Reply to 18 y.o. DD's mysterious brain ailment, advice please

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't understand what a neuropsych exam would do. We just had one done for my son. It tests things like processing speed and math computational skills. I don't think it would help OP figure out what is going on with her daughter, especially if they didn't have a baseline test to compare it to.
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Here are some ways in which a neuropsych can help:

1)  As you can see upthread, a lot of PPs doubt the mom's assessment of the child as being worse off cognitively.  These PPs think that the Mom has an overinflated sense of what the child should be able to accomplish or achieve.  Even the executive functioning coach said, "nothing is wrong."  A neuropsych can provide concrete pieces of data that show ability and achievement.  The ability is shown by IQ.  The achievement is shown by various WIAT or WJ tests in reading, math, writing, listening comprehension, etc.   When ability and IQ are discordant, it raises a red flag that something is wrong.  That something could be -- learning disability, brain damage from illness or injury or attention problems.  On the other hand, when ability and achievement are within a similar range, the implication is that the child is functioning normally.   For example, my DD had a concussion, several years later, cognitive testing showed clear deficits in attention.  Although she was a very high functioning child academically, these deficits were causing problems and stress at school.  From the school's perspective, nothing was wrong because DD was an A/B student in all advanced classes.  From my perspective, I knew that she continued to struggle in ways that she had not before the concussion.  We would not have known this without cognitive testing.

2)  Cognitive testing can identify areas of weakness across cognitive functions, and thus provide clues as to where dysfunction lies in the brain.  This data can provide clues to different types of illness or disorder.  For example, in older persons, speech and language assessment can often differentiate between different kinds of dementia.  To be overly simplistic:  if you have memory problems the diagnosis is likely to be Alzheimers but if you have word-finding difficulty with good memory, the diagnosis is likely to be logopenic aphasia.  Different diagnosis have different treatments or compensations.

3) Baseline is helpful but not necessary for a couple of reasons.  First, assessments are usually done on standardized normed instruments, so you have a number that represents performance in comparison to population and you usually also have an ability number to compare to.  Second, in certain situations early performance in school can be used as a proxy for comparison.  If my child had done well on state exams but now was performing poorly in math achievement, it would raise questions, even if the data is not an apples to apples comparison.

4)  Finally, neuropsych assessment can quantify a number of "softer" diagnoses, like attention, anxiety or depression/mood disorders.  Again, these symptoms can often be dismissed as just "over worrying" when there is nothing really wrong,  or they can be diagnoses that are provided while the real problem goes untreated.  This happened with my DD, whom many teachers criticized during concussion recovery as being dramatic, or moody, or anxious, when she was suffering from real, physical symptoms of brain injury.  Neuropsych helped by giving us concrete evidence of cognitive problems and ruling out anxiety and depression.  [/quote]

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