Journal Critique

In

Psychological
Assessment

Prof. Angelica Arimuhunan

Francisco, Ray Andrew

BS Psychology 3rd year
09/20/19
Formal Psychological Assessment in Evaluating
Depression: A New Methodology to Build Exhaustive
and Irredundant Adaptive Questionnaires
Author:

Francesca Serra,

Andrea Spoto,

Marta Ghisi, and Giulio Vidotto

Summary:

Psychological Assessment can be defined as a complex procedure of

information collection, analysis and processing. Formal Psychological
Assessment (FPA) tries to improve this procedure by providing a formal
framework to build assessment tools. In this paper, FPA is applied to
depression. Seven questionnaires widely used for the self-evaluation of
depression were selected. Diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder
were derived from the DSM-5, literature and Seligman’s and Beck’s theories.
A Boolean matrix was built, including 266 items from the questionnaires in the
rows and 20 selected attributes, obtained through diagnostic criteria
decomposition, in the columns. In the matrix, a 1 in a cell meant that the
corresponding item investigated the specific attribute. It was thus possible to
analyze the relationships between items and attributes and among items.
While none of the considered questionnaires could alone cover all the criteria
for the evaluation of depressive symptoms, we observed that a set of 30 items
contained the same information that was obtained redundantly with 266 items.
Another result highlighted by the matrix regards the relations among items.
FPA allows in-depth analysis of currently used questionnaires based on the
presence/absence of clinical elements. FPA allows for going beyond the mere
 score by differentiating the patients according to symptomatology.
Furthermore, it allows for computerized-adaptive assessment.

Relevance:

Depression nowadays is increasing over in short period of time, the study of

evaluating depression disorder with a proper construction of test and valid in different
criterion takes a big role in our society. Surely, that this study won’t have affect to
Psychological Assessment but for having a proper training for constructions of the
test has an effect in our society with different cultures and environment. This study,
carry a large role because in the issue involving depression and anxiety, even our
country has a high rate of major depressive disorder and suicide. According to 2015
data from the Global Burden of Disease Study, suicide rates in the Philippines are up
to 1.9 for females, 5.8 for males, and 3.8 for both sexes for every 100,000 of the
general population. Data from the same study in 2016 sheds light upon our mental
health problems: we have close to 9 million prevalent cases of mental, neurological,
and substance use disorders, 3.3 million of which are anxiety disorders, and 2.6
million of which are depression.

As for the study states that, The correct identification of depression during the
assessment phase is a critical issue. In general, the quality of the clinical evaluation
is always fundamental for diagnosis and treatment. An incorrect psychological
assessment may result in patients’ dissatisfaction and suffering. Depression has
many considered variable and it is important to us to determine how to approach it to
the client in the field of psychological assessment.

Personal Implication:

As a Psychology student, talking about depression, talking about anxiety and

suicides such a big deal in our era. Millennials , also known as generation Y is the
worst generation ever because people most likely teens nowadays are expose in
social media. Social media is one of the factor why people are depressed. And also
in our culture, family is a big factor why a person intend to consume his/her most of
the time in social media. Filipino culture has a toxic one. Like for example, your
parents expecting you to have a higher grade at school but didn’t support you in
terms of financial, emotional, and physical. They are expecting at you , and that’s all
they know. But they didn’t know what is your feeling, they didn’t know what happen
to you during in your school days and so on and so forth.

What I just really want to imply is , an issue about depression needs to take a
deep study to make a proper assessment not just for Filipinos but in every part of our
world. Mental illness is no different than our physical illness. So the study is good for
the field of psychology and as a student of psychological assessment.

Recommendation:

The assessment much more likely time consuming and needs a lot of time to
focus the evaluation. In my own opinion, minimizing the time is not that good idea,
but it is not also bad. What I am just saying is , mastering the assessment and tools
in particular case can minimize the time consummation so we can balance
monitoring the individuals behavior after the so called assessment.

Reference:

Francesca Serra, Andrea Spoto, Marta Ghisi, and Giulio Vidotto (2015)

Formal Psychological Assessment in Evaluating Depression: A New

Methodology to Build Exhaustive and Irredundant Adaptive Questionnaires.
Published online 2015 Apr 15
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4398546/