Quantitative needs assessment tools for people with mental health problems: a systematic scoping review.

Needs assessment in mental health is a complex and multifaceted process that involves different steps, from assessing mental health needs at the population or individual level to assessing the different needs of individuals or groups of people. This review focuses on quantitative needs assessment tools for people with mental health problems. Our aim was to find all possible tools that can be used to assess different needs within different populations, according to their diverse uses. A comprehensive literature search with the Boolean operators "Mental health" AND "Needs assessment" was conducted in the PubMed and PsychINFO electronic databases. The search was performed with the inclusion of all results without time or other limits. Only papers addressing quantitative studies on needs assessment in people with mental health problems were included. Additional articles were added through a review of previous review articles that focused on a narrower range of such needs and their assessment. Twenty-nine different need-assessment tools specifically designed for people with mental health problems were found. Some tools can only be used by professionals, some by patients, some even by caregivers, or a combination of all three. Within each recognized tool, there are different fields of needs, so they can be used for different purposes within the needs assessment process, according to the final research or clinical aims. The added value of this review is that the retrieved tools can be used for assessment at the individual level, research purposes or evaluation at the outcome level. Therefore, best needs assessment tool can be chosen based on the specific goals or focus of the related needs assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Current Psychology is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)