Is anyone doing a psychlogy PhD? Does anyone use/know of an assessment for psychiatric symptoms that can be filled out by the participant rather than a clinical interview or to be filled out by a spouse/care giver? (as most of them are)

My suspervisor suggested the Neuropsychiatric Inventory, which is usually filled in by a care giver, but she seems to think it might be possible to use it as a self assessment. Has anyone heard of/or used it in this way?

For what psychiatric symptoms? For what conditions?

Most of the robust and psychometrically valid measures normally require a trained rater (either psychiatrist, psychologist or other mental health specialist from a clinical background). Thats why inventories like the SCID cannot be validly administered by just anyone.

The assessment is for people with Neuropsychiatric lupus. This can cause symptoms of psychosis but we're likely to have people with very mild symptoms if at all (hence we may leave this measure out). Other researchers in this area have used the Breif Psychatris Rating Scale, but this requires a clinical interview and I'm not qualified to do this, plus I don't have ethical approval to do one.

It depends what you want to measure? There are a large number of scales that can be filled out by the patient, depression scales, general health questionnaires, quality of life questionnaires etc etc etc

Sorry I've not been very clear here.
In my battery I have tests of depression, anxiety, quality of life, I need something to measure symptoms such as psychosis, mania, delusions, etc.

Hi Catlinbond,

you could try and look in the book "Measuring Disease" from Ann Bowling, Open University Press. This contains information on various scales, including psychiatric ones.

I fear that most assessments regarding areas like psychosis, mania etc probably will need a clinician to fill them in (as a typical symptom of a patient with psychosis / mania is the lack of insight). I think if they would be filled in by the patient to ones without symptoms would be able to fill them in, yet the "psychotic patients" would not!