This document discusses various assessment aspects in counseling, including defining terms like assessment, intake, screening, psychological testing, diagnosis, and treatment planning. It covers elements of the intake process, mental status examination, psychological testing, and contracting in counseling. Specific topics covered include key elements of a counseling contract, counseling room considerations like seating arrangements and comfort/privacy, and the components and elements of intake, screening, and mental status examinations.

1. ASSESSMENT ASPECT IN COUNSELLING
FACILITATOR: OSORO M FREDRICK
Counselling Psychologist
0717268348/0728087101
thikacampus@kibco.ac.ke

2. • DEFINITION OF TERMS
Assessment
Intake
Screening
Psychological testing
Diagnosis
Treatment planning
Case formulation
MSE

3. ACTIVITY
1. List tools needed by a counselor prior to a
session

4. Contracting in Counselling
• Dale (2003:4) states that having a contract
with the client:
• “.. Means that you have given the client all the
information they need in order to decide
whether or not to work with you. This includes
your terms and conditions, and some
exploration of your working style.

5. KEY ELEMENTS OF A CONTRACT
• Confidentiality
• Fees
• Sessions
• Payment options
• Councelations
• Duration of Counselling

6. Counseling Room
• Comfortable
• Safe
• Spacious
• Quiet

7. • For practitioners working in a more regulated
organizational context, the counselling
workspace has been reported as a factor that
can influence the relationship between
counsellor and client, as well as session
outcomes (Iwai, Churchill, & Cummings,
1983).

8. • An early study by Mintz (1956) found that
participants in an “ugly room” were more
likely to complain of monotony, fatigue, and
headache, and showed irritability and
hostility.
• Summer (1974) also reported that hard,
impervious architectural design tends to
distance people from the environment and
from others.

9. SEATING
• Confrontational Seating: This is seating which is directly
opposite is regarded as being confrontational as eye
contact is direct. This can be threatening to the client. If
there is a desk or table between the chairs this can be an
additional barrier to effective communication.
• Cooperative Seating: Cooperative seating arrangement is a
seating arrangement with not too much distance between
two chairs. It allows both parties to mutually focus on what
is in front of them, usually at a table.
• Side by Side: Sitting ‘side by side’ but with some distance
between two chairs is conducive to private study tasks and
not counselling. Both parties are not in direct contact but
can be in contact should they wish.

10. • , Lecomte, Bernstein and Dumont (1981) found
an intermediate distance (127cm) between
counsellor and client chairs maximized
counsellor communications and client self-
disclosure.
• An interesting finding indicated that if clients
have some control over the furniture in
consulting rooms, e.g. moveable chairs, they
experience a high degree of comfort, autonomy
and equality

11. INTAKE
• This is the process of collecting important
information from the client such as :age ,marital
status, gender, education history,family history,
medical history ,

12. Client history
What is involved in the following?
• Biodata
• Family history
• Medical history

13. MSE
• Mental status examination involve the
following major categories:
(1) General Appearance,
(2) Emotions,
(3) Thoughts,
(4) Cognition,
(5) Judgment and Insight.

14. SCREENING
COMPONENT
i. Sensorium
ii. cognition
iii. Insight
iv. Judgment
v. Motor activity
vi. Speech
vii. Mood and affect
ELEMENT TO ASSESS
i. level and stability of consciousness
ii. Attention, concentration, memory
iii. Client's awareness and understanding of
illness and need for treatment
iv. Client's recognition of consequences of
actions
v. Body posture and movement, facial
expressions
vi. Quantity: talkative, expansive, paucity,
poverty (alogia)
vii. Affect: physician's objective observation of
patient's expressed emotional stateMood:
patient's subjective report of emotional
state

15. Psychological testing
• refers to the administration of psychological
tests. A psychological test is "an objective and
standardized measure of a sample of
behavior"

16. A psychological test
• is an instrument designed to measure
unobserved constructs, also known as latent
variables.

17. DIAGNOSIS
• This is the description of the presenting issues
in a deeper perspective. The diagnosis need to
capture the acquisition, perpetuation and
maintenance of psychological disturbance

18. TREATMENT PLAN
• This involve a set of predetermined activities
to be undertaken in intervention following
assessment ,conceptualization of client’s
issues and the most suitable models to be
used.
• It also indicates the goals to be achieved