Strengths Assessment in Mental Health Services: A Systematic Review

Purpose: This study aims to review the development of strengths assessment in mental health services and evaluate the features of those newly developed strengths assessments. Method: A systematic literature review approach was adopted to identify relevant articles from September 2010 to August 2021. Results: The results reveals that 1) the Value in Action Inventory of Strengths is the most widely studied strengths assessment but contains shortcomings in the application of mental health services; 2) 12 strengths assessments have been newly developed, which demonstrated quantitative measure, brief questionnaire, and contextual consideration are the tendency of measure development; 3) domains of strengths assessments were categorized into individual strengths, environmental strengths, and interpersonal strengths, in which individual strengths was the most commonly focus; 4) strengths conceptualization and psychometric properties are two remained limitations of existing strengths assessments. Discussion: Developing a brief, quantitative, holistic, contextualized, recovery-oriented, psychometrically sound, and strengths-based assessment for people with mental illnesses is promising.