Health and Psychology

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).  ...

Today I get to do one of my favorite exercises with my class.  I downloaded actual accident reports from the internet on train, airplane crashes with diagrams or photos and car accident simulation diagrams for the class.  Then we get to talk about the physics of brain injury, the use of restraints to mitigate injury, and the complexity of orthopaedic injuries and soft tissue injuries compounding brain injuries.

So here's what the class gets to find out:

Being in love can minimize the impact of pain.  When people are in this passionate, all-consuming phase of love, there are significant alterations in their mood that are impacting their experience of pain,” said Sean Mackey, MD, PhD, chief of the Division of Pain Management, associate professor of anesthesia and senior author of the study on pain and love from stanford University Medical Center, published online Oct. 13 in PLoS ONE. “We’re beginning to tease apart some...

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...

Minor brain injury can result in long term complications.  The average healthy adult can anticipate recovery from a minor brain injury in 3 to 6 months.  Some people with minor brain injuries are not healthy premorbidly and some people have had more than one brain injury.  This leads to more complications that can occur over a longer period of time.

Head trauma sets in motion a complex neurochemical and physiological reaction.  The range of physiological ...