EEOC investigators, employers, people with mental disorders, and mental health care providers face the challenge of determining who with a mental disorder has a psychiatric disability under the law. The Status of Functional Assessment Questionnaires, interviewing techniques, and observational approaches have been developed to assess disability, and disability assessment has become a standard part of vocational and psychosocial rehabilitation services. Recent analyses have documented shortcomings of these disability assessment methods. Following a comprehensive review, one researcher concluded that no one instrument was wholly adequate for assessing functional impairments.
Most evaluations use relatively idiosyncratic methods of measuring role functioning.
What is needed is an easily administered, low-cost assessment tool that not only measures individuals' impairments and role functioning, but provides information that is directly relevant to treatment decisions. Similarly, expert reviewers of social functioning measures concluded that modest reliability and the lack of evaluation limit the usefulness of available assessment tools. Furthermore, they concluded, none is simple enough for routine clinical use. Needed are. . . Eligibility for these programs hinges on the inability to work.