Personality assessment

A personality assessment describes patterns — how a person characteristically responds under pressure, what they do with anger, how close they let people get, what they reach for when something goes wrong, and how stable those patterns have been across their life. It uses internationally validated instruments, and the instruments are the smaller half of it: the clinical interpretation is what turns a set of responses into something meaningful.

People come to it for very different reasons. Some have been given a word by a relative, a previous clinician or the internet and want to know what is actually going on. Some have watched the same difficulty repeat across three jobs or two marriages and want to understand the shape of it. Some are already in therapy and their psychologist has suggested it, because knowing how a person is built changes what kind of therapy is likely to help.

PHC is an assessment-first practice, and this assessment is often the one that makes the difference to what therapy is offered afterwards.

1. An initial session.We ask what has been going on, over what span of time, and what has made it a question now. If you have been given a diagnosis or a report before, bring it. Nothing is administered before this conversation.
2. A decision about what is warranted.Whether a personality assessment is the right instrument for the question, and what should sit alongside it — often emotional assessment and symptom screening, because mood and anxiety can look like character from the inside. You will not be given tests you do not need.
3. Administration and clinical interview.Structured instruments administered by a qualified clinical psychologist, alongside a clinical interview about history and pattern, because a response to an item means little without the life it sits in. Assessment sessions run about two hours for a child and about three hours for an adult. Where sessions are held daily an assessment is usually finished in about a week; more often it takes two to three weeks, and we do not recommend stretching it past three — the length depends on what the initial session found was warranted, and you are told before you come.
4. A written report.What was administered, the patterns it describes, how they tend to show up in work and in relationships, and what that suggests about the kind of therapeutic work likely to be useful. The report belongs to you. It is not sent to a family member, an employer or anyone else without your say-so. The report is with you in two to three weeks, depending on how complex the case is. The tests are scored and interpreted, the report is written, and Prof. Dr. Tahira Yousaf reviews and approves it before it is handed over.
5. A conversation about what follows.Where the finding points to therapy, DBT is often indicated for difficulty with emotional regulation and relationships, and CBT where patterns of thinking are doing the most damage. Which applies to you is decided from the assessment, not from a website.

Adults, and adolescents where it is clinically appropriate — patterns are still forming in adolescence and a good assessment says so rather than stamping a young person with a description they will carry.

It is not for settling a dispute, and it is not something PHC will do to someone on another person's request. If you are worried about a family member, that is a real and legitimate worry, but the route is a conversation about how to support them, not an assessment conducted about them.

It is also not the first thing that happens when someone is in acute distress. Where a person is in crisis, the crisis comes first and the assessment waits.

• Personality disorderswhat the diagnosis means and does not mean, and the therapies our clinicians are trained in.
• Bipolar disorderpsychological support alongside psychiatric care.

Both of those pages route here for assessment, and this page lists them back.

Confidentiality, session length and choosing your psychologist are answered in full in questions people ask before booking.