Health and Psychology

I get asked about accommodations testing fairly routinely.  Many people call in with questions about how much I charge for specific tests.  Accommodations testing isn't about the tests.  Accommodations testing is the data used for a psychological report that will ultimately be reviewed by an administrative law judge or an attorney involved in applications of the American's with Disabilities Act to ensure that the person seeking accommodations under the Act is not being afforded...

Back when I was in college I was the person someone called to get the stray cat from out of the closet, from under the bed, from making life insane when all someone thought they were trying to do was help by taking the stray indoors.  

I speak cat.  Cats have about 100+ different vocalizations mainly to express how they feel or to connect with what is in their environment.  I wasn't allow cats as a child; my mother hated them.  But as soon as I left home ...

I received an email from a psychological assistant of mine forwarded from an insurance company.  It talked about dual relationships being created by allowing clients to run up enormous debt and then having to collect that debt.  It's the wrong focus.

The focus should be on understanding your purpose and what you value.  If the purpose in providing mental health care is to help clients get better then allowing them to amass enormous debt doesn't serve that purp...

The DIagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fifth Edition (DSM V) is published by the American Psychiatric Association.  It is due out next year.  Already the complaints are coming in about it not having an adequate research basis for many diagnostic categories.  The is another diagnostic system: The International Classification of Disease 10th Edition (ICD 10).  As a result of problems with the DSM system many psychologists will be switching over to the ICD ...

Ethics is often presented in psychology as a form of risk management, but that does ethics an injustice.  Ethics is about making a determination about the correct course of action after looking at a variety of options.  It's not about religion, or feelings, or laws.  Although hopefully religions proscribe rightness of actions, and feelings guide you to correct choices, and laws uphold the correct course of actions.  But that's not always the case.  Risk management inv...

I have a sign up at my office at the Westwood Counseling Center.  There's a flying pig over the sign that suggests both the aspirational nature of the saying and the impossibility of living up to it.  It says that "My mission is to inspire people to be their best self and to inspire others to bring out the best in the people they come in contact with and to inspire them as well.  Nothing can stand in my way.  There is always a way.  There is always time."

I did something different.  I decided to write a psychological assessment report directly to a child.  Not about a child.  To them directly.  I'm not sure why I never thought about doing that before or why I thought about it with this specific child.  But it just seems respectful of the child.  After all the child was the one that went through all that evaluation.  In her case it was about three hours on a Sunday.  And it's what I'm going to do from now...

Jessica Jacobs died in August. She had Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. She is also described as having Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. I say described because I’m not sure I believe that. I think she had Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome with Autonomic Dysregulation and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome is just a part of that. She lived most of her adult life in Washington, DC but moved back to Twain Harte, California when she became too disabled to continue working. She wanted t...