Often viewed as a solely negative phenomenon, stress is, in fact, an integral part of human life. Without the factors causing stress, people would not be able to develop coping mechanisms for preventing the development of neuroses and the related psychological issues (Thoits, 2010, 541). When going out of control, however, stress can cause major damage to a person’s mental and physical health. By conducting assessments designed specifically for evaluating stress levels in a patient, the latter can be isolated from the factors causing stress. The vagueness of the evaluation system and the lack of precision in terms of results assessment, however, beg the question whether psychological assessments can be trusted (Dawans, Kirschbaum & Heinrichs, 2011, 515). Because of the clichéd approach used in creating these test and the stock questions, which patients traditionally provide stock answers to, psychological assessments for stress evaluation should be used together with more advanced methods of defining psychological issues like the Trier Social Stress Test (Birkett, 2011, 3238). One of the most basic flaws that psychological assessments designed to define stress inpatients have, the inconsistency of measurement units, like the ones in the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory, makes the results interpretation process extremely complicated. More to the point, the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory omits or underestimates a number of stress factors that can be seen as major contributors to creating extremely stressful environment. True, it admittedly allows defining the major stress factors, yet their choice seems inconsequent. For example, the death of a spouse has been reasonably considered the factor of the greatest influence. The death of a child, which is obviously a nonetheless tragic event in the life of a person, has either been disregarded in the given test, or shoved under the category of the “death of close family member” and rated at 44 points. The death of a spouse, in its turn, has been rated at 100 points. Seeing how both events must be equally tragic, the veracity of the given test should be legitimately doubted. Therefore, it can be assumed that the given test can be used for defining whether a person’s life is stressful; however, the test may fail at defining the stage of depression that the person taking test may be at present. The Perceived Stress Scale, which is another method of evaluating the rates of stress in an individual, has basically the same flaws as the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory, being just as vague on the evaluation of the results. However, unlike the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory, which at least provides a numerical assessment of the results, the given test allows for choosing between such answers as “Never,” “Almost never,” “Sometimes,” “Fairly often” and “Often.” Thus, the recommendations provided for the patient sound even less distinct, and the assessment of the patient’s wellness becomes even less precise. In some way, the given test could be used as the means of evaluating the patient’s self-esteem, seeing how some of the questions are clearly related to the former’s self image. For example, such question as “In the last month, how often have you felt that things were going your way?” can be interpreted as the question whether the patient considers his-/herself successful and worthy. The tests under consideration are doubtlessly effective i