Psychological Assessment
Psychological assessments can fill a variety of needs, from understanding yourself and your problems better, establishing a diagnosis, creating a treatment plan, learning about your personality, or cognitive and/or academic strengths and weaknesses.
Psychologists use a variety of tools as needed, from clinical interviews, standardized measures, observation, and medical file reviews. At times, it may be helpful to speak with family, friends, doctors, or teachers to better understand a client’s strengths, personality, emotions, and behaviour. We will then use this information to formulate a comprehensive and complete picture of the person being tested, and to make recommendations .
Guelph CBT provides the following types of assessment:
- Diagnostic assessment
- Treatment suitability and planning
- Psychoeducational assessments (e.g., ADHD, learning disorders)
- Neuropsychological assessments (e.g., changes in cognitive functioning over time)
- Healthy aging consultations
Psychodiagnostic Assessment
The purpose of a psychodiagnostic assessment is to better understand your emotional functioning, personality, and behaviour. This type of assessment uses a variety of data sources to identify any problem areas, to identify relevant diagnoses, and to assist with treatment planning.
Psychoeducational Assessment
The goal of a psychoeducational assessment is to identify cognitive and academic strengths and weaknesses. It can help identify uniqueness in brain development and help characterize developmental conditions, such as attention deficit disorders (ADHD), if present. The role of emotional functioning is also explored. This type of assessment can help guide academic or career planning based on an individual’s profile.
Neuropsychological Assessment
The goal of a neuropsychological assessment is to better understand changes in brain functioning, typically related to an illness or injury. It involves characterizing a person’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses and emotional functioning, as well as gathering information about a person’s previous level of functioning before they began noticing changes.
All of our assessment services examine a range of data sources and use a variety of tools from clinical interviews, standardized measures, observation, to medical file reviews. At times, it may be helpful to speak with family, friends, doctors, or teachers to better understand a client’s strengths, personality, emotions, and behaviour. We will then use this information to formulate a comprehensive and complete picture of the person being tested, and to make recommendations.
Abbreviated Assessments
While some people are looking for a comprehensive and in-depth picture of their functioning and possible diagnoses, other people may be looking for a brief overview of their abilities or targeted examination of certain domains of thinking or behaviour. Abbreviated assessments may be used to answer a specific question about treatment planning, rather than arriving at a comprehensive diagnostic picture. We offer abbreviated assessments for both adults and seniors that can help inform health care and treatment planning decisions.
Healthy Aging Consultation
One type of abbreviated service we offer is consultation to other health care providers and families about age-related changes. Many adults experience changes in thinking that are within expectation with aging, while other changes may be in need of further characterization and treatment. We offer a consultation service, including abbreviated cognitive testing, that explores clients’ concerns, and can identify problems (if present) that warrant further treatment and care planning.