Skilled feedback using the SASSI can engage the client's interest and give them a sense of being understood. The hypothetical profile can be examined as a joint exercise, with the client being encouraged to participate, to gainsay or contribute additional information.
With adolescent clients particularly, workers often find it hard work to get them to talk at all. The SASSI provides many, many hooks for open-ended conversations and opportunities to elicit examples of behaviours and to talk about feelings. It often happens that the client will be happy to write down or endorse in written form, an idea which they would have been hesitant to express verbally, and once the matter is raised in this way, the worker has permission to explore it with the client.
Clients who feel alienated, isolated and that no-one understands them, are often reassured to see themselves located along a continuum of normal psychological functioning.
