Mental Health Assessment: Adult Screening Tools

Mental health screening refers to the administration of a measure (typically self-report or interview) to offenders entering a criminal justice agency for the purposes of identifying those offenders who have a mental illness. Screening is necessary to ensure that appropriate interventions can be administered or referrals to community resources can be made. This topic is relevant to the field of criminal psychology because it reflects an intersection between clinical psychology (assessment of mental illness) and the criminal justice system (offender population). This entry focuses on mental health screening among adult offenders and describes (a) the purposes of mental health screening in various correctional settings, (b) characteristics of effective screening tools, (c) examples of promising screening tools, and (d) considerations for agencies administering these tools.

Purposes of ...

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