Health and Psychology

One of my students was asking me how many hours a week I'm working.  I think the question stemmed from the fact that I'm seen at school between 8 and 12 hours a day four days a week and the students know it's not my primary job.  So I've been working about 90 hours a week.  The student asked if I was worried about burn out.  Nope, not at all.

Burn out comes from not only doing too much, but doing things that aren't replenishing.  I have some work that pays my mo...

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...

What is the purpose of psychological testing?

If you have a question about how somene thinks, how they get along, how they can do in school or how they can improve relationships, then psychological testing may be able to provide a lot of information in a brief period of time.  Often people come to an office wanting a specific test.  This is such a disservice to them and to the practice of psychology.  So in my explanation to people I explain it's like going to...

Well it's been a busy few weeks.  I've increased my work at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, have opened a new office location in Santa Clarita, California and have taken on a delightful psychological assistant who will be working with me to expand the range of services I can offer.  

The new office in Santa Clarita is at 28494 Westinghouse Place, Suite 214, Santa Clarita, CA 91355.  It's a lovely atrium building with plenty of parking.

Maria...

Gardening is probably genetic in my family.  Every single member of my biological family gardens.  My adoptive family hired gardeners.  I was the only person that really liked plants and wanted to grow them.  So I thought gardening was something most people didn't do. My adoptive father had studied medicine made from plants when he was in school.  Once I moved out he gave me all his old textbooks on pla...

Psychological Assessment is a complex field.  I get calls asking what I charge for an assessment.  I have a fee schedule posted on this website but it's complicated.  What I need to know to estimate a cost of an assessment is what the nature of the referral question is and where the assessment is to take place.  So if I have a simple assessment such as "My child is doing this behavior.  Can you tell me if something is wrong with him or her?"  That's something tha...

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 ...

Health Psychologists, Neuropsychologists, Neurologists, and Oncologists are the fields that have rather routine discussions about how patients want to live and be treated as they approach the end of their lives.  There is some basic information that needs to be covered either with the patient or with their family.

• Advanced Directives
• Active Treatment or Palliative Care
  
• Decision making if the patient is incompacitated-Durable Power of Attorney f...

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...