Experience from the Client’s Perspective
As a client, the overall experience filling out the client intake questionnaire was entirely was pleas. Within my personal experience filling out questionnaires in my life, this was a decent questionnaire, especially in collecting essential details required in therapy admission. Some of the good qualities of the questionnaire include the fact that the length was satisfactory as I was able to fill it out in one sitting and reveal adequate details about me. The language was quite simple and easy, making every question clear, in that no terms were requiring me to check their definitions from a dictionary.
All questions were precise, correct, and the phrasing of the questions also enhanced, also made me comfortable revealing intimate details about me to a stranger. This is, however, except for the question my spiritually, something that is quite vague in my mind, thus making it quite difficult for me to choose between either “Yes” or “No,” something that could have been resolved by providing more options or making the question open-ended.
Additionally, the balance between the open and close-ended questions played a key role in ensuring that they were both thorough and short. Complex questions have broken into filtered questions, enhancing the overall clarity of the questionnaire. The questions were organized and phrased logically, and it was clear that the objective was to collect essential details about my social, physical, and psychological well-being, thus making all the questions relevant. In general, from them the questions, it was clear that this was an analytical questionnaire, a critical tool for my therapist.
Given the quality and the evident effort applied in its construction, the paper would be pretty easy to navigate. I especially appreciated the alert that email is not a safe way to send confidential information, which reassured me that the therapist cared and understood the concept of confidentiality. The request for consent on whether I preferred receiving a massage was also valuable in reaffirming that I was in a safe space where I could be vulnerable.
However, there were various challenges in the process, something that I can attribute to the poor design of the questionnaire. The closed-ended questions were quite challenging due to the positioning of the “Yes” and “No” options, that is, the inconsistency of which one would be on the left or right. After filling out the questionnaires, I revised them and found that I have selected the wrong option. I had checked “No” on question one of the “Additional Information” section instead of checking “Yes” on my employment status.
I can attribute this to the questions of my family member’s mental health history, where the order of the “Yes” and “No” options were inverse. In addition to this, the questionnaire was relatively ineffective in helping me build a rapport with the therapist. Even though the questions were transparent and objective, they failed to make me feel safe to be vulnerable and reveal intimate details about me. One of the most contributors to this feeling is the lack of the statement reassuring me that I could leave out any point I was not comfortable revealing.
For example, I was uncomfortable indicating my relationship status, but it felt like a personal failing or rude to leave a question blank. I was also uncomfortable indicating my eating disorders, especially in written form, given that it is an issue I have not had a chance to disclose to anyone. This problem could have been resolved by indicating that I should fill out the details I was comfortable revealing and leave out the rest, something that would not determine whether I would be accepted into the therapy program or not (Labudda et al., 2020).
Experience from the HSW Perspective
From a human service worker perspective, I administer the questionnaire to my roommate, Zebulon P., who played the client’s role. He gave me the consent to discuss the nature of the answers he provided, as the answers he provided were fictitious and not based on his current well-being. I felt that the questionnaire quite effectively revealed all the necessary details about Zeb’s well-being and quite exhaustive. It felt like an interrogation due to the limit of the human connection between “the client” and me.
Additionally, I thought that the interview was quite comprehensive, given that all the questions were important and aimed at revealing essential details about the client’s well-being, which was consistent throughout our discussion. Unlike me, playing the client’s role, Zeb answered all the questions, revealing that the questionnaire was adequately structured. The language used was quite polite.
On the other hand, he made a subtle comment that “Some of these questions sound rude” after I asked about the frequency of his drug use. “I drink four cups of coffee every. Does that count?” This question led to a debate on whether we should consider coffee as a recreational or a mere stimulant drug. This revealed the vagueness of the question.
Zeb also complained that the language used in the questions was quite tricky, given that he has no background knowledge of psychology. Such words include psychotherapy and spirituality. He also asked the question, “What is obsessive-compulsive disorder? It sounds like something my sister has”. This experience made” my client” and I feel pretty uncomfortable.
However, I noticed various things needed to be rectified when I assessed the questionnaire from a therapist’s perspective. For example, the space provided for open-ended questions was too small to fit the client’s responses. This was quite evident when I asked him about his appetite problems, where he provided so many details that it was difficult to capture them accurately in the provided space. This is something I feel can be improved by delivering larger openings of the open-ended questions.
The use of a more intimate language could have been instrumental in enhancing the creation of a good rapport between the therapist and the client. This is an idea I derive from Zeb’s comment, “If I did not know you in real life, I would be having a harder time answering most of these questions,” he pointed out. “It feels like there is an impending consequence if I answer a question a certain way, for example, being admitted or rejected from the therapy program.”
The only source of human connection in this interview was the rapport that Zeb and I have, which is quite rare during the intake process but can be built later in the practitioner-client relationship. A more intimate language in the phrasing of the questions would make the client feel safe to be more vulnerable. One such technique is reassuring the client that there are no consequences attached to the answers they provide, even when they opt not to respond to a question.
From a therapist’s perspective, it is clear that the intake questionnaire’s rationale is to build a good rapport and the foundation of an excellent practitioner-client relationship. The client understands that the therapy program’s success relies on the relationship and the accuracy of the information, both on a conscious and unconscious level. They play a crucial role in enhancing the client’s ability to question their conscious perceptions, which is very important in therapy (Labudda et al., 2020). For example, by the middle of the interview, Zeb was questioning the consequences of him providing particular answers.
Client Intake Questionnaire Reflection Essay References
Labudda, K., Frauenheim, M., Miller, I., Schrecke, M., Brandt, C., & Bien, C. G. (2020). Outcome of CBT-based multimodal psychotherapy in patients with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures: A prospective naturalistic study. Epilepsy & Behavior, 106, 107029.
