The development of the various assessments has
partly been driven by three fundamental issues:

 

1.     
Case recognition in people with ID is difficult.
It is often the family members who know the person best, but they are not
always able to distinguish between behaviours that are result of intellectual
disability, and those that are signs and symptoms of mental disorder. As
mentioned earlier, this can lead to under-recognition of disorders such as
depression and anxiety.

 

2.     
Although most people with ID have language
limitations, many can provide crucial clinical information themselves,
particularly when their reporting is supported by that of a key informant.  Nothing can replace the insights of the person
themselves, so enhancing the quality of patient interviewing offers huge
potential benefits to the assessment process.

 

3.     
Many staff who work with the person have
in-depth knowledge and connection with the person and their family. This places
them in an excellent position to collect detailed symptom information. However,
they often have inadequate knowledge to enable them to do this as fully as they
might.

 

The PAS-ADD system has responded to the three
challenges by developing (to date) for assessments. These are:

 

1.     
The PAS-ADD clinical interview (Moss &
Friedlander, 2011).  This is the top
level assessment in this series, designed to maximise the ability of the person
with ID to undertake a clinical interview.

 

2.     
The Mini PAS-ADD (Moss, 2002), designed for
informant interviewing in relation to adults with intellectual disability

 

3.     
The Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment
Schedule (ChA-PAS) (Moss et al, 2007) has is a similar format to the Mini
PAS-ADD, but is extended to include ADHD and Conduct Disorder.

 

4.     
The PAS-ADD Checklist (Moss, 2002), designed for
non—trained users to enable them to make more informed judgements about the
presence of a possible mental disorder requiring further assessment.