It’s now month 12 of a pandemic we hoped would be over quickly. Our lives and situations have changed in many ways. That’s why it may be worth taking a few moments to take a pulse on your mental health.

Today we’re sharing self-assessment tools that are used in psychotherapy for clients to gauge their mental health.

Has this mood been persisting for a while?

Generally practitioners ask clients to track their moods over a period of 2 weeks. This helps clients and their therapist to notice any concerning trends in moods. It also gives a sense of severity of mental health and mood symptoms.

Life is full of ups and downs and it’s normal and healthy to experience changes in our moods. This is how we react to life’s circumstances. But when a mood is persisting for more than two weeks without improvement, we start to ask whether it’s becoming chronic.

Self Assessment Tools

The two most common tools used in counselling practice to track clients moods are the GAD-7 and the PHQ-9 scoring tools.

GAD-7 for Anxiety (Click Here to View PDF from St. Michael's Hospital)

GAD-7 –This tool uses 7 simple questions asking individuals to rate whether there is anxiety in different areas of thoughts, physical and emotional life. Often practitioners will use this check-in when they begin with a client, then after some time they will re-score to see if anxiety has changed.

PHQ-9 Depression(Click Here to View PDF from Stanford University)

PHQ-9 –This tool uses 9 questions to rate moods or behaviours that may indicate chronic depression. Again, this is helpful for clients and their therapists to get a snapshot of how severe symptoms may be. It also helps with tracking long-term changes to moods.

How to use the tools.

These tools are meant to be used along with professional guidance to assess anxiety and depression. However, it may be helpful for your own reflection to be able to gauge severity of moods.

You could use these on a semi-regular basis to check-in with your own moods. This may be helpful over a long period of time to track any trends over the year such as seasonal changes to moods. This may help you and your practitioner as you work together to create strategies for your mental health.

If you would like to review your GAD-7 or PHQ-9 results with one of our therapists, we are here to help. You can book using our online booking system or by calling 705-300-0077.