neuro-psych evaluation --does it always equal a diagnosis?

[Anonymous]

We are considering allowing dc to be evaluated but are concerned that the evaluater sees everything as a diagnosis waiting to happen.

Has anyone gone through the process and at the end had the evaluater say there is nothing clinical wrong with your kid?

Are there evaluaters who are more focused on seeing the whole child?

[Anonymous]

How old is your kid? Do you mean seeing a developmental pediatrician for an evaluation or seeing a psychologist for neuropsych evaluation which would include IQ tests, screening for anxiety or ADHD among other things.

It's possible to go through both and not get any official diagnosis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are considering allowing dc to be evaluated but are concerned that the evaluater sees everything as a diagnosis waiting to happen.

Has anyone gone through the process and at the end had the evaluater say there is nothing clinical wrong with your kid?

Are there evaluaters who are more focused on seeing the whole child?

You need to get over your irrational fears. Regardless of any diagnosis, if your kid has delays or a learning issue, you get an evaluation to best help your kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are considering allowing dc to be evaluated but are concerned that the evaluater sees everything as a diagnosis waiting to happen.

Has anyone gone through the process and at the end had the evaluater say there is nothing clinical wrong with your kid?

Are there evaluaters who are more focused on seeing the whole child?

You need to get over your irrational fears. Regardless of any diagnosis, if your kid has delays or a learning issue, you get an evaluation to best help your kid.

Just stop it. It is NOT irrational to want to avoid a misdiagnosis. I know you don't believe it, but it happens. There is research showing that every single child evaluated by some autism centers are given an autism diagnosis.

To the OP - pick a reputable clinician and plan to get a second opinion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are considering allowing dc to be evaluated but are concerned that the evaluater sees everything as a diagnosis waiting to happen.

Has anyone gone through the process and at the end had the evaluater say there is nothing clinical wrong with your kid?

Are there evaluaters who are more focused on seeing the whole child?

You need to get over your irrational fears. Regardless of any diagnosis, if your kid has delays or a learning issue, you get an evaluation to best help your kid.

Just stop it. It is NOT irrational to want to avoid a misdiagnosis. I know you don't believe it, but it happens. There is research showing that every single child evaluated by some autism centers are given an autism diagnosis.

To the OP - pick a reputable clinician and plan to get a second opinion.

I don't know that I have $3500 to $5000 for one evaluation let along $7000 to $10000 for two!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are considering allowing dc to be evaluated but are concerned that the evaluater sees everything as a diagnosis waiting to happen.

Has anyone gone through the process and at the end had the evaluater say there is nothing clinical wrong with your kid?

Are there evaluaters who are more focused on seeing the whole child?

You need to get over your irrational fears. Regardless of any diagnosis, if your kid has delays or a learning issue, you get an evaluation to best help your kid.

Just stop it. It is NOT irrational to want to avoid a misdiagnosis. I know you don't believe it, but it happens. There is research showing that every single child evaluated by some autism centers are given an autism diagnosis.

To the OP - pick a reputable clinician and plan to get a second opinion.

I don't know that I have $3500 to $5000 for one evaluation let along $7000 to $10000 for two!

+1. There are lots of horror stories about kids being misdiagnosed on this board but I can't recall a single instance of anyone saying that their child was misdiagnosed by a full neuropsychological evaluation.

[Anonymous]

If you didn't think there was a problem, why would you even consider an evaluation. And, if there is something wrong, why do you want the evaluator to come back with nothing? Your whole post baffles me.

That being said, my son did not get a diagnosis from his eval. We got a lot of information that was very helpful. The information included problems and suggestions for working with him. But, diagnosis? Nope.

[Anonymous]

I know lots of people who are concerned about autism and don't get an autism diagnosis. But I don't know anyone who gets no diagnosis at all. Not because there is rampant misdiagnosis, but because if you are concerned enough about your kid to get a $4000 evaluation, there's probably something there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you didn't think there was a problem, why would you even consider an evaluation. And, if there is something wrong, why do you want the evaluator to come back with nothing? Your whole post baffles me.

That being said, my son did not get a diagnosis from his eval. We got a lot of information that was very helpful. The information included problems and suggestions for working with him. But, diagnosis? Nope.

Finally, a voice of reason.

Parents of children who seek out specialists in autism, probably already suspect the answer.

A child who is assessed at age 3 or younger and is given a autism diagnosis (correctly or incorrectly) isn't a "horror." It opens up early intervention services for them that they would not otherwise qualify for them.

Also, testing isn't set in stone. Some issues that are clearly apparent when a child is young, resolve in time (usually through services like speech, OT, special ed, or behavioral therapy.) Other issues that may be barely noticeable when a child is young may rear up as a child enters elementary school or later. Sometimes it's autism, sometimes it's anxiety, sometimes it's ADHD.

The point is you get your kid help vs. guessing. FYI, the public school FAPE designation is not a medical diagnosis.

(And P.S. I know IRL a very vocal poster on here who continuously rants about her kid's "misdiagnosis." That didn't stop her from using all the services covered by insurance although it took her forever in seeking out a medical opinion. Denial and prejudice only hurts your kid. It may actually not be autism, but not doing anything is stupid. Don't screw yourself or your kid over, OP.)

[Anonymous]

To avoid mis-diagnosing your child and wasting your money, you just have to follow two simple rules:

1. DO choose a reputable developmental ped. or psychologist, who is specialized in the issues you are worried about. These have years of experience and will NEVER see a diagnosis where one does not exist, and even then they will usually err on the conservative side (say the disorder is mild instead of moderate or severe). The ones to watch out for are the general peds or bad psychologists - they have no clue what they're doing.

2. Do NOT test too young, or if you do, expect the diagnosis to evolve, or if no diagnosis is given, plan to retest a few years later to see if your child is diagnosable then. Young children are not reliable test-takers before late elementary! The full neuro-psychological evaluation for my 10 year old at Stixrud's lasted 8 or so hours. When children are too young, their reading and understanding of concepts are not developed enough to do in-depth testing and tease out different but similarly-presenting disorders (ex: social issues stemming from inattentive ADHD or mild Asperger's).

[Anonymous]

What kind of things are you worried about?

We've had teachers suggest testing to us when our kid was 7 and 8. We didn't feel there was anything greatly wrong with him. In fact, socially he is doing great. He's just not that switched on at school (lack of interest, which then leads to gaps in knowledge and under-performance). We thought it was not far outside of the ordinary, so we ignored the advice for expensive testing (especially without any clear idea of what we might be looking for) and just spent more time with him on school work and general development (board games, etc.). We are now more convinced than ever that there was no need for the $3000+ testing.

I think it has gotten a bit out of hand here, really. More than half of the boys I know have had some kind of testing like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are considering allowing dc to be evaluated but are concerned that the evaluater sees everything as a diagnosis waiting to happen.

Has anyone gone through the process and at the end had the evaluater say there is nothing clinical wrong with your kid?

Are there evaluaters who are more focused on seeing the whole child?

You need to get over your irrational fears. Regardless of any diagnosis, if your kid has delays or a learning issue, you get an evaluation to best help your kid.

Just stop it. It is NOT irrational to want to avoid a misdiagnosis. I know you don't believe it, but it happens. There is research showing that every single child evaluated by some autism centers are given an autism diagnosis.

To the OP - pick a reputable clinician and plan to get a second opinion.

Mythical, unless you can actually cite the "research."

Also, you can't test too young if there are significant delays. Early intervention works.

My kid was profoundly delayed in speech and the developmental pediatrician could still tell that he wasn't on the spectrum. However, the early interventions we did would not have been all that different if he had been.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
To avoid mis-diagnosing your child and wasting your money, you just have to follow two simple rules:

1. DO choose a reputable developmental ped. or psychologist, who is specialized in the issues you are worried about. These have years of experience and will NEVER see a diagnosis where one does not exist, and even then they will usually err on the conservative side (say the disorder is mild instead of moderate or severe). The ones to watch out for are the general peds or bad psychologists - they have no clue what they're doing.

2. Do NOT test too young, or if you do, expect the diagnosis to evolve, or if no diagnosis is given, plan to retest a few years later to see if your child is diagnosable then. Young children are not reliable test-takers before late elementary! The full neuro-psychological evaluation for my 10 year old at Stixrud's lasted 8 or so hours. When children are too young, their reading and understanding of concepts are not developed enough to do in-depth testing and tease out different but similarly-presenting disorders (ex: social issues stemming from inattentive ADHD or mild Asperger's).

PP who wrote the above. Let me just add that motor, speech and social development in infants and toddlers do not come under the neuro-psych umbrella. For this you go to a developmental ped who will evaluate your child and possibly refer him to occupational, physical, speech or play therapists, etc, as early intervention is absolutely critical. From the bent of OP's question, I understood he or she had an older child who exhibited symptoms of a more behavioral/academic/emotional nature, which would necessitate a neuro-psychological evaluation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you didn't think there was a problem, why would you even consider an evaluation. And, if there is something wrong, why do you want the evaluator to come back with nothing? Your whole post baffles me.

That being said, my son did not get a diagnosis from his eval. We got a lot of information that was very helpful. The information included problems and suggestions for working with him. But, diagnosis? Nope.

Not OP, but we are considering testing but do not necessarily think there is a problem. DC's teacher is insistent something is wrong with him. He is not the easiest child, but we've never thought his behavior suggested a larger problem - although of course, we are concerned he's having so much trouble behaving in school. We've already had one therapist tell us there is no diagnosis (no formal testing), but teacher is insistent and we don't want to ignore her concerns. On the one hand, we want to be sure and don't want to miss something - obviously if there is something to her concerns, we want to get DC intervention as soon as possible. On the other, I wouldn't be surprised if there was no diagnosis (or if there was one - I think it could go either way).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
To avoid mis-diagnosing your child and wasting your money, you just have to follow two simple rules:

1. DO choose a reputable developmental ped. or psychologist, who is specialized in the issues you are worried about. These have years of experience and will NEVER see a diagnosis where one does not exist, and even then they will usually err on the conservative side (say the disorder is mild instead of moderate or severe). The ones to watch out for are the general peds or bad psychologists - they have no clue what they're doing.

2. Do NOT test too young, or if you do, expect the diagnosis to evolve, or if no diagnosis is given, plan to retest a few years later to see if your child is diagnosable then. Young children are not reliable test-takers before late elementary! The full neuro-psychological evaluation for my 10 year old at Stixrud's lasted 8 or so hours. When children are too young, their reading and understanding of concepts are not developed enough to do in-depth testing and tease out different but similarly-presenting disorders (ex: social issues stemming from inattentive ADHD or mild Asperger's).

PP who wrote the above. Let me just add that motor, speech and social development in infants and toddlers do not come under the neuro-psych umbrella. For this you go to a developmental ped who will evaluate your child and possibly refer him to occupational, physical, speech or play therapists, etc, as early intervention is absolutely critical. From the bent of OP's question, I understood he or she had an older child who exhibited symptoms of a more behavioral/academic/emotional nature, which would necessitate a neuro-psychological evaluation.

Hmmmm. Do you want to know why those probably don't come under the "neuro-psych umbrella"? Because there's little evidence that interventions there work. But please prove me wrong: Show me well-published references of randomized controlled trials proving that diagnostic X by a ped leads to treatment Y and to neuro/ behavioral benefits A, B and C.