UNZA Pharmacy Training Lecture notes

1. Clinical Assessment of Patients
with Behavioural Symptoms
Mrs J. M. Ncheka

2. What are Behavioural Symptoms?

3. • Psychological tests are used to assess patients
with behavioural problems.

4. Overview of Psychological Tests
• What are psychological test?
• Characteristics of a good test.
• Clinical uses
• Clinical judgement

5. • Objective measure for behaviour.
– Tests done in a uniform way
• Admnistration
• Scoring
• Interpretation
– Administrator does not use subjective judgement

6. • Designed to capture a representative sample
of behaviour that is of interest.

7. • They have been used in:
– Occupational therapy (Vocational guidance)
– Education (Identification of learning disorders)
– Clinical settings (as an adjunct to clinical decision
making)

8. What is a Good Test?
• It should be reliable (accuracy with which the
test measures a given characteristic)
• It should be valid (test measuring what it is
supposed to measure)

9. • Should have good norms
• Should be appropriate for the individual’s age,
cultural, linguistic and social background.

10. • Psychological tests are used to assess:
– Intelligence
– Achievement
– Personality
– Psychopathology
• Test batteries are also used to assess an
individual in a number of functional areas.

11. • Examples of the test battery

12. • International neurobehavioural test battery
• Also known as the Zambia neurobehavioural
test battery.

13. • Examples of psychological tests

14. Intelligence Tests
• Intelligence is defined as the ability to
understand abstract concepts, reason,
assimilate, recall, analyze, organize
information and meet the special needs of
new situations.

15. • Mental age (MA) reflects a person's level of
intellectual functioning (Alfred Binet)
• Chronological age (CA) is the person's actual
age in years.

16. • How do we calculate the Intelligence quotient
(IQ)
• IQ is the ratio of MA to CA times 100
– MA/CA x 100 = IQ.
• An IQ of 100 means that the person's mental
and chronological ages are equivalent.

17. • Wechsler intelligence tests
– General information, comprehension, similarities,
arithmetic, vocabulary, picture assembly and
completion, block design and object assembly.

18. Achievement Tests
• Achievement tests evaluate how well an
individual has mastered specific subject areas:
– Reading
– Mathematics.

19. • These tests are used for:
– Evaluation
– Career counseling in schools and industry.

20. • Personality Tests
– Used to evaluate psychopathology and personality
characteristics.

21. Summary