PSYCHLOPS is a new mental health outcome measure. It has been developed by a group of primary health-care professionals and therapists based at the Department of Primary Care and Public Health Sciences, King's College London.
The development of PSYCHLOPS was strongly influenced by Depression Alliance who provided a user perspective. Its roots lie in MYMOP which is a patient-generated outcome measure focussing primarily on physical problems. PSYCHLOPS has been approved by the Plain English Campaign and carries its 'Crystal Mark'.
PSYCHLOPS consists of three domains: Problems, Function and Wellbeing.
It is a hybrid measure, containing of both idiographic and nomothetic measures:
Problem domain (two questions): asks clients to describe the problems that trouble them most; these problems are then given a scoring.
Function domain (one question): asks clients to describe what they find hard to do as a result of their problem; this is scored
Wellbeing domain (one question): asks clients to score their wellbeing
PSYCHLOPS is a short one-page outcome measure designed to be a sensitive indicator of change, after therapy. It should be used as a before-and-after measure. In validation studies, it has proved a more sensitive indicator of change than commonly used 'nomothetic' instruments. In other words, if a client improves after therapy, this improvement is more likely to show up using PSYCHLOPS.
Because PSYCHLOPS only measures change in those individual items chosen by clients it cannot readily be used to compare the severity of psychological distress between individuals or groups. That is best done using standardised measures which ask the same questions to all clients.
If an instrument is needed which measures change in those issues of importance to the client, then PSYCHLOPS is the way to tap into these issues. It is ideally suited to situations where clients present with varied mental health issues which might not be adequately captured by standardised instruments.
Some changes have been made in PSYCHLOPS since its launch in 2004:
small changes in layout and introductory wording making it tidier and simpler to use
a ‘back page’ (page 2) which is not copyrighted and can be used by the therapist to record client information. It now also contains a summary of the scoring system
minor changes to the scoring system. See ‘Scoring guide’ below. The revised scoring generates a score of 0 – 5 for each question, resulting in a maximum score of 20. The Problem domain contributes a maximum possible score of 10, while the Function and Wellbeing domains each contribute a maximum of 5.
introduction of a ‘during therapy’ version of PSYCHLOPS. This version enables data to be captured during the course of therapy. Since the main function of PSYCHLOPS is to measure change, this new version enables change to be measured throughout the process of talking therapy without the requirement to have completed therapy before change can be measured
Finally, PSYCHLOPS Version 5 has been designed to be as future-proof as possible. It is our intention that this version will remain unchanged for 10 years.
user guide (HTML | Word document | PDF)
scoring guide (HTML | Word document | PDF)
publications (HTML | Word document | PDF)
the 'impacts' of PSYCHLOPS (HTML | Word document | PDF)
video of a short talk about PSYCHLOPS. This was talk that Mark, Clinical Senior Lecturer gave in the Department of General Practice and Primary Care, King's College London School of Medicine, on 5.xi.08. It provides a good, quick introduction to PSYCHLOPS.
PSYCHLOPS is currently copyright but there is no charge for reproduction on paper for researchers and charities. A small one-off charge is made to individuals and a larger one-off charge is made to NHS Trusts or other organisations who want to use PSYCHLOPS.
Specimen copies are available here for download in PDF format but may not be altered in any way.
Unlocked copies without the "specimen" label can be obtained from Marilyn Peters, Kings College London.
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