What Happens During A Counselling Assessment? A Clinical Psychology Podcast Episode.

Unless you’ve accessed mental health support before, you might not even know there’s such thing as a psychological or counselling assessment. And even if you’re aware of it, in my experience, it isn’t really until your postgraduate qualification that you learn about the role of a clinical psychologist in a psychological assessment. In an effort to breach this gap and help raise awareness of assessments, I want to share and reflect on my experiences of the counselling assessment I had for my specialist rape counselling. By the end of this brilliant and fascinating clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll understand what happens during a counselling assessment, what makes a good assessment versus a bad one and how you might want to use this knowledge in your own clinical practice in the future. If you enjoy learning about mental health, psychotherapy and counselling psychology then this will be a great episode for you.

Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Clinical Psychology Collection Volume 6: Thoughts On Mental Health, Psychotherapy and Abnormal Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

What Happens During A Counselling Assessment? Extract from Clinical Psychology Reflections Volume 6 (COPYRIGHT 2025 Connor Whiteley)

In the last reflection, I told you (rather passionately) why I love evening appointments in mental health services, and in this reflection, I want to talk about what actually happens in a counselling assessment.

I want to do this because I’ve had two now and they are very similar, and these are very standard within mental health services. Therefore, in case you ever have to do one or to give you a little bit of extra knowledge, I want to explain how counselling assessments work.

Of course, every mental health service will have slight differences, but this is for information purposes only based on my own experience as a client (and a clinical psychology Masters student at the time of writing).

What Happens During A Counselling Assessment?

My counselling assessment for the sexual assault counselling was done over Zoom at 7:30 in the evening (again it was very suitable and a great time for me) and I always have a problem getting onto Zoom, but I managed it.

As I mentioned in few reflections ago, being a well-rounded person is critical within clinical psychology, because the lovely lady who was doing my assessment told me something. She told me about her dogs and that she was working at home and a takeaway person was going to ring the doorbell at some point during our call for other people in the house.

This wasn’t her being unprofessional but it was her making it clear that her dogs would probably bark and she didn’t want to alarm me. And honestly, I found this short conversation very reassuring because it showed to me that she was a kind, normal person and she was a person who I could get along with. As well as it showed me that even though I had literally only said “hello” that she already had my best interests at heart.

I appreciated that fact a lot considering how nervous I had been about this counselling assessment.

Next she explained how the counselling assessment was going to work and how long it would last, and she asked me some questions about myself. For example, what Doctors am I registered at, am I living in Canterbury and just some more information about me.

Afterwards, we spoke about the counselling itself. This included information on what I was hoping to gain out of this counselling, my physiological and psychological symptoms and what my availability was.

Now as a client, this shows the power of being a well-rounded and likeable clinical psychologist. Since in my last counselling assessment for the university, when the woman doing it asked me questions I would give her the answer but I wouldn’t add context or additional information.

I didn’t want to do this because I didn’t like her. She was way too smiley, she interrupted and I didn’t have a natural rapport with her.

However, the lovely lady at the charity, I was very open with so I told her about the physiological symptoms, me being suicidal the other week and I gave her more context than I normally would. She appreciated this and as an aspiring clinical psychologist, I think this goes to show how important it is to just be friendly, respectful and open with the client.

And try to build that therapeutic alliance or those interpersonal skills as soon as possible.

Especially, because the lady was able to add information to my assessment forms that would help the counsellor in the future. I think one of the “extra” notes was something in the next section about “have I ever thought that being dead would be easier”. Now she asked on a Likert scale that I’ll talk about in a moment and because it was “only” for one day, on the scale, it wouldn’t be a lot but because I was honest and open with her she was able to add a note that would be useful for my future counsellor.

Furthermore, in this section, the lady asked me about past mental health, am I on any medication and those sort of general mental health questions. I am not on any medication but

I do have past mental health and past trauma.

Leading to an interesting discussion about why if I ever requested my notes, I would see “Not

For A Placement Counsellor” written on them. Since the charity has a handful of placement counsellors who want experience with sexual violence survivors, but the charity doesn’t allow these placement counsellors to help survivors with additional trauma.

This might sound harsh but I seriously understand it.

Due to, I am only speaking for myself here, but my child abuse and trauma directly impacted my sexual assault. And to be honest, if I wasn’t abused as kid then I never would have been sexually assaulted so they’re connected in that way. Yet they are connected through the mental health impact after the sexual assault too.

