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

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Reply to "neuro-psych evaluation --does it always equal a diagnosis?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=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).

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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.

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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.[/quote]

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