PLEASE NOTE: This blog post dates back to December 2008.  All the questionnaires on this page, updated scoring details for the IES-R, the widely used Posttraumatic Cognitions Inventory, descriptions of how to do "reliving" of the trauma, written accounts, and site visits, as well as a series of other updated PTSD-relevant questionnaires and handouts are available on the relevant "Good knowledge" page of this website - "PTSD assessment, images, memories & assessment".  Also of relevance (particularly for child abuse) is the page "Life review, traumatic memories & therapeutic writing".

Here are the two main questionnaires currently used to assess Health Anxiety Disorder - the HAI and the HAQ.  The HAI is the one recommended by the NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) initiative.  I've also added a scale put together by Adrian Wells that assesses safety behaviours and extent of disease belief.  Finally there is a classic CBT thoughts record.  I don't use these kinds of records much any more, but I've added it for 'completeness'.

Health anxiety inventory (HAI) - the 18 item (short form) HAI is the disorder specific scale recommended by the IAPT initiative.  The third page of the download gives typical scores for a Health Anxiety group, a more general anxiety group, a control group, and so on.   

Health anxiety questionnaire (HAQ) - this 21 item health anxiety questionnaire yields four subscales, which can make it easier therapeutically to target specific behaviours like reassurance seeking.  The third page of the download gives some idea of likely scores in different disorders.

“

The data is friendly.

” - Anon

For many years my work split fairly evenly between helping people with psychological difficulties and helping people with pain problems.  Quite a few people were troubled with both.  In the last several years I have done much less work with pain, although I still see some people for overall pain management.  This has been partly because I was trying to keep up-to-date with too many fields, so stepping back from pain work made sense.  It has also been partly because the flourishing of research into happiness & wellbeing has fascinated me and taken up time.  Here are a collection of pain-associated assessment and information sheets that I accumulated over the years.  They are obviously relevant for work with pain, and some (e.g. one year symptom diary) can be adapted for work with stress & psychological difficulties. 

“ Wherever there is a ruin, there is hope for treasure ” - Rumi

Here are a series of information and assessment handouts on alcohol and food.  "We are what we eat" is bit over-simplified, but only a bit.  It's amazing how important what we eat and drink is for our psychological and physical health.  This site's blog posts  "New research shows diet's importance for preventing depression" and "Preventing cancer through life style choices" make this point well and also provide links with many other sources of information.  Searching the tag cloud brings up much recent relevant research and advice.  Try clicking, for example, on

Emotions, feelings & personality

“ God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. ” - Reinhold Niebhur (adapted)

Here are a series of questionnaires and handouts on couples, sexuality, parenting, attachment, and abuse.  The first sequence of 20 or so handouts are from a two day workshop I run - for more details including downloadable copies of the slides, see the blog post "Psychotherapy with couples & other close relationships".  Listed below these are further relevant handouts & questionnaires.

“ In good time we shall see God and his light, you say - Fool, you shall never see what you not see today! ” - Angelus Silesius

Here is a mixed bag of handouts and questionnaires.  Most are spin-offs from CBASP (pronounced 'seebasp') - the awkwardly named cognitive behavioral analysis system of psychotherapy.  There are also a few handouts which are adapted downloads from the neurosciences site "The brain from top to bottom".   When in 2000, Keller et al reported on the very impressive results obtained by treating chronic depression with a mixture of CBASP and antidepressants, it seemed likely that a big step forward had been taken in improving the lot of chronic depression sufferers.  The "CBASP research results" handout (below) gives the abstracts for 14 research papers that are both relevant to CBASP and also highlight other important related themes like th

“

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

” - Einstein

Depression assessment scales come in two basic forms - interviewer/clinician rated and sufferer/patient rated.  As stated in the background information on the IDS/QIDS questionnaires (see below) "There are several accepted clinician rated and patient self report measures of depressive symptoms. The most commonly used clinician rated scales are the 17, 21, 24, 28, and 31 item versions of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD) (Hamilton 1960, 1967), and the 10-item Montgomery-Asberg Scale (Montgomery and Asberg 1979). The most frequently used self-reports include the 13, and 21 item version of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) (Beck et al. 1961), the BDI-II (Beck et al. 1996), the Zung Depression Rating Scale (Zung 1965), the Carroll Rating Scale (CRS) (Carroll et al. 1981), and the Patient Health Questionnaire - 9 (PHQ-9) (Kroenke et al.

“

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

” - Anon

Here are a few handouts that I've put together over the years to provide background information about depression.  The development/maintenance diagram is probably the handout here that I use most - both to explain issues about depression and also for many other psychological disorders as well. 

“

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage

” - Lao Tzu

Here are a series of forms that I use almost every session with clients, or for screening and orientation at the start of therapy: