Assessment Services
The CPSD offers psychological and psychoeducational assessments for children, adolescents, and adults to provide diagnosis and treatment recommendations. Clients seek assessment for a variety of issues, such as problems meeting the demands of school and/or work, difficulty concentrating, memory problems, or unexplained changes in daily functioning. Often, clients come with a specific question, such as “Do I have a learning disability?” or “Does my child have ADHD?”
Psychological assessment can be particularly helpful in clarifying underlying reasons for current difficulties and what to do about them, as well as identifying individual strengths. You can learn more about how psychological assessment may help you from the American Psychological Association: Understanding Psychological Assessment.
The CPSD welcomes referrals for psychological and psychoeducational assessments from individuals, mental health professionals, schools, physicians, and parents. As a training clinic, we provide a closely supervised comprehensive assessment battery for each client that covers a wide range of functioning. Typically, our evaluations include measures of intellectual ability, academic achievement, personality, emotional functioning, and behavior. For school-age clients, information from teachers or other caregivers is also an important part of the process. The exact composition of each assessment battery is based on clinical need.
Following the assessment, you will be provided with a written report of integrated findings and recommendations. Because we believe in the value of a carefully considered, well-written report, this intensively supervised process usually takes four to six weeks to complete following the assessment.
Assessment and therapy address different needs. Assessments involve two to three testing appointments and are designed to efficiently gather a large amount of information to determine a diagnosis and treatment recommendations. This is usually the end of the contact with the clinician.
The goal of therapy, on the other hand, is to provide treatment over a longer period of time. It is not necessary to complete an assessment before beginning therapy. However, sometimes we may suggest this as a first step, to help us better understand your strengths and challenges, or to clarify appropriate treatment goals.