Formal assessments can help to identify your strengths and weaknesses and provide a clearer path forward for your mental health care. Insight’s trained therapists provide assessments that assist individuals of all ages to improve their lives. Assessments are helpful in identifying your levels of symptoms objectively. While assessments can vary from individual to individual, most times they include testing, interviews, observation, and consultation with one of Insight’s trained professionals. Many of these assessments can be done as part of therapy but some may require a higher level of formality depending on the level of need and purpose of the assessment.
When attempting to understand developmental disorders, exploring a psychological assessment can become a critical component in understanding the nuances needed to help adequately diagnose a specific disorder.
At Insight Psychological, we have the most up-to-date psychological tests to explore, understand, identify, and even diagnose many of the developmental disorders experienced by both adults and children.
What is a developmental disability assessment?
Diagnoses of developmental disorders commonly involve the combination of understanding components of each of the following:
- Psycho-educational assessments
- Behavioral assessments
- Academic assessments
- Neuropsychological assessments
This may even include specific functional assessments for specific issues such as EQ (emotional intelligence) or attention issues, not to mention the personality assessment elements that are frequently identified as concerns.
Currently, Insight Psychological has the capacity to assess and diagnose disorders including:
- Cognitive disabilities
- Autism spectrum disorder
- Learning disorders
- Expressive and receptive language disorders
- Pervasive developmental disorders (including those that are not always able to be specifically diagnosed). Some of these diagnoses include other communication/social disorders.
Why is the assessment used?
These tests, in addition to a thorough initial interview and background history helps gather the necessary information to fully understand and diagnose disorders, which helps many individuals get funding for special needs both within the school system and out.
For any of those issues that are out of Insight’s scope, we have developed a good relationship with medical specialists in the area to help support and/or identify those diagnoses that may be necessary for adequate treatment or funding/care.
Unfortunately, many government and publicly funded agencies have long waiting lists which can be up to a year or more. This sometimes limits an individual or parent’s ability to quickly get funding for the care they or their children need. Insight attempts to get those in need diagnosed quicker than they would be able to get within a government funded agency to activate the process as fast as possible.
Although not funded publicly or by government services, psychological services are usually available through extended health care benefits packages well as some government-sponsored agencies, including Children’s Services and Veterans Affairs.
The assessment process
Some people ask which tests we use here at Insight. Currently, Insight Psychological has access to over 350 tests used to identify specific disorders or issues. More comprehensive tests include the up-to-date versions of the Wechsler intelligence scales (WAIS), Wechsler memory tests (WMS) and the Wechsler Individual Achievement Tests (WIAT) as well as the K-TEA, the K- ABC, ADOS-2, the BASC, Connors scales, CBCL and the ABAS-2 and ABS-2 to name a few. We also use neuropsychological tests such as the Halstead-Reitan neuropsychological battery.
Psychological tests get updated annually and Insight is committed to ensuring we have the most up-to-date materials and training for our therapists to make sure we can cover any areas of need – both now and in the future.
Although some assessments tend to be standardized, many times we need to customize our assessments as many disorders or issues are not as clear-cut as we would like them to be. We are able to customize these assessments in order to expertly analyze and identify issues.
To learn more about booking one of our developmental disorder assessments, please call 780-461-1717. We recognize that each individual has different needs and our intake and admin specialists will be able to provide you with an estimated quote and timeline for your assessment.