For example, the same sort of abusive and negative thoughts that popped up in my childhood popped up after my sexual assault. My mind tried to use my sexual assault as proof that everything my abusers “taught” me in my childhood was true and so on.

There is a massive connection and overlap, and as a client, I would prefer a fully-qualified counsellor with a LOT of experience to help me.

Even as an aspiring clinical psychologist, I seriously wouldn’t want someone like me as my first few cases.

Moving onto the final section of the counselling assessment, this is the section reserved for the mental health questionnaire. Now as psychology is a science, I am no stranger to questionnaires and I have made some questionnaires myself.

However, even I have to admit mental health questionnaires are almost funny at times because they are so cold and calculating that they miss so much nuance.

Although, my counselling assessment was a little messed up in this section because this week had been extremely weird in terms of my mental health. I wasn’t dealing with rape or sexual assault stuff this week because I was spending so much time dealing with being publicly and privately attacked by someone I know who has Dissociative Identity Disorder with psychotic features.

Even though I will admit that as soon as all that was dealt with the sexual violence stuff returned with a vengeance. Unfortunately, this was after my assessment was done.

Anyway, there were 34 questions in total and some of them she didn’t ask because I had already answered them in the other sections in response to other questions. As well as these were done as a Likert Scale ranging from “None Of The Time” to “Most of The Time” with “Often” and “Some of The Time” and “Occasionally” being in the middle.

In addition, the actual questionnaire has a timeframe of the past 7 days, but because of the weirdness of my week, the lady proposed the past 7 to 10 days which I wasn’t going to reject. 

I need the counselling way too much to not help myself.

For the rest of the counselling assessment, we went through the questions that asked how happiness, social functioning, suicidality, anxiety and a bunch of other domains of functioning too.

It was a good set of questions I admit and the lady did something I did appreciate.

She kept it fun.

She didn’t make it seem like a deep, depressing task that would ultimately decide my future, and if I didn’t answer something right it would be the end of the world.

No, instead she kept it light and fun and she worked with me as well. Due to let’s face it, in my mind, there is very little difference between “Often” and “Some of The Time” so sometimes me and her did need to think about certain answers because the “real” answer was between those two points but I needed to put something as my official answer.

And that ability and patience to work with me was important. I am really grateful that she wanted to do that with me because she could have easily made me feel uncomfortable and awkward so I could say random answers to get it over and done with.

Yet she didn’t.

She made me feel listened too, respected and she actually did some empowerment stuff without me or her even realising even now. She waited for me to give a response so I could make a real choice for the first time since my sexual assault.

And that feels amazing.

Now I’m realising that I actually made a choice for myself, that feels incredible and wonderful and I know for a precious few minutes, I don’t feel like a weak, pathetic victim (yes I realise that self-perception is something I need to work on in counselling).

Then we wrapped up with whether I had any questions for her now, next steps and she spoke about how if I needed support or had a major meltdown I could reach out to the helpline or the woman at the charity who referred me to the counselling department because she is my dedicated sexual violence worker.

Personally, I still think I should have been given some kind of resource or a Brief Psychological Intervention, especially as the waiting list could be three months long. But the charity is brilliant and I am happy with my experience.

On the whole, when it comes to counselling assessment, as an aspiring clinical psychologist, I’ve learnt that you need to be kind, respectful and patient with the client. Since they will be nervous, they will be scared and they will probably be feeling so disempowered about the world around them.

Therefore, if you can give them a positive experience using your good interpersonal skills that make them feel respected, listened to and cared about. Then even though this is not a counselling session, you are going to have an insanely positive impact on them.

I’ve had a good and a bad counselling assessment and after comparing the two in my head, I know the main difference is the person performing the assessment. You are the main factor that will impact the client’s experience.

Of course, the client has to want therapy, they want to have to change and improve their lives, and they have to want to work with the therapist. I know that.

However, if you don’t treat the client with respect, patience and you don’t empower them, like the first woman at my university. Then you might make them have a negative experience and that isn’t what we want.

It will happen at some point in your career, that’s normal and you can learn from the experience, but if you can nail it and make a client feel great and hopeful about the future. Then you already might have helped a client more than you could ever realise and it isn’t even the first counselling session yet.

I know it can happen from my own experience, so I have no doubt it can happen again and again and again.

I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode.

If you want to learn more, please check out:

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Have a great day.

Clinical Psychology Reference and Further Reading

Whiteley, C. (2025) Clinical Psychology Collection Volume 6: Thoughts On Mental Health, Psychotherapy and Abnormal Psychology. CGD Publishing. England.

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