Author Description

Public and private entities are rapidly developing new methods for measuring and reviewing psychiatric care.methods that may not always reflect good research into the perspective of clinicians. Mental health providers and their patients are being held to new "criteria" in determinations of access to services. A wide range of clinical and policy issues are affected by the selection and application of psychiatric measures: eligibility determinations, outcomes assessment, pricing, and risk adjustment, as well as activities related to quality assurance and utilization review. This handbook responds to these challenges. It provides clinicians working in mental health or primary care settings with a compendium of the available rating scales, tests, and measures that may be useful for caring for patients with mental illnesses. Accompanying this handbook is a CD-ROM that includes complete copies of 108 measures discussed in the handbook--over 900 pages of measures. The CD-ROM also includes the complete, unabridged text, in fully searchable form.