Assignment: Read a selection of your colleagues' responses. Respond to at least two of your colleagues by comparing your assessment tool to theirs. APA Format with at least two references in each responses no more than five years old Response Post #1 Main Post - Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale Week 2 Discussion - Assessment and Diagnosis in Psychotherapy Main Post Assessment Tools It is paramount as health care professionals to be skillful in assessing clients to be able to diagnose, plan, and produce optimal care yielding full or partial recovery of the clients.  Various assessment and measuring tools are available for mental health providers to help measure illness, diagnose clients, and measure a client’s response to treatment that will help supplement data obtained from the clinical interview.  Though assessments usually span the entire treatment cycle, a thoughtfully constructed initial intake meeting can be a great tool to establish and reinforce the required therapeutic alliances between client and therapist, provide reassurance, ease anxiety, and enhance information gathering process required for an accurate diagnosis and suitable treatment plan (Wheeler, 2014).  Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale The Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) was developed in the sixties.  It is still one of the most popular behavioral rating scales/instruments use today by clinicians to quickly gather information about the possible presence and severity of various psychiatric symptoms and to assess changes in symptoms in response to medications (Zanello et al., 2013).  Originally, the BPRS was a 16-item scale, it was later extended to the standard 18-item version and currently expanded to a 24-item scale to measure additional aspects of schizophrenia symptoms thereby increasing its sensitivity to psychotic and affective disorders and to be used for patients living in the community (Shafer et al., 2017).  The 18-item BPRS assess the following symptoms: somatic concern, anxiety, emotional withdrawal, conceptual disorganization, guilt feelings, tension, mannerisms and posturing, grandiosity, depressive mood, hostility, suspiciousness, hallucinatory behavior, motor retardation, uncooperativeness, unusual thought content, blunted affect, excitement, and disorientation (Yee et al., 2017).  The manual of administration of the 24-item BPRS offers a more detailed semi-structured interview with more probe questions for each symptom, and providing supplementary rules for the rating (e.g., delusions) including a well-defined anchor point (Zanello et al., 2013).  The recent analysis of the 24-item BPRS produced a four-factor solution: Negative Symptoms, Positive Symptoms, Manic-hostility, and Anxiety–Depression (Zanello et al., 2013).  The current BPRS is rated on a seven-point Likert-type scale.  A rating of “1” indicates the absence of symptoms, ratings of “2–3” indicate “very mild” to “mild” symptoms that are considered to have nonpathological inte.

1. Assignment:
Read
a selection of your colleagues' responses.
Respond
to at least
two
of your colleagues by comparing your assessment tool to theirs.
APA Format with at least two references in each responses no
more than five years old
Response Post #1
Main Post - Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale
Week 2 Discussion - Assessment and Diagnosis in
Psychotherapy
Main Post
Assessment Tools
It is paramount as health care professionals to be skillful in
assessing clients to be able to diagnose, plan, and produce
optimal care yielding full or partial recovery of the clients.
Various assessment and measuring tools are available for
mental health providers to help measure illness, diagnose
clients, and measure a client’s response to treatment that will

2. help supplement data obtained from the clinical interview.
Though assessments usually span the entire treatment cycle, a
thoughtfully constructed initial intake meeting can be a great
tool to establish and reinforce the required therapeutic alliances
between client and therapist, provide reassurance, ease anxiety,
and enhance information gathering process required for an
accurate diagnosis and suitable treatment plan (Wheeler, 2014).
Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale
The Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) was developed in the
sixties. It is still one of the most popular behavioral rating
scales/instruments use today by clinicians to quickly gather
information about the possible presence and severity of various
psychiatric symptoms and to assess changes in symptoms in
response to medications (Zanello et al., 2013). Originally, the
BPRS was a 16-item scale, it was later extended to the standard
18-item version and currently expanded to a 24-item scale to
measure additional aspects of schizophrenia symptoms thereby
increasing its sensitivity to psychotic and affective disorders
and to be used for patients living in the community (Shafer et
al., 2017).
The 18-item BPRS assess the following symptoms: somatic
concern, anxiety, emotional withdrawal, conceptual
disorganization, guilt feelings, tension, mannerisms and
posturing, grandiosity, depressive mood, hostility,
suspiciousness, hallucinatory behavior, motor retardation,
uncooperativeness, unusual thought content, blunted affect,
excitement, and disorientation (Yee et al., 2017). The manual
of administration of the 24-item BPRS offers a more detailed
semi-structured interview with more probe questions for each
symptom, and providing supplementary rules for the rating
(e.g., delusions) including a well-defined anchor point (Zanello
et al., 2013). The recent analysis of the 24-item BPRS
produced a four-factor solution: Negative Symptoms, Positive

3. Symptoms, Manic-hostility, and Anxiety–Depression (Zanello et
al., 2013). The current BPRS is rated on a seven-point Likert-
type scale. A rating of “1” indicates the absence of symptoms,
ratings of “2–3” indicate “very mild” to “mild” symptoms that
are considered to have nonpathological intensity, and ratings of
“6–7” indicate “severe” or “extremely severe” symptoms
associated with significant distress or impairment (Zanello et
al., 2013).
The BPRS 18 has been studied extensively and has been proven
to be reliable, valid, and reliable in many languages such as
German, Portuguese, Dutch, based on score correlations with
other rating scales and longitudinal sensitivity to changes in
psychiatric symptoms (Yee et al., 2017). When the
psychometric properties of validity, sensitivity, and reliability
of BPRS were explored, various factor solutions were found due
to the heterogeneity of psychiatric diseases (Yee et al., 2017).
Clinicians/therapists must pay close attention to the clients
they interact with, instilling hope in them, making sure they are
comfortable, maintaining security, privacy, and safety to ensure
their return for follow-up care (Wheeler, 2014).
Response Post #2
Quality of Life in Depression Scale
According to Kennedy, Eisfeld, and Cooke (2001, p. 23),
the concept of quality of life serves to evaluate the efficacy of
treatment intervention from the patient’s perspective and how
they influence a person’s overall sense of well-being and
satisfaction with life. The theoretical foundation of the Quality
of Life in Depression Scale (QLDS) is that quality of life
derives from the patient’s own aptitude and capacity to fulfill

4. their individual needs (Kennedy et al. 2001, p. 25).
Psychometric Properties of QLDS
To create the QLDS, researchers conducted interviews
with patients who had active or recent depression treated by
psychotropic medication to discover how their depression
affected their quality of life (Tuynman-Qua, Jonghe, and
McKenna, 1997, p. 8). The interviewers extrapolated 75 general
statements from the interviews and eventually winnowed the
total number to 35 positive and negative statements about their
quality of life (Tuynman-Qua, Jonghe, and McKenna, 1997, p.
8). The respondents who complete the QLDS respond either
“true” or “not true” to these statements which include examples
such as, “I feel as if I am not in control of my life” and “I look
forward to things” (Tuynman-Qua, Jonghe, and McKenna, 1997,
p. 8).
Appropriate Utilization of QLDS
De Fruyt and Demyttenaere (2009, p. 214), discuss that
health is not merely defined or measured as the absence of
disease but a more holistic state of total well-being in the
realms of physical, mental, and social health. This
comprehensive understanding of health requires more than
objective metrics like diagnostic imaging and blood tests to
determine the absence of disease. Instead, implementation of a
questionnaire such as the QLDS serves to gather essential data
on the patient’s perception of their current state of well-being
(Tuynman-Qua, Jonghe, and McKenna, 1997, p. 12). Tuynman-
Qua, Jonghe, and McKenna (1997, p. 4), note that the presence
of objectively identifiable symptoms and disease correlates less
with health care utilization than the patient’s perception of
feeling unwell. Additionally, patient perception of effect on
well-being also correlates treatment compliance (Tuynman-Qua,
Jonghe, and McKenna, 1997, p. 12). Therefore, it is appropriate

5. to implement the QLDS before and after the implementation of
a psychopharmacological intervention to understand the
patient’s perception of benefit from treatment on their overall
well-being
The QLDS is appropriate for use to evaluate the efficacy
of psychopharmacologic medications. Per Fruyt and
Demyttenaere (2009, p. 216), a Medline search for the
utilization of the QLDS in Antidepressant trials found eight
papers that used the QLDS. In one study on the efficacy of
treatment of Major Depression (MD) with duloxetine in 40 to
55-year-old women, the study utilized the QLDS to capture the
patient-perceived quality of life pre and post-treatment (Burt,
Wohlreich, Mallinckrodt, Detke, Watkin, and Stewart, 2005, p.
345). The QLDS captured improved perception of quality of life
consistent with improvements seen in both clinician-rated scales
such as Hamilton Depression Scale and Clinician Global
Impression as well as the patient-rated Patient Global
Impression of Improvement Scale (Burt et al. 2005, p. 351).