What Matters to You?: How Systematic Idiographic Measurement May Help Make Primary Mental Health Services More Effective and Empowering for Adolescents

Abstract

This dissertation examines the effect and utility of implementing a systematic idiographic assessment approach, called Assert, in adolescent primary mental health services. Assert focuses primarily on administering one question to the adolescent: “What matters to you?” It thus elicits the three most important topics the adolescent wants to address in counseling. Assert may enhance adolescents’ sense of being able to influence their life circumstances and mental health, by allowing them more control of what is addressed in counseling, which might be especially valuable for adolescents. Guiding adolescents to act on their own behalf and follow their own values and interests—by helping them define their personal goals and supporting them in their process—could foster a positive autonomy development. The counselors who used Assert considered it a relatively small change to the services’ existing routines and while also providing more structure and continuity. The explicit and systematic follow-up of the adolescents’ needs could facilitate client-centered care, adapted to the dynamic and changing nature of mental health concerns among adolescents.