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Question use in child mental health assessments and the challenges of listening to families
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Abstract
The mental health assessment is a fundamental aspect of clinical practice and central to this is the use of questions.
To investigate the frequency and type of questions utilised within a child mental health assessment.
The data consisted of 28 naturally occurring assessments from a UK child and adolescent mental health service. Data were analysed using quantitative and qualitative content analysis to determine frequencies and question type.
Results indicated a total of 9086 questions in 41 h across the 28 clinical encounters. This equated to a mean of 3.7 questions per minute. Four types of questions were identified; yes–no interrogatives, wh-prefaced questions, declarative questions and tag questions.
The current format of questioning may impede the opportunity for families to fully express their particular concerns and this has implications for service delivery and training.
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- Research Article
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- Creative Commons
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2015
Footnotes
Declaration of interest
None.
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