Admission and Emergency Assessments

Book excerpt: Admission and Emergency Assessments: A Handbook for Clinicians provides a conceptual framework and concrete practice examples to conduct effective assessments for mental health crises and psychiatric admissions. Behavioral health treatment starts with an accurate and thorough assessment of a client’s daily functioning, level of risk, and needs. This assessment serves as the clinician’s lens for conceptualizing the patient’s presentation and aptitude for expressing their problems. Through narrative descriptions, diagrams, and vignettes, this book provides the necessary tools to assess patients in behavioral health crises. It serves as a reference for specific clinical situations—from working with translators, busy doctors, and adversarial insurance agencies to assessing a variety of patient dispositions and demographics. This book seeks to elevate and accelerate clinical skills that can be integrated into other practice settings.