If you’ve ever gone to therapy for help with symptoms of anxiety, depression, or other mental health conditions, you may have had a clinical intake interview. Most psychologists and therapists conduct a more formal, structured clinical interview the first time they meet with new clients. This is to try to figure out what factors are contributing to the emotional distress and the symptoms that the client experiences. They probably also asked you about your background, your family, the kind of childhood that you had, or what your experience was like in school. Gathering this kind of information is important because it helps us get to know our clients before we start giving advice.
While the initial interview is necessary, and often very helpful, sometimes it is not enough to reveal the underlying reasons why my clients are struggling. Sometimes, clients present as very complex, having multiple challenges getting through every day life, struggling to find and stay in healthy relationships, and feeling like their life isn’t meaningful. Human beings are complex, after all, so it makes sense that we can’t pinpoint the source of their problems right away. Even after meeting with some clients several times, I still feel like there are missing pieces. Perhaps the client isn’t thinking of everything important they need to tell me. Or they may have challenges they aren’t even fully aware of. Therefore, an intake interview and a few therapy sessions is still insufficient to fully understand the complexities.
In recent years, there have been several mental health conditions that have become publicized through social media and pop culture. Celebrities are often quick to identify themselves this way, which can be affirming for people who have similar struggles. Seeing all this, we can convince ourselves that we have a condition, but getting an evaluation from a qualified mental health provider is the best route to understanding ourselves and to getting effective treatment when appropriate. While many people genuinely struggle with these issues, it’s necessary for clinicians to do more than just validate peoples feelings about whether or not the condition exists.
Conducting psychological evaluations based on the clinician’s training and empirical research data is key to ensuring that people do not get inaccurately diagnosed. Psychological testing removes the guess work from the early treatment stage by clearly identifying the nature and extent of the presenting problems. The evaluation involves not only a clinical interview, but the administration of of tests that ask many specific questions, investigate thought processes and emotions, and gather important information that does not appear from merely talking to clients.
Below are two of the more common diagnoses we read about. If you are concerned that you might have one of these conditions, psychological testing can help determine your diagnosis and make sure that you’re investing in the correct treatment.
ADHD Among Adults
There has been an increase in the number of adults diagnosed with ADHD in the last decade who were not previously diagnosed earlier in life. While it is certainly possible for ADHD to occur without being detected in high functioning persons who have done reasonably well academically, or who may have had the inattentive subtype that did not result in disruptive behavior, there are many reasons why adults struggle to concentrate. A psychological evaluation can tease out other factors that affect the ability to sustain attention and function effectively at work and in every day life. Anxiety disorders, depression, and substance use are just a few factors that can affect a person’s attention and that should be investigated before deciding that ADHD is the culprit.
PTSD
It’s hard to get through reading the news without finding an article about trauma or the impact of traumatic events. It is certainly true that we live in a world where bad things happen all the time, and we want to understand how traumatic events affect people differently. Not everyone responds to trauma in the same way, and psychological evaluations do a thorough job of identifying how intensely someone has been impacted by their experiences. Research suggests that people are often misdiagnosed with conditions such as bipolar disorder when in fact trauma is behind their behavioral changes in mood fluctuations. But PTSD and bipolar disorder are treated radically differently both medically and psychologically. Thus, ruling out the incorrect diagnosis is critical.
Although psychological evaluations can be expensive and time consuming, the money and time saved in treatment later are well worth the cost of the outset. My practice offers these kinds of evaluations. Please feel free to inquire for more information, using the contact form on this website.
Photo by David Travis on Unsplash