An intake is a clinical interview with a referred client who requests help with certain complaints to find out the client’s presenting problem and to get acquainted with the client. This allows for the building of a working relationship and is an important source for hypothesis building.

The intake categorizes the information about the client:

1. Problem
   This includes the presenting problem which consists of cognitive status complaints (1), emotional status complaints (2), suicidal ideation (3) and aggressive ideation (4).
2. Content
   This includes symptomatic evaluation which consists of developmental history (1), psychiatric history (2), alcohol- and substance history (3), medical history (4) and family medical and psychiatric history (5).
3. Context
   This includes psychosocial evaluation which consists of family history (1), educational and vocational history (2), criminal and legal history (3), social history (4), psychosexual history (5) and multicultural evaluation (6).
4. Behavioural observations via mental state evaluation
   This includes all behavioural observations during the intake which consists of appearance and behaviour (1), speech and language (2), mood and affect (3), thought processes and content (4), cognition (5) and prefrontal functioning (6).

The predisposing- (1), explanatory- (2), perpetuating- (3) and protective factors (4) need to be taken into account when assessing the complaints and the impaired functioning.

Recognizing patterns in behaviour and complaints in order to apply a classification system is called a classifying diagnosis. Cause-effect relationships and seeing a diagnosis as an individual theory is a descriptive diagnosis.

The presenting problem refers to determining in what way a client’s functioning is impaired. This includes whatever complaint the individual identifies as the reason for assessment. The symptomatic evaluation refers to the symptomatic and medical features of what may be impairing the client’s functioning.

Behavioural observations are added to the intake’s observations because self-report is limited (1), it adds information on complaints and personality (2), double-checks the information given by the client (3) and not observing deviations is informative too.

The mental status evaluation refers to a method of organizing clinical observations data.

Receptive language refers to language comprehension. Expressive language refers to the individual’s use of language. Mood refers to the current emotional state of an individual as reported by the individual. Affect refers to the observed emotional state of an individual. Mood can be incongruent with the situation and with the affect.

Hypotheses should be generated for all likely causes of impairments. One hypothesis always states that the individual’s functioning is normative and functional. This requires all impairments in functioning to be mapped. Impairment in functioning due to medical illness or substance-related disorders need to be ruled out.

There are several additional biases of an intake:

1. Availability heuristic
   This is the tendency to overuse information that is recent or striking.
2. Halo effect
   This is the tendency to observe one positive property and link other properties to create a general positive image.
3. Horn effect
   This is the tendency to observe one negative property and link other properties to create a general negative image.
4. Stereotyping
   This is the tendency to attribute the characteristics of a group to the person belonging to this group (e.g. race).