Many individuals face challenges like feeling overwhelmed, struggling with focus, or experiencing difficulties in social situations. These issues can sometimes signal deeper concerns such as anxiety or mood disorders. With the right neuropsychological evaluation and support, you can gain valuable insights into your struggles, identify underlying conditions, and develop effective strategies for improvement and personal growth.
You might be experiencing persistent challenges in maintaining focus, often feeling easily distracted or overwhelmed by tasks. This can manifest as difficulty completing work assignments, frequently misplacing important items, or struggling to follow through on daily responsibilities, ultimately affecting your productivity and sense of accomplishment.
You may find yourself facing considerable difficulties in social situations, feeling anxious or uncomfortable in group settings. This could lead to avoidance of gatherings, heightened stress in new environments, or challenges in building meaningful connections, resulting in feelings of isolation and impacting your overall well-being.
Regardless of your struggles, you may be considering that it’s time to talk to a therapist.
Millions of children, teens, and adults in the US suffer from mood disorders and neurodevelopmental challenges. Yet as common as these issues are, many people never get properly diagnosed—and others end up misdiagnosed. Many presentations are misunderstood, especially when there are co-occurring symptoms. For instance, people who have trouble paying attention are usually diagnosed with ADHD, yet inattention can also be a sign of anxiety, OCD, and many other conditions. On your own, it’s hard to piece all the symptoms together and tell if your struggles match one disorder instead of another.
All too often, people with mental health disorders and neurodevelopmental challenges aren’t given proper education about their diagnoses. And without the right psychoeducation, it’s hard to know where to begin with treatment, since you don’t even know what you’re dealing with.
Additionally, many people lack access to vital interventions and resources and are unable to get connected with necessary accommodations. They often struggle to find communities that support them and wind up feeling misunderstood, judged, and confused.
An evaluation provides a stepping stone to in-depth psychoeducation, vital resources, and communities of love and acceptance. It’s a