This chapter highlights some important features of psychological work within the context of acute psychiatric services, specifically psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) settings. A psychological perspective offers a valuable opportunity for mental health professions to investigate the holistic experience of ward culture and patient treatment on such wards. This chapter explores some of the key roles of a clinical psychologist on a PICU, including offering psychological assessments, psychological therapy and management to patients and their families. A relational and developmental model is used, in line with object-relations theorists such as Winnicott and Casement. The chapter reflects on the role of psychologists in offering staff support and encouraging psychological safety on wards. It explores specific challenges to psychological work on acute wards will be explored, including working with the involuntary status of patients, and the complexity and risk to self and others inherent to presentations in acute settings.

The quality of psychological assessment processes in talent management is influenced by our choices about which measurement technologies to use. Technology with relevance to assessing talent is also advancing at great speed in many domains. These advances include processing power and speed, human computer interaction research, and machine learning and artificial intelligence. Given these rapid developments, it is an appropriate time to pause and take stock of how emerging assessment approaches (e.g., game-based assessment) that leverage these new developments are used, relative to more traditional approaches such as questionnaires and interviews. To achieve this objective, we report here on a survey of European assessment practitioners. We ask about the technology they use for psychological assessment, the constructs they measure with those approaches, and the levels of organisations they are used at. We also asked about how traditional approaches are being enhanced with technology and about practitioner perceptions of the reliability, validity and adverse impact and privacy of their technological choices.

Chapter 8 begins by pointing out the current lack of collective clarity about the role of psychological care providers (PCPs) and suggests that researchers and practitioners make collective effort to develop the role of PCPs in sex development in future. Meanwhile it outlines the psychological consultation process that is generic and familiar to most PCPs. The author provides an initial assessment template and summarizes the popular psychotherapeutic interventions. The template is visible in several of the practice vignettes in the ensuing chapters of the book. The author ends the chapter by arguing that the tertiary environment is set up for diagnostic workup and treatment and unsuitable for the kind of ongoing psychosocial input that is needed by individuals and families living in their communities. The author makes a case for PCPs in DSD centers to collaborate with peer support workers to enable nonspecialist providers in the community to contribute to ongoing support for individuals and families.

The egg donor or sperm donor plays a very important role in the reproductive medicine practice. The donor is both a patient and not a patient. He or she is a patient in that he/she must be taken care of both physically and psychologically. He or she is not a patient, in that the donor is not presenting for his/her own treatment. When the gamete donor enters the consultation room, the fertility counselor will be challenged in his/her many different roles and responsibilities which we will identify and discuss in the chapter. In addition, we will highlight key issues in how to prepare for and conduct the clinical interview, the usefulness of, and decision making, regarding psychological testing, how to ensure informed consent can be given, discuss the short- and long-term implications of gamete donation and zoom in on the experience of the gamete donor.

Psychological care is endorsed in DSD medicine. Psychosocial research has been on the increase. But these positive moves have not given psychological practice the kind of collective focus that is enjoyed by the biomedical disciplines. However, psychological care providers have a wide variety of thinking tools and practice techniques to draw on, if to work in an ad hoc way at times. These tools and techniques do not change, but some are more useful and relevant than others for this service context. In Chapter 7, the author discusses the strengths and weaknesses of key theoretical frameworks in healthcare psychology. A major weakness of the individualistic models is their lack of capacity to address structural inequalities in psychological wellness and distress. The author introduces aspects of the Power Threat Meaning Framework and describes how to draw from its theoretical richness to think systemically about what sex variations pose to individuals and families in the social context and how they are responded to. The Framework provides the theoretical backbone for some of the practice vignettes in the final section of the book (Chapters 9–14).

One of the earliest studies that focused on functioning in the Caribbean people was recorded in Edith Clarke’s book first published in 1957. This study used direct and participant observations in multiple Jamaican communities. Although this and earlier studies did not use standard psychological testing, they were among some of the first efforts to use systematic methods to observe functioning in Caribbean people. Since the mid-twentieth century, multiple studies conducted in the region have used tests and measures designed by researchers of European heritage for people of similar backgrounds who reside primarily from North America and Europe. Equally important is that such assessment tools are used in clinical as well as industrial and organizational contexts. While these tools have provided important information on Caribbean people’s functioning, their lack of attention to reliability and validity concerns for the Caribbean populations have made their findings somewhat questionable. This chapter addresses the historical use of psychological assessment in practice and research throughout the Caribbean region. Although to a lesser extent, it also focuses on contemporary use of psychological assessment tools in the Caribbean context.

Spain and Portugal share the territory of the Iberian Peninsula at the southwestern end of the European continent. They are two countries with remarkable similarities but also with marked peculiarities of their own. They form two of the oldest states in Europe and both experienced a period of splendor and glory during the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries, as a result of the great maritime expeditions undertaken, and the vast territories first explored by European countries. Both Spain and Portugal suffered an extended period of decline from the eighteenth century onwards, from which they have only been able to recover in the second half of the twentieth century. This historical evolution has strongly conditioned, as it could not be otherwise, the development of economic and scientific activities in both countries, which logically also applies to the use of psychological assessment instruments. This chapter briefly describes the evolution of psychological assessment techniques in Spain and Portugal, following a chronological order, paying greater attention to the early days, which are generally less well known, and identifying the most outstanding milestones or those that have had the greatest impact in the scientific field and in professional practice.

This chapter sets out to provide a comparative perspective on seemingly incompatible global agendas and efforts to include all children in the general school system, thus reducing exclusion. With an examination of the international testing culture and the politics of inclusion currently permeating national school reforms, this chapter intends to raise a critical and constructive discussion of these movements, which appear to support one another, yet simultaneously offer profound contradictions. The chapter will include a brief history of psychological testing in Central Africa and identify types of psychological tests in use in Central Africa as well as the issues and problems that arise when making use of such psychological tests at both national and local levels. It will shed light on new possibilities for educational improvements in global and local contexts.

Relatively speaking, the history of psychological testing in North America is brief but dense. Given the similarities in language and culture of Canada and the United States, it is not surprising that many events in the history of psychological testing were shared by the two countries. Progress in academic and professional realms readily crosses the border, helping to sustain a stable and mutually beneficial relationship. This chapter begins by describing milestone events in the shared history of these two countries that marked turning points in the development of instruments and testing practices. Activities by European scholars laid the foundation for further developments in North America. These activities are reviewed first, followed by discussions of events concerning the North American history of intellectual assessment, personality testing, and psychological testing used in employment contexts. Next, major impacts of the history of psychological testing in North American are described to demonstrate how they have helped to shape psychological testing in the larger international sphere.

The United Kingdom is more properly called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, where Great Britain includes the nations of Scotland, England, and Wales. In this chapter we will see that the development of psychological assessment as a science in the United Kingdom and more widely proceeded in parallel with and in interaction with the development of psychometrics as a set of measurement tools, which in turn was used to support a world view at that time which saw psychological differences as relatively fixed attributes that were only primarily changeable through genetic changes. We also track the development of assessment methods which were influenced strongly by the two World Wars. The greatest changes and developments in testing and assessment in the United Kingdom took place in occupational job selection and training settings before they had an impact on practice in clinical and educational assessment. As a consequence, this chapter focuses on the history of occupational assessment rather than on developments in the clinical and educational fields.

The history of psychology in general and of assessment in particular in the Nordic countries is not very well covered in the relevant international literature. The few articles and books one can find are mostly written in the respective native languages of these countries. The information in this chapter is taken mainly from K.H. Teigen (2015), with other information also coming from a number of articles and additional sources as cited. This chapter covers the history of assessment and its development in the Nordic countries with emphasis on Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, with some reference to Finland.

Psychological assessment is deemed one of the most crucial parts of the science of psychology, particularly its clinical branch, and has helped enhance its credibility to a great extent. Although a considerable number of psychological assessment movements have originated in North America and Europe, limiting the developmental aspects of ongoing research on assessment trends and techniques to the aforementioned regions, and disregarding the role of other regions in the further development of this branch seems unjust and irrational. Moreover, the growing tendencies in adopting a reductionist approach in natural science and overlooking the importance of cultural aspects over the past decades have damaged the true nature of psychological assessment. The role played by culture and other contextual variables in psychological research has been duly emphasized, to such a degree that any clinical or psychological decision making without taking these factors into consideration is faced with skepticism. In this chapter, we will examine the historical trends in psychological assessment in Central Asia (Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan) while discussing the scientific and research potential of its countries in expanding the field of psychological assessment.

China, Japan, and South Korea, as three representative countries in East Asia, all have their own historical and cultural traditions, but they are closely related. In particular, Chinese culture has a great influence on Japan and Korea. The history of psychological testing in East Asia can be traced back to the ancient Chinese talent selection system. For example, an important content of the system of selecting officials in ancient China, the imperial examinations not only penetrated the middle and late stages of Chinese feudal society but also had a particularly profound impact on the entire East Asian civilization. However, despite some similarities in culture, these three countries have maintained their own ways of living. In this chapter we discuss the histories of psychological assessment of the three countries.

Oceania comprises those islands scattered through the Pacific Ocean bounded by Australia and Papua New Guinea to the west, the Hawaiian Islands to the north, New Zealand to the south, and Easter Island to the east. Although there are many cultures and nations in Oceania, psychological assessment as practiced today developed mainly in Australia and New Zealand. The history of testing and assessment in the chapter on Oceania is thus a history of testing and assessment in Australia, in New Zealand, and in the islands that in the twentieth century fell into the sphere of influence of those two countries. The chapter on Oceania seeks to briefly sketch the development of testing and assessment, its successes, and its limitations.