From three-hour interviews to three-minute assessments: How one psychologist transformed his practice with CAT-MH
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What if you could spot undiagnosed ADHD in a 40-year-old father who came in for marriage counseling? Dr. Jared Minkel did exactly that—and it changed his patient's life. But first, the backstory...
Dr. Jared Minkel runs a private practice in Rhode Island, specializing in behavioral sleep medicine. His days are filled with complex cases—patients dealing with depression, anxiety, insomnia, and medical comorbidities, often all at once. He offers both teletherapy and in-person sessions, letting patients choose what works best for them.
Like many clinicians, Dr. Minkel was stuck between two frustrating options: lengthy three-hour structured interviews that exhausted already-distressed patients, or basic questionnaires that barely scratched the surface of what was really going on.
Then a colleague — someone familiar with cutting-edge assessment options — introduced him to CAT-MH®. What happened next shows how the right assessment tool doesn't just save time; it transforms entire practices and changes lives.
Watch the full interview with Dr. Jared Minkel
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The assessment dilemma: Caught between thorough and practical
"People reach out when they're experiencing something negative," Dr. Minkel explains. "They really want help. And it can be really frustrating to come in and do this lengthy interview where most questions aren't even relevant to them."
The traditional gold standard—structured clinical interviews—could take three hours. Imagine being a patient in distress, finally working up the courage to seek help, only to spend your first session answering hundreds of questions that don't seem to relate to your problems.
But the alternative wasn't much better. Shorter screening tools measure symptoms, not diagnoses. "Some places I've worked, people mistake a high PHQ-9 score for evidence of major depressive disorder, which is not true and can lead you to make incorrect decisions," Dr. Minkel notes.
This distinction matters more than you might think. A high depression score could indicate major depressive disorder, but it could also signal someone dealing with postpartum depression, grief, or even an underlying condition like ADHD. Without diagnostic accuracy, clinicians risk missing the real issue entirely.
Dr. Minkel needed something that was both efficient and diagnostically accurate. CAT-MH® promised to deliver both—but he admits he was skeptical at first. "When I first heard of the research supporting CAT-MH®, I thought it might be too good to be true."
The science behind the solution
CAT-MH® uses sophisticated technology to deliver comprehensive mental health screening in just minutes. Instead of asking every patient the same lengthy list of questions, it adapts based on their responses, creating a personalized assessment experience.
The validation behind CAT-MH® impressed Dr. Minkel immediately. "There's no point using a measure that hasn't been validated, and this was validated with the best possible people. I'm very familiar with Michelle Craske at UCLA—she's one of the leaders in the field, and CAT-MH® partnered with them for a long time to really make sure this was performing well."
What sets CAT-MH® apart is its validation for both symptom severity and diagnostic accuracy—a crucial difference that many clinicians don't fully appreciate until they experience it firsthand.
Implementation: Transforming the intake process
For Dr. Minkel's private practice, CAT-MH® meant he could send assessments to patients before their first appointment. "When people show up for their first session, it's less frustrating for them," he says. "I can get a sense before people show up if they're even appropriate for me."
This pre-screening capability proved invaluable. If someone screened positive for psychotic symptoms, for example, Dr. Minkel could refer them to more appropriate care or have a deeper phone conversation before scheduling. It meant better matches between patients and providers from day one.
But the real breakthrough came when Dr. Minkel shifted his thinking about when to use CAT-MH®. "The best way to use CAT-MH® is to give it to everybody," he discovered. This universal screening approach gave him a comprehensive baseline for every patient, regardless of their presenting concerns. It also meant he could track progress over time with repeated measurements, something that traditional fixed questionnaires struggle with.
"If I want to follow somebody's depression over time, and they're repeating this over and over, it's a little different each time," Dr. Minkel explains. This variety matters more than most clinicians realize. When patients fill out the same nine-question depression scale repeatedly, they often stop thinking about each question individually. The adaptive nature of CAT-MH® keeps patients engaged and provides more valid measurements over time.
The comprehensive picture: Beyond depression and anxiety
One of CAT-MH®'s greatest strengths is its comprehensive coverage across nine mental health domains. For Dr. Minkel, this meant never missing critical areas that might otherwise be overlooked.
"I really like the suicide assessment," he says. "Sometimes therapists and patients can be in cahoots to not talk about it, and this just ensures you're definitely going to ask about it. They're going to report it in a way that's valid and engaging."
The substance use assessment proved equally valuable. "I don't always do a good job assessing drugs and alcohol, and I need to. CAT-MH® just ensures that you'll be asking those questions—how much alcohol do you drink, running through all the different drugs."
But perhaps most surprising was the ADHD component. "Having a validated measure of ADHD symptom severity is really important, and it's underappreciated in adult patients," Dr. Minkel notes. "A lot of people in their 40s and older didn't get assessed as children. They had it as children, but they didn't get assessed."
The breakthrough case: Hidden ADHD changes everything
Here's where Dr. Minkel's story becomes truly compelling. A man in his 40s with three children came to him primarily for marriage counseling. Standard practice might have focused solely on relationship dynamics and communication patterns.
But CAT-MH® flagged something unexpected: significant ADHD symptoms.
"He's always worked sort of a blue-collar helping profession," Dr. Minkel recalls. "I would not have thought to check for ADHD. It's not something that I routinely screen for, and it requires some specialized training."
The conversation that followed was revelatory. Drawing on his undergraduate experience working in an ADHD lab at Berkeley, Dr. Minkel described what it's like to grow up with undiagnosed ADHD. His patient's response was immediate and emotional: "Oh my God, yes, that was my experience. I didn't know."
Dr. Minkel referred the patient for neuropsychological testing to confirm the findings and connected him with specialists who could discuss medication options. The patient ultimately chose to try stimulant medication.
The transformation was remarkable. "It was really life-changing for him. He did better at work. He did better at home. It was kind of a missing piece of his life that he wouldn't have known."
This case haunted Dr. Minkel in the best possible way. "It makes me wonder how many people I missed before I started using this routinely."
The numbers were staggering. Dr. Minkel found ADHD symptoms in about a third of his patients—far more than the 5% or less he had expected. Each positive screen led to further evaluation, treatment discussions, and often life-changing outcomes.
Scaling beyond private practice: Research and university settings
Dr. Minkel's success with CAT-MH® extends far beyond his private practice. As Chief Science Officer at an AI-focused digital behavioral health startup, he discovered CAT-MH®'s power in research settings.
"A lot of times now you want to very quickly recruit a large number of people from all over the country," he explains. "You don't want to have to shuffle them to a trained clinician—it slows things down, you get increased dropout, and you get a less valid sample of the population."
By incorporating CAT-MH® into research protocols, Dr. Minkel could efficiently screen participants nationwide, gathering detailed psychiatric information that elevated his research "from kind of interesting to state-of-the-art." Whether studying how people with different mental health conditions use social media or exploring other behavioral health questions, CAT-MH® provided the comprehensive baseline data that made meaningful analysis possible.
At the University of Rhode Island, where Dr. Minkel has an affiliation with the doctoral program in clinical psychology, he's advocating for CAT-MH® in an even broader context: routine health services.
"This is not the mental health branch," he clarifies. "This is just anybody going in for anything—they don't feel well, they have a cold or flu, whatever. When we can get that routinely screened, we're getting a much better assessment of the entire student body, and we can catch things where they would have been missed in the past."
This universal screening approach in primary care settings represents CAT-MH®'s potential to transform mental health identification across healthcare. "I feel like it really belongs in primary care settings, emergency rooms—anywhere you don't have people with the expertise to do a three-hour interview," Dr. Minkel says.
The ripple effect: Changing standards of care
Dr. Minkel's experience with CAT-MH® has fundamentally changed how he thinks about mental health screening. "I feel like it should be the standard of care for mental health screening," he says. "It takes slightly longer than a PHQ-9, but it's about a million times better, and patients prefer it."
The patient experience matters more than many clinicians realize. "In my experience, at least anecdotally, they like doing something like that. They feel like the questions are better, more pointed. They're more likely to find what the person actually cares about."
Compare this to traditional screening: "The standard depression forms that they've done a million times—they're like, 'This means nothing,' and it just sort of goes off and they don't even know what happens with it."
The bottom line: Assessment that changes lives
Dr. Minkel's journey with CAT-MH® demonstrates what happens when assessment tools match the pace of modern healthcare without sacrificing accuracy. It's not just about efficiency—though completing comprehensive screening in minutes rather than hours matters enormously. It's about finding what was hidden, catching what might be missed, and giving clinicians the confidence that they're seeing the full picture.
For that father of three who came in for marriage counseling, comprehensive screening meant discovering a condition that had shaped his entire life. For Dr. Minkel, it meant never having to wonder again what he might be missing.
"You don't want to miss ADHD. You don't want to miss bipolar disorder. And you don't want to miss addiction or suicidality either," he reflects. "The diagnosis often really does matter."
In an era where mental health needs are growing faster than our ability to address them, tools like CAT-MH® don't just make clinicians more efficient—they make them more effective. And for patients struggling to find answers, that difference can be life-changing.
Ready to transform your mental health screening? Learn more about how CAT-MH® can help you deliver more accurate, efficient care.