A psychiatric intake form is a powerful tool to incorporate during the patient onboarding process. It offers a simple yet professional way to gather vital information before the first appointment such as the patient's background, life changes, and other vital information to help you plan your therapy sessions and future strategy.
In order to draft the ideal psychiatric/mental health intake form and collect all the necessary client information, the questions you include must be simple yet insightful and have a defined purpose. To help you create straightforward and effective intake forms, we will go over some of the main elements to cover.
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What Should a Psychiatric/Mental Health Intake Form Include?
While the specific questions you choose to include in your psychiatric/mental health intake forms may vary depending on your client and niche, the following elements should help as a guideline to make sure you don't miss any important detail.
Contact Information
The first section of your intake form should help you gather all necessary contact information. This includes the patient's full name, phone number, email address, billing address, and emergency contact information.
Expectations
Next, try to identify what your clients are looking to get out of therapy and why they are seeking help in the first place. Here are a couple of aspects to focus on:
- Main reasons for seeking psychiatric therapy.
- Experiences with mental health experts in the past (outcomes, reasons for ending the therapy, etc.)
- Goals for the therapy (build self-esteem, strengthen coping mechanisms, reduce anxiety, etc.)
- Any recent or important life changes that may be impacting their current situation.
Medical History
To complete your intake form, make sure to cover their medical and mental health history including past treatments, family background and any other elements you find appropriate to help you guide the patient accordingly. Try covering the following aspects in this section:
- Current prescription and non-prescription drug intake.
- Prior mental health diagnoses and treatment.
- History of emotional, physical, sexual abuse or substance addiction.
- The diagnoses and treatments of any family members who have suffered mental illness in the past.
Create the Perfect Patient Intake Form With Bonsai
With Bonsai's client form builder you can quickly draft your intake forms or any other documents needed for your practice and easily print or send them to your new patients via email or URL link on any device. Your patients can download and fill out the form online so you can view and store their answers to have them handy whenever you need them.
Our forms are completely customizable so you can add as many questions as you need, set up your preferred answer format (text, multiple choice, etc.), and incorporate your own branding elements.
Sign up for your 7-day free trial today to check out these and many more administrative tools Bonsai has to offer!
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