Measurement-Based Care in Mental Disorders

This innovative monograph introduces a measurement-based framework for effective treatment of patients with mood disorders, personality disorders, and schizophrenia. Rooted firmly in principles of pharmacotherapy and clinical psychometrics, the book’s signature diagram balances rating scale results and patient self-reported progress along three angles: therapeutic effects, adverse effects, and quality of life. The author’s choices of measures are brief, valid, widely used, and easy for clinicians to administer and patients to understand. But rather than being a mechanistic or an impersonal formula, this system is shown as a science-based means of fostering constructive collaboration between patient and therapist, leading to greater patient well-being.

Included in the coverage:

·         Negative mental health: the ordinary symptom-orientated mental disorders.

·         The basic diagram of personality dimensions.

·         Self-reported symptom scales within the basic diagram.

·         Clinician-administered symptom scales within the basic diagram.

·         The pharmacopsychometric triangle in measurement-based care.

·         Diagnostic rating scales.

Offering a medical level of precision to mental health, Measurement-Based Care in Mental Disorders should interest health care providers at all levels, particularly physicians and staff in primary care settings, and in psychiatric in- and outpatient clinics, including psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and social workers.

Per Bech received a medical degree from Copenhagen University in 1969. In 1972 he received a gold medal award from Århus University for his thesis on the dose-response relationship between cannabis (tetrahydrocannabinol) and various psychological measurements, including time experience and reaction time in simulated car driving. He completed a doctorate thesis (Dr.Med.Sci) at Copenhagen University on the clinical and psychometric validity of rating scales in depression and mania in 1981. He was appointed Professor of Psychiatry at Odense University in 1992 and in 2008 he was appointed Professor of Applied or Clinical Psychometrics at Copenhagen University. Since 1981 he has headed the Psychiatric Research Unit at The Mental Health Centre North Zealand in Hillerød (Capital Region of Denmark). He is an honorary member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA).