Background and objective: Psychological skills are critical for high achievement and elite sports performance. However, there remains a lack of valid, reliable, and accessible instruments adapted to modern athletes. This highlights significant psychometric challenges in the existing tools currently available. While the Psychological Skills Inventory for Sport (PSIS-R5) is a commonly used tool in sports psychology worldwide, it has demonstrated various psychometric issues over time. A previous adaptation to the Latvian sports environment highlighted specific challenges in the Latvian context. It is important to note that these issues are not unique to the Latvian adaptation. A comprehensive review is necessary to address these broader psychometric concerns and ensure the instrument’s suitability for contemporary athletes, including those in Latvia. Moreover, the adaptation process may offer insights and methodological guidance for similar efforts in other cultural contexts. The aims of this research were twofold: first, to review and adapt the PSIS-R5 for use in Latvia (PSIS-R5-L), ensuring its validity and reliability; and second, to assess the applicability of the PSIS-R5-L in elite sports settings by examining relationships between athletes’ achievement levels and psychological skills. Methods: A total of 444 Latvian athletes aged between 18–43 (M = 21.32; SD = 6.52) completed the PSIS-R5 inventory to assess their psychological skills. The PSIS-R5 was re-translated into Latvian language (PSIS-R5-L) using forward-backward translation. Additionally, five sports psychologists participated in the study, providing evaluations of elite athletes’ psychological skills using the PSIS-R5 inventory. Results: Series of Principal Components Analyses (PCA) were conducted to explore and validate the structure of the Latvian revisited adaptation of the PSIS-R5-L. As a result, a stable four-factor structure was obtained, consisting of 17 items with satisfactory fit indices (CFI = 0.968, RMSEA = 0.045 [90% CI: 0.034, 0.057], SRMR = 0.026). The findings indicate that the Latvian adapted PSIS-R5-L has appropriate psychometric properties, confirming its suitability for use in the Latvian sports environment. Comparisons between different athlete groups (elite, pre-elite, and amateur) revealed several correlations and statistically significant (p < 0.05) differences in psychological skills. Conclusions: The PSIS-R5-L is a psychometrically robust and practically valuable tool for assessing athletes’ psychological skills in Latvia. It offers coaches, sports psychologists, and practitioners an evidence-based instrument to evaluate and enhance mental skills across different athlete populations, supporting psychological preparation programs in both elite and amateur sports settings.

The main aim of this study was to evaluate the criterion validity and to estimate the cut-off score of the Depression scale (DS) and short Depression scale (DSs) for a new self-report measure – Latvian Clinical Personality Inventory (LCPI). Usefulness of DS and DSs for identifying patients with major depression were analysed based on psychometric analysis of data acquired from psychiatric inpatient sample with depressive disorder (n = 37) in comparison to randomised stratified community subsample (n = 176) selected from the overall test development sample (N = 888). The present study was carried within the framework of the National Research Program (BIOMEDICINE) 2014 – 2017 (sub-project Nr.5.8.2.). It was shown that all 24 item of DS show good to excellent discrimination power. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.97 for DS and 0.95 for DSs in test development sample. For DS, the optimal cut-off score was 26 points (sensitivity 95%, specificity 91%, and positive predicted value of 69%). For DSs, the optimal cut-off was 12 points (sensitivity 92%, specificity 89%, and positive predicted value 63%). DS and DSs of LCPI is proved to have good criterion validity in detecting depression and to be a reliable and valid instrument for assessment of depression symptoms in patients with depression and in general population. Subjects scoring at least 26 on DS or 12 points on DSs constitute a target group for further diagnostic assessment in order to determine appropriate treatment.

In this research differences between discrepancies in evaluations of value importance and reachability of Russian-speaking high school students from Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia were examined. The study sample included 30 high school students from Latvia, 30 from Estonia and 30 from Lithuania aged 16 to 18. All students completed value-rating survey developed by Fantalova (Fantalova, 2011) and demographic questionnaire. Results have shown that the key values in all the Baltic countries are similar: health, love, happy family and friends. There is basically no statistically significant difference between value importance, value reachability, and value conflicts. Statically significant differences between Latvian and Lithuanian pupils are in the following values: beauty of nature and art, but there are statistically significant differences between Latvian and Estonian pupils in the following values: materially secured life, interesting work. It was found that in these three samples value conflicts don’t creates enough tension to motivate action. It can thus be assumed that the migration of school graduates possibly is not linked to the inability to realize the values that are important to them in their country. As the tension between values grows, the reasons why young people emigrate from one of the Baltic countries may be different.

Art therapy assessment benefits from analytical clarity while preserving non-directive, process-sensitive practice. Although the Expressive Therapies Continuum (ETC) is widely used to conceptualize sensory, affective, cognitive, and symbolic processes in art-making, ETC-informed assessment often relies on implicit clinical reasoning, limiting transparency and interdisciplinary communication. This article presents the developmental stage of a protocol-based Expressive Therapies Continuum Assessment Profile (ETC-AP) developed at Rīga Stradiņš University. The ETC-AP differentiates activation and inhibition patterns around integration midpoints and organizes observation in a defined five-step interpretive sequence without positioning the method as a psychometrically validated test. It combines (i) a uniform three-task, non-directive administration with a brief post-task inquiry; (ii) criteria-guided coding of observable features across three artworks and process notes; and (iii) 0–100 descriptive profile indicators to support within-case pattern description and professional dialogue. An illustrative case vignette shows how the ETC-AP can generate trauma-informed, regulation-oriented hypotheses about channel accessibility and cautious regulation-oriented sequencing, while remaining subordinate to clinical judgment and context. Key boundaries include incomplete operational coverage in some inhibition ranges, limits of static documentation for process-dependent markers, and the need for structured training materials and programmatic studies of reliability, feasibility, and sensitivity to change.