And yes, i'm an advocate for the mix and match approach.
Where are you from? This reminds me of a long-since-dead grammatical construction, the "passival", in which -ing participles were used passively - the example I read about was correspondence stating "our garden is putting in order" where the modern language would require "being put".
In my English, it's still possible to say "the app needs amending" [= "needs to be amended"], or "the app's functionality needs amending" [ditto], but definitely not "the app needs its functionality amending".
I'd say the thing you're commenting on is normal, if not altogether correct, in British English (Where are you from? I'm from the UK).
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/need-hea...
> Passival my arse.
Do you see this construction as different?
Wikipedia:
> Another construction sometimes referred to as passival involves a wider class of verbs, and was used in English until the nineteenth century. Sentences having this construction feature progressive aspect and resemble the active voice, but with meaning like the passive. Examples of this would be:
> The house is building. (modern English: The house is being built)
> The meal is eating. (modern English: The meal is being eaten)
> This passival construction was displaced during the late 18th and early 19th century by the progressive passive
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_passive_voice#Passival )
I think it's fair to call that "long since dead".
> Where are you from? I'm from the UK
California.
E.g. headline in a major newspaper in 2019 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/you-vote-ukip-tomorro...
As for whether "need your head examining" or "needs its functionality amending" are related to the examples you're giving, it sounds like you perhaps think more deeply about grammar than I do, but I would tentatively say not. Your examples are "<noun> is <present participle>", whereas "<noun> needs its <noun> <present-participle>" seems different to me.