Assessment in Health Psychology Clinical Practice

Assessment is a core psychological intervention competency for practitioner Health Psychologists. Assessment skills enable psychologists to gather useful information and, when combined with formulation, help us develop a collaborative, shared understanding of health-related problems and their influences and guide intervention planning for individuals, groups, communities or whole populations. This chapter presents a practical approach to one-to-one Health Psychology assessment in clinical practice settings, when offering psychological services to help people keep well or adjust to, cope with and manage acute or long-term health conditions. This chapter first describes the authors’ own experiences of clinical Health Psychology assessment and the need they perceived for some extra guidance. Using examples from a fictional case vignette, the chapter then presents an introductory guide to the integrative …