Unit 7: Communication Skills

Tests of Mental Illness

Many of the tests commonly used for psychological screening of law enforcement candidates were originally developed to produce more exact information about people who were already known to have serious mental problems but whose precise diagnosis was not clear. If you are given a test which appears to have been designed for use with mentally ill people, that understanding will help you to interpret and answer questions appropriately. For instance, if a test asks, “Do you hear voices?” it is really asking if you have hallucinations; it is not asking if you have medical problems with your hearing. If a test asks, “Do you sometimes think that life is not worth living?” it is asking if you get depressed and suicidal, it is not asking how you feel about a situation in which a person is being kept alive in a coma like a vegetable or is in extreme pain and terminally ill. If a test asks, “Have you ever been in a mental hospital?” it is asking if you have been a patient, not if you have ever been a visitor. If you encounter a test originally designed to assess mental illness, interpret and answer questions from a mental illness perspective.