You are presently employed as a mental health counsellor
You are presently employed as a mental health counsellor within a community health setting in rural Canada.
Your funding has been cut for mental health services and your leadership team emphasizes “doing more with less.” Consequently, your colleague tells you their idea of creating their own mental health questionnaire for clients which will assess levels of depression, anxiety, and grief based on commonly presented symptoms. They have created their own scoring for each concept.
These three conditions are found within your provincial/territorial funding as the main priorities within your geographic area.
You begin to discuss using other assessments that are evidence-based, such as the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS), which your colleagues state is too frustrating for clients to complet and there are often discrepancies between client answers and symptom presentation.
Based on your knowledge from chapters 5 and 6 of assessment in counselling (Daniga c. Hays), how can you address this situation using concepts such as reliability, validity, and testing?
What are some of the challenges posed with a modified questionnaire as proposed by your colleague?