Many people have a great fear of mental health testing. This is often because there is no real scale for "normal" and it is very common to have unusual and even frightening thoughts on occasion. This is something that therapists understand, and they have tried to create tests that offer a scale, rather than a black and white determination. Here is a look at five of the tests they may use when diagnosing a patient:
Rorschach
This is one of the most well-known of all the tests that a psychologist will use. Inkblots of abstract shapes are shown to a subject, and they are asked to describe what they see. The themes, locations, and parts of the inkblot that are assessed are all used in determining if there is an issue worth exploring.
Meyers-Briggs
This is one of the most famous personality tests given. It gives an idea of the kind of learning and value that a person places on the world, and can be a clue in the kinds of treatment that will work best for them. Each person is given one of two personality types in four categories. These include Extrovert vs Introvert, Thinking vs Perceiving, Sensing vs Intuition, and Judging vs Perceiving.
IQ
Emotional, memory and intellectual capacity is all tested in a broad IQ test in a lot of situations. One of the main reasons for this is that there are different expectations for emotional and logical reasoning if a person is of very low IQ, and in some cases a person of very high intellectual IQ may be on a lower scale when it comes to emotion, and they may not be able to understand the importance of interpersonal dynamics in the lives of many others. A strong understanding of the whole picture gives a stronger idea of the level on which a person should function when they are emotionally healthy.
MMPI-2
This is a 567 question true or false test that is used to look for mental illnesses. It is commonly used to help diagnose symptoms of paranoia, hypomania, social introversion, masculinity/femininity, and psychopathology. It is not, however, an effective tool in dealing with healthy individuals who don't have true mental illnesses. As most mental illnesses are extreme versions of personality traits in otherwise healthy individuals, not everyone likes this test. They feel like it has a good chance of creating a number of false positives in regard to mental illness.
16PF
The 16PF test is a better way to understand someone without major mental illness in regard to their personality traits. The 16 traits they measure are warmth, reasoning, emotional stability, dominance, liveliness, rule-consciousness, social boldness, sensitivity, vigilance, abstractedness, privateness, apprehension, openness to change, self-reliance, perfectionism and tension. Each has a scale associated with them.
