The Professional Counselor | Volume 13, Issue 3 202 Implications We found initial, possible support for a brief version of the OQ-45.2 for economically vulnerable individuals. The abbreviated 16-item OQ assessment derived from this research requires less time to complete while capturing an individual’s distress on substance use, interpersonal relationships, and symptom distress. A brief instrument can provide professional counselors with a snapshot of the client’s concerns, which can assist in monitoring a client’s level of psychological distress throughout treatment. In clinical settings, counselors can utilize this instrument to briefly assess at intake the baseline distress of their clients and use it as a guide or conversation starter for discussing client distress. For example, a counselor may ask that the client complete the brief OQ-16 instrument with the intake paperwork. In review of all paperwork, the counselor may note to the client, “I noticed that you indicated high distress with interpersonal relationships. Is that a place you would like to begin, or do you have another place you want to begin?” Further, we retained two critical items (i.e., Items 8 and 44) in the 18-item version of the OQ brief assessment, as psychological distress associated with economic vulnerability is linked to higher rates of suicide and homicide (Knifton & Inglis, 2020). Because of the clinical utility of this instrument, professional counselors may want to include those items to assess a client’s level of threat of harm to self or others. Dependent on the client’s answer to these critical items, professional counselors have a quick reference with which to intervene or focus the initial session to address safety. Therefore, the items of this assessment may possibly be used to start the initial dialogue regarding an individual’s psychological distress and/or suicidal intent; however, the assessment should not be used as the only tool or instrument to diagnose or treat psychological distress. We understand that these items can help professional counselors efficiently assess for suicidal or homicidal intent. Therefore, the counselor can opt to use the 16-item version and include an additional, more reliable assessment for measuring threat of harm to self and/or others. For example, counselors may opt to use an instrument such as the Ask Suicide-Screening Questions tool (Horowitz et al., 2012) to further evaluate suicidal intent. In our experience, when following up with study participants based on a score higher than 1 on a scale of 1–5, many participants indicated they felt that way in the past but no longer feel that way now. In our use of the OQ-45.2, we find that participants tend to answer these questions based on their entire life versus the time frame indicated in the assessment instructions (the past week [7 days]). Therefore, professional counselors should be clear that respondents should answer based on the past week, rather than “ever experienced.” When offering the assessment to clients, we recommend that the counselor highlight the time frame in the instructions or clearly communicate that time frame to the client before they complete the instrument to gain the most accurate data. Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research As with all research, results should be considered in light of limitations. The large study sample consisted of diverse individuals; however, the majority were women, and all individuals were from the southeast region of the United States, minimizing the generalizability of these findings. In addition, although findings indicate initial, possible support for a revised three-factor model consisting of 16 items, future studies are warranted to strengthen the validity of this abbreviated version of the OQ-45.2. We suggest that future researchers test the 16-item assessment through CFA with a similar population to confirm the current study’s findings. All respondents volunteered to participate in a 6-month study, which may indicate more motivation to improve or represent a population with distress responses different from those who were recruited but chose not to participate in the study. Additionally, study participants were actively recruited, and may have experienced less distress than a help-seeking sample.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDU5MTM1