Mental Health Assessments

Mental health assessment involves a number of steps. This is to ensure we are able to assess the mental illness, reach a diagnosis and develop a treatment plan with you. Below is an example of a typical assessment:

History taking: 

This involves taking a comprehensive history including history of presenting complaints, personal history as well as family history of mental illness.

Collateral history:

This is history from others. The could be GP or family members. This helps build up a picture of the present state of our clients.

Risk assessment: We will always carry out a risk assessment.

Mental state examination:

This involves specialist skills eliciting the current mental state that would lead to diagnostic formulation.

Formulation:

The main skill of a psychiatrist is to be able to develop a formulation. This involves biological, psychological and social factors. It is also dependant on predisposing , precipitating and perpetuating factors. This is what we try to achieve based on our assessment. This informs our diagnosis and treatment plan.

Diagnosis:

Following our assessment, we will try to arrive at a diagnosis. This is based on International Classification of Disease version 10 (ICD 10). We will always provide an ICD 10 code to your diagnosis, if that is applicable.

Treatment plan:

We will discuss your diagnosis and treatment plan during your consultation. We believe in informed decision making and will ensure we provide you with all the information needed to make a decision. We want you to be involved in developing your treatment plan. 

Correspondence:

We will send you in writing your assessment and treatment plan. This will be copied to your GP, with your consent. The is to ensure that our recommendations are followed through.

We will also send you written information about your illness and/or your medications if required.

Follow up:

This can be arranged  to see our psychiatrist as and when required. The process is similar to BOOK AN APPOINTMENT.

Prescriptions:

We can issue private prescriptions. These can be part of your consultation with Dr Agrawal. If you need private prescription outside of your consultation, there will be a fee for this.

Psychological interventions:

Dr Agrawal has been trained and has a Diploma in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Life Coaching.  He uses these techniques in assessment and treatment of his patients. If required, we are able to sign post to various psychological interventions that may be available.