Health and Psychology

This question was raised at the Health Psychology group I belong to.  The situations were a bit different but the questions remained. 

• "I referred a patient out for a dementia work up and they said he was normal." 

• "I referred a head trauma patient out for an evaluation and the test came back anxious, not head injured."

• "I referred a patient out for a medical evaluation.  They said the symptoms were all in her head, not real."...

There's a format to psychological assessment report writing.  The actual report style may vary based on the setting and the purpose of the report.  But the report is generally written for the intended reader of the report.  So if I'm writing a report for a court case, it's written for an attorney.  If I'm writing a report for a colleague on their client, it's written for the psychologist.  If I'm writing for a physician's patient, it may be written so the patient can ...

For the second time this year (and it's March!) and more than the 10th time in the past year, I've sat across from someone telling me that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a chronic disease and there are no effective treatments.  Occasionally thse are uninformed therapists, but sadly some of these people are patients.

What a shame.  First, it's not true.  There are three evidence based treatments for PTSD.

• Cognitive Processing Therapy
• Eye M...

There's a huge difference between appraisal and assessment.  An appraisal is essentially a screening technique that may involve some sort of rating scale, self-report or brief test.  A psychological assessment, on the other hand, involves formulating a complex, in-depth understanding of an individual from multiple points of view.

Personality assessment involves evaluating someone's functioning in a wide variety of situations to come to an understanding of how they are likely t...

What's the difference between testing in neuropsychology and psychology?

I met a psychologist who does psychological testing that includes some neuropsychological instruments.  I've also met neuropsychologists who are primarily using psychological tests as neuropsychological instruments.  So here's the difference.  A neuropsychologist can relate brain functioning to testing. 

A standard psychological test is the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS).  ...

Okay I received a cool new gadget from Square.  It's a credit card reader that attaches to my iPad and allows me to take credit card payments.

https://squareup.com" target="_blank">https://squareup.com/

That means that whether I'm in Los Angeles or Lancaster I can now accept a credit card for services and the purchaser gets an email recording all the information.

The card reader is free and is sent via mail.  ...

I'm giving an exam tomorrow in one of my classes and a major assignment in another, so I thought it might help to write an article on dealing with test anxiety.

I had horrible test anxiety throughout school.  Over the years I developed strategies to deal with it.  So here are some things I learned.

1.  Get enough rest.

2.  Don't drink alcohol the night before the exam, you'll just wake in the middle of the night.

3.  Do ...

Psychological Assessment requires a clear understanding of the question being asked in order to most appropriately select from available measures. 

There are two basic types of assessment of "personality."  Some of the measures restrict the available ways of responding to the questions. Often the format of these measures is a true/false set of possible responses. These types have been referred to as "objective measures."  They tend to be computer scored, alth...

The test selection for a complex assessment is based on the referral question.  It's helpful to think of these in levels.  The first level is a very simple question that can be answered with a single test and history or a couple of tests and history.  Examples of these types of questions are:

• Can I read at grade level?
• Is there any evidence of a brain injury?
• Do I have any symptoms consistent with ____ (diagnosis)?

The next level up...

The average psychologist does little by way of assessment in clinical practice.  There are several reasons for this.  First, psychological assessment is a complex and expensive process.  The average psychological test costs about $500 to purchase and the average test battery consists of about 3 to 5 tests.  Second, the tests are updated about every 10 to 15 years requiring repurchase of new items.  Lastly, they are time consuming to administer, score and interpret and...