry or even persistent fear of failure. As an ever so frequent result of hearing individuals commonly delaying psychological treatment for some time, at Positive Wellbeing Psychology we have introduced a completely separate service that allows the individual to complete a preliminary assessment process in the comfort of their own home and device.
What is the Positive Wellbeing Psychology Mini Mental Status Screener?
Our screening service will provide you with a summary of presenting symptoms that may be impacting your daily activities. Once you have completed the process, a registered psychologist will interpret your scores and provide recommendations on seeking support or strategies that may be useful, based on the level of severity of your health condition.
How can the anxiety and other mental health difficulties screener help me?
At Positive Wellbeing Psychology, we have introduced this service because our aim is to provide a stepping stone for individuals who may be on the fence and feeling uncertain as to if and when they should seek support from a qualified professional and what this support may actually represent based on evidence based findings.
What does the mini mental state screener include?
1. Carefully selected valid and reliable screening tools (1-2 screening tools) send via email to be completed from the comfort and confidential setting of your own home and device.2. Interpretation of the result read by a psychologist.3. Confirmation on the presenting difficulties and consequences of leaving this untreated.
4. Recommendations on next steps in terms of evidence-based treatment approach based on decades of clinical research.
What happens if my presenting concern requires more than a brief screener?
If by the chance, the individual’s presenting concern does not allow our psychologist to measure the result using a valid and reliable brief screening tool (e.g., relationship difficulties) then our recommendations will be based on the information the individual has provided (200-300 words required).
Research has indicated the following findings:
> Almost half (45%) Australians will experience a mental illness in their lifetime (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009).
> 54% of people with mental illness do not access any treatment (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2014).
> The proportion of people with mental illness accessing treatment is half that of people with physical disorders (Commonwealth of Australia, 2010).
> The onset of mental illness is typically around mid-to-late adolescence (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2014).
> Australian youth aged 18-24 years old have the highest prevalence of mental illness than any other age group.
> Around one in five (21.2%) of young people aged 15-19 years old met the criteria for a probable serious mental illness shown by the data from the 2014 Mission Australia’s Youth Survey (Ivancic, Perrens, Fildes, Perry, & Christensen, 2014)
> Anxiety disorders (14%) depressive disorders (6%) and substance use disorders (5%) are common mental illnesses in Australians (Kitchener & Jorm, 2009).
> Depression has high lifetime prevalence – one in seven Australians will experience depression in their lifetime (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009).
> The World Health Organisation estimates that depression will be the number one health concern in both the developed and developing nations by 2030 (World Health Organisation, 2008).
> Mood disorders are overall more prevalent among males in the 35-44 age group, while for women they are more prevalent in the 25-34 age group than for other age groups (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009).
> Women (7.1%) are more likely to report experiencing mood disorders, compared to men (5.3%) (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009)
For the full factsheet by the Black Dog Institute, read more here.
How Can Positive Wellbeing Psychology Help?
You may from our mini-mental health screener designed to assist you in understanding the benefits of seeking professional assistance and/or psychological support for certain difficulties and concerns. Complete the below Online Request for Mini-Mental Status Screener. You will receive an email confirming your request has been received and information on the next step.
To send an Online Enquiry for our Mini-Mental Status Screener, please fill in the below. We’ll be in touch with you via email shortly.
Our Australian Registered Psychologists will use a anxiety or mental health screener to assist in making recommendations for evidence-based psychotherapy approaches for your individual needs.