This past week, while attending Missio Nexus, we were able to take in a workshop by Laura Mae Gardner, author of “Healthy, Resilient and Effective”
https://www.condeopress.com/products/healthy-resilient-and-effective
and Brent Lindquist, CEO of LinkCare
http://www.linkcare.org/staff/brent-lindquist/
Dr. Lindquist clearly explained that there were both legal and moral implications AGAINST using psychological screening, even though he pointed out that member care practitioners and counselors (like Laura and Brent) were some of the very outspoken proponents for this practice even 20 years ago. Bottom line: According to these experts, organizations using psychological screening as a part of the application process should take steps immediately to a) redefine what they want the testing to accomplish and, more than likely, b) stop the practice immediately. Brent even went so far as to apologize for introducing the term, “Member care.” He went on to explain that the term has become so broadly applied, yet so often misunderstood. The best he could do was recommend we start saying, “Missionary health.” But either way, he said more often than not, people were thinking of member care people as counselors. He would RATHER the definition be much bigger than that. He urged organizations to redefine what they meant by “member care” — and suggested that the definition focus around the kind of care that everyone in the organization could show to everyone else. He said there was still a place for professionals, but held that member care can’t be delegated to a single department.
Wow. That leaves me very confused about the practice as far as what are the legal and moral issues?
Even though I have extensive training in psychological testing, even the Rorschach, I have not found the time and effort to do it worth the trouble. When I was a new psychologist, it was a great way to put me into a mindset to do careful evaluations with my clients. So that was a benefit for both of us. I was just talking this past week with a rookie psychologist whom I had recently supervised. She was very anxious about the time and money needed to do military client evaluations that she may not get reimbursed for. I questioned her about the value of all the testing she wanted to do. Evaluation is an ongoing process for most psychological issues.
This article has left me confused as well… But looking back, I’m wondering if Psychological screening really ever identified many of the individuals who later crashed on the field – due to underlying issues. I wonder if observation of group interaction activities perhaps, could be a better way to spot potential issues? Rather than just “Dumping” this “It’s immoral and potentially illegal” to do screening, you really need to do more to help inform us. This post is woefully incomplete as a result. It’s just left us confused as to what to do. How about some immediate follow up!??!
Perhaps the best way to proceed is to contact Dr. Lindquist directly. He regularly visits organizations to provide member care assessments and coaching. He’d help sort this out for sure.
As he would be too busy or it would take him too long to visit all the organizations to explain it, could he explain his view on Brigada? This would be very helpful.