Workplace mental health assessment questions

Currently, the mainstream workplace mental health assessment questions are divided into three categories: clinical screening, career adaptation, and stress response. Different academic schools have very different emphasis on the questions. Ordinary workers do not need to use hundreds of professional normative questions for self-assessment. They can quickly judge their own mental state by completing 10-12 scenario-based core questions. There is no need to buy premium commercial assessments for so-called "professional reports."

Last week, I helped an HR friend from an Internet company select EAP service providers and collected seven or eight sets of assessment question banks from different organizations. After going through them, I discovered that the questions asked by organizations with different backgrounds were vastly different.

The first thing I got was the clinical screening version from the Municipal Mental Health Center. It was all behavioral questions without subjective judgments. It didn’t ask you vague questions like “Have you felt anxious recently?” They were all questions with clear behavioral references such as “In the past 14 days, have you been unable to fall asleep for more than an hour after lying down for more than 3 days?” “Have you rechecked confirmed work documents more than 3 times, or can’t control your worries about making mistakes?” This set of questions has the highest reliability and validity, but many corporate HRs are afraid to use it - if it turns out that a candidate has a tendency to be depressed or anxious, should they be hired or not? On the contrary, it is easy to step into the trap of employment risks, so most private enterprises will not use this set of assessments for school recruitment and social recruitment.

The most commonly used assessment by companies on the market today is the career adaptation version of the positive psychology school. The logic of the questions is completely opposite to that of the clinical school. It basically does not ask about negative status, but only questions pointing to professional characteristics: "Do you agree that 'as long as you work hard enough, you will definitely be able to complete the set KPIs'" "During department collective activities last week, you initiated several topic discussions" and "When encountering cross-department collaboration to blame others, do you prefer to look for your own problems first or clarify the boundaries of responsibilities first?" To put it bluntly, this kind of question does not test whether you are healthy or not, but whether you are in tune with the company's corporate culture. I have come across many complaints from colleagues who work in employee relations. This set of questions is essentially a "workplace fitness filter". If you answer "You don't agree that you can achieve your goals with hard work", you will be directly labeled as "insufficient in resilience", and whether you can advance to the next round is up for grabs.

Let me tell you something interesting. Last month, a kid who worked in content operations came to me to complain. He said that when he was interviewed by a leading content platform, he first took 200 evaluation questions. The final report said that he had "low risk tolerance and was not suitable for high-pressure positions." However, in his previous job, he had just completed three S-level projects and watched the content go online until the early morning every day for half a month without any collapse. To put it bluntly, he chose "not accepting meaningless overtime" when answering the question, and was directly given a low score by the system. It has nothing to do with mental health.

If you just want to test whether your current status is correct by yourself, there is no need to do those fancy business evaluations. I have been working with enterprise EAP services for 5 years and have sorted out some of the most accurate scenario questions. You can stop and answer them now, without scoring, just yes or no:

Last week, did you suddenly receive an emergency request for temporary get off work before getting off work? Your first reaction was not to think about how to dismantle the task, but to suddenly feel sick in your stomach?

Have you ever sat at your workstation and nothing bad happened, but suddenly you couldn't control your tears, and after wiping them, you had to raise your head quickly to avoid being seen by your colleagues next to you?

Have you ever spent more than two weeks in a row, lying at home for two days on the weekend, and still feel tired, and you can’t even get excited about your favorite activities like playing ball, watching TV shows, or eating with friends?

Have you ever rehearsed the report in your mind more than a dozen times before reporting to your boss? Even though you are fully prepared, you still can't help but worry that something will go wrong?

If your answer to more than two questions is "yes", don't believe the nonsense on the Internet that "you just have poor stress tolerance." Either go to a regular mental health center for a clinical evaluation, or give yourself a two-day holiday to lie down completely. Don't hold on until something goes wrong before you take it seriously.

Of course, don’t take the evaluation results too seriously. I have been in contact with a To B salesperson before. During the clinical screening, the anxiety score was almost twice as high as the critical value. When I asked, I found out that he had just changed his house and had a monthly payment of more than 30,000 yuan. It was indeed stressful, but his performance ranked among the top three in the department all year round. For him, that little anxiety was the driving force for him to run, and he did not need any intervention at all. After all, assessments are just tools, and your true feelings are the most accurate yardstick.

By the way, if you happen to feel a little bored now, stop scrolling on your phone, get up and go downstairs to buy a glass of iced sparkling water, and walk around the park twice. It is much more useful than worrying about the evaluation results.