Emotional assessment and symptom screening

This is the assessment most people at PHC actually start with, and it is the one that makes assessment-first mean something rather than sounding like a slogan.

It is a structured clinical screening of emotional functioning and of the symptoms you have come in with — mood, anxiety, sleep, appetite, concentration, irritability, how you are managing at work or at school, and what has changed — using internationally validated instruments alongside a clinical interview with a qualified psychologist. Its purpose is not to hand you a label. Its purpose is to establish what is actually going on, and to decide which further tests, if any, are clinically warranted.

Screening of symptoms

Screening is the part that casts wider than the presenting complaint. Somebody arrives about sleep and the picture underneath is anxiety. Somebody arrives about a child's behaviour and the thing in the room is a parent who has been exhausted for two years. Somebody arrives certain they have one thing, and the screening finds something adjacent that nobody had looked at. That is not a failure of the person's self-knowledge — it is what a structured screening is for, because the loudest symptom is very often not the one driving it.

1. An initial session.We ask what has been going on, for how long, and what it is costing you. Nothing is administered before this conversation. If you have been given a diagnosis or a report before, bring it.
2. Structured screening.Internationally validated instruments covering emotional functioning and presenting symptoms, administered and interpreted by a qualified psychologist rather than handed over to fill in. Assessment sessions run about two hours for a child and about three hours for an adult. Where sessions are held daily an assessment is usually finished in about a week; more often it takes two to three weeks, and we do not recommend stretching it past three — you are told what to expect before you come.
3. A decision about what is warranted.This is the point of the whole thing. The screening determines which further assessment, if any, is clinically indicated — an IQ assessment, a learning and achievement assessment, a neurodevelopmental assessment, a personality assessment, or none. You will not be given tests you do not need, and you will not be sold a battery because a battery is more profitable.
4. A written summary of what was found.What was screened, what it indicates, and what is being recommended and why. It belongs to you, and it is not sent to anyone else without your say-so. The report is with you in two to three weeks, depending on how complex the case is. The tests are scored and interpreted, the report is written, and Prof. Dr. Tahira Yousaf reviews and approves it before it is handed over.
5. A psychologist matched to what that found.Psychologists at PHC are assigned on speciality, your presenting needs and clinical fit — never on who happens to be free. If the fit is not right, tell us and we will move you to someone else.

Nearly everybody, and that is the honest answer. Children, adolescents, adults and the elderly. If you cannot name what is wrong, this is the right place to arrive — not knowing is the normal starting position, and working it out is our job rather than something you have to have done before you contact us.

It is not the right first step when someone is in immediate danger. If that is where you or somebody else is today, there are faster routes than us and they are worth using first. Here is what to do →

And it is not a substitute for medical care. Where a presentation needs a psychiatric opinion, a physician or a hospital, the screening is often what makes that clear — and we will tell you plainly rather than beginning therapy around it.

Not sure whether this is us? Contact us anyway. We will tell you directly whether we can help, and refer you elsewhere if we cannot.

This is the default first assessment for most of what PHC works with. Each of these has a page of its own explaining what we do about it.

• Anxiety
• Depression
• OCD
• PTSD
• Panic attacks and panic disorder
• Social anxiety

These are six of the presentations this screening is used for at PHC, not all of them. See every condition we work with.