It’s a process for better understanding our behaviors, thoughts, feelings, strengths, and challenge areas. Psychological evaluations are different than psychotherapy, which may be a longer-term process. Evaluations take a look at you right where you are at right now, including information from your past, and setting goals for your future. It first involves having a discussion to clarify what you want to know (or what someone else might want to know, for example, a school or work setting). Once we have decided what we are looking for, various tests are selected and more questions may be presented to get to the answers that will be most helpful.

Evaluations can be comprehensive, including a lot of different tests, or they can be briefer with just one or two questionnaires. Most evaluations include questionnaires, interactive psychological tests, and an interview.  People may seek out psychological assessments when they are looking for an accurate way to diagnose (or describe) a mental health concern they aren’t quite sure about.

You may want to know your strengths and weaknesses or know the extent of your intellectual giftedness or find out if your memory problems are different from what is typical for someone your age. There may be some issues with concentration, attention, focusing, distraction, or retaining information. An evaluation can help clarify whether these difficulties are stress-related or emotional, or might be simpler information-processing problems that could be helped by accommodations at school or at work.

Testing can help open up new ideas for psychological treatment that might have been missed by therapists.

Some people seek out a psychological evaluation to help determine their eligibility for certain kinds of elective surgery, adoption, or in order to apply for certain career fields (like pilot, police officer, or clergy). 

We currently provide evaluations for adults (ages 18+) and for adolescents (ages 12-17). 

For adolescents, why should we have an independent evaluation done for our child if the school system already does these?

It can help to have an independent evaluator assess your child’s skills and areas of challenge outside of what’s available in the school system.  You may pursue this because you feel that the results of your child’s initial school evaluation may not have been accurate or have not been effective in meeting your child’s needs. You may feel something was overlooked or not assessed during the initial evaluation that is relevant to your child’s functioning. Or you may just want a second professional opinion.  Please note that we do not guarantee our results will be any different than the initial evaluation, but will always strive to be thorough and provide your child and your family with recommendations that can be useful going forward.

Our approach to each evaluation is to acknowledge you as a whole person with a unique identity. Our services are meant to be inclusive and respectful of each person’s ethnicity, religion, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, and physical or cognitive abilities.  We strive to provide neuroaffirming care and are open to any other feedback about the process that can improve your experience with the evaluation.

Although services are currently only available in English at this time, we would be happy to provide you with referrals if your primary language is not English. 

1. First, we discuss your questions or needs (or your adolescent’s needs), we set goals for testing, and agree on fees and billing.
2. Next, we do a clinical interview: we talk about relevant background information and we ask you questions.
3. We then do 6-10 hours of interactive testing activities. Some may be fun, others may be boring or frustrating but they will be selected to answer the questions you have in the best way possible. This is tiring so we typically spread this out across two or three days to get more accurate information.
4. We also are likely to give you 2-3 hours of completing questionnaires. Again, some of this may seem boring but it may be important to ask you a series of questions that are designed to clarify what is going on.
5. We may review some of your (or your teen’s) records (grades, medical or mental health information, as long as it is relevant to your testing).
6. We may talk with others who know you or your adolescent, if you permit us (might include teachers, family members, or your medical team).
7. We take a great deal of time putting together the broad range of information we have collected from you, the testing, and any other sources of information, to develop a comprehensive report that focuses on the questions we started with and the answers we now have. We often recommend some specific “next steps” if there is a problem that we have identified.
8. A 1-hour feedback session where we review your results and you can take home a written report for your records. 

If you are looking only for a very specific test or question to be answered, it may take as little as 4 hours of working together and 1-2 weeks to provide the report. For a typical comprehensive assessment, we are likely to meet for a total of 6-12 hours (split up over multiple days) and it might take 4-8 weeks to finish the report and schedule your feedback session.

This is a comprehensive look at you! We will take time to measure relevant areas of your life and have you complete various tests to help us do that. Part of what we are doing is also ruling out possible areas of concern, so we can home in on what is most important to you and your goals. 

There is no special preparation required for the testing. All materials will be provided.  It is strongly recommended that the testing occurs during the time of day when you are feeling most alert and engaged, that you do your best to get plenty of rest the night before, and that you come prepared to answer questions and complete the tasks asked of you.  You will be provided ahead of time with a list of dos and don’ts for the testing space.

If you are currently on any medications, please let your evaluator know about this, because it may be relevant to your testing results.

You will receive a written report that includes the data we collected, conclusions about how to understand the data, and recommendations for going forward that will reflect the initial goals we set up in the beginning. We will have a feedback session to meet and discuss the results together as well, to give you a chance to ask questions, and share any feedback you have about the process.

It’s important to remember that with testing, we are not looking to confirm what you already think, but rather to see what’s there using the best methods we have for assessing the answers to your questions. Your results will always include honest and clear feedback that is based on our most current understanding of mental health conditions. Accommodations for work or school may be included if appropriate with a stated diagnosis.  Not all testing results in a diagnosis, but we will still provide you with recommendations towards your stated goals.  Diagnoses (when given) are based on how we conceptualize mental health concerns in the DSM-5-TR.  

The testing process is multi-step and involves collecting and then integrating a lot of data about you. You can expect to receive your written report and have your feedback session anywhere from 6-8 weeks from the day we meet for our first consultation, assuming we can schedule the different parts of the evaluation without much delay. 

Testing typically costs between $4200-$6500, depending on your needs. Each assessment is tailored to your questions and goals. The price range here is for typical evaluations. It is based on the cost of the tests themselves, the time spent with you, our scoring, analyzing, and integrating the data, and the time it takes to write the report. There are rare circumstances where substantially fewer (or more) tests may be needed so the fee could be lower or higher than this range. However, most evaluations will fall near the middle of that range.  The actual fee will be discussed during your initial meeting when we are able to clarify what your concerns are and what we will need to do. Prior to the start of the testing, we require half of the expected total as a deposit. The other half is due when your report is completed, just prior to your feedback session.

If your evaluation requires any “add-on” testing or paperwork beyond the provided final report or additional feedback or consultation sessions (including participating in any school meetings), this will be billed at an hourly rate of $250/hour.  The same rate applies (and is billed separately) if you would like to follow up at either a 3-month or 6-month interval with the evaluator to discuss how you are using the results.

Due to the extensive time and resources that we reserve for testing, any testing sessions you do not cancel at least 2 business days in advance will be billed at $225 per hour of reserved time if we cannot accommodate you during that same calendar week (e.g., if you are scheduled to have a 3-hour appointment on a Tuesday morning and you cancel on the previous Friday afternoon, we will bill you for an additional $675.00 in addition to your assessment ‘package’ fee if we cannot accommodate you by the coming Friday afternoon (i.e., end of the ‘calendar week’).

If you are in need of an IQ-test renewal/update, personality assessment due to professional requirements, or have questions about a request that differs from what is outlined above, please call us with your questions. If we are unable to provide the requested service, we will be happy to provide you with local referrals. 

We do not bill any health insurance companies directly. Our fees are paid by our clients, so all evaluations need to be paid out-of-pocket, at least initially. Payment is expected in full, prior to the start of the evaluation, or can be paid in two intervals (50% of the expected fees prior to beginning the clinical interview and the remaining fees prior to the feedback session). We will provide you with a statement at the end of the evaluation that you can submit to your insurer if you wish.  Some mental health evaluations may qualify for HSA/FSA spending, but others (e.g., evaluations for giftedness) may not—you should consult your insurance administrator with any questions about this.

If you are planning to submit your own claim to your insurance company, keep in mind that they may only cover certain diagnoses and may not cover the cost of testing even if it results in a diagnosis. If you decide to use your insurance coverage and they require a preauthorization, we will be happy to complete this, but it will be your responsibility to share that information with us as needed. We will only communicate with insurance companies regarding pre-authorization after you have authorized us to do so.

You are responsible for gathering any information from your insurer before beginning the testing process. We are also happy to provide you with a list of common questions you can ask your insurance company to help determine how much (or what exactly) they will cover. Please note that most, if not all insurers, will require at least that the final diagnosis to be shared with them in the process of covering the cost.  Even if an insurer claims they will cover the cost of the testing, there may be caveats to this. The insurer may have a list of diagnoses they do not cover or they may not cover the cost of the testing if the result of the evaluation is that there is no diagnosis at all.  

Yes.  If you are seeking an evaluation related to a forensic or court-related concern (child custody, mental competency for court-ordered evaluations, etc.), to evaluate traumatic brain injury, or for a bariatric surgical evaluation, we do not conduct these, but we are happy to refer you to a local colleague who may be able to work with you.