Mental Health of Care Recipients

The mental health of care recipients may be assessed directly if the psychologist has access to them, and the care recipients are capable of reporting their experiences.

When care recipients are incapable of providing accurate reports of their experience due to limited cognitive ability (e.g., small children, persons with dementia), the caregiver is typically asked to provide information as a knowledgeable informant. Caregivers for children and adults with some disabilities, dementia or severe mental illness are often asked to complete measures about the functioning of the care recipient, as the person who knows them and their behaviors best.

The following measures can be used by adult care recipients, or by their informants. (Child measures may need to be selected individually by the assessing psychologists depending on the child’s age and developmental stage and the problem being assessed.)

It may also become clear to the psychologist that an accurate appraisal of the care recipient’s status, behaviors and needs is necessary to help the caregiver make appropriate plans or adjust appropriately to the changed state of the care recipient. An example of a measure of care recipient functioning which is completed by the caregiver is the NeuroPsychiatric Inventory (NPI).

Depression

• Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CESD)
• Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS)
• Beck Depression Inventory (BDI)
• Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and (PHQ-2 / Prime-MD screen) 

Anxiety

• Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (GAI)
• The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI)

Grief and Complicated Grief

• Texas Revised Inventory of Grief (TRIG)
• Inventory of Complicated Grief (ICG)

Psychopathology - multiple domains

• NeuroPsychiatric Inventory (NPI)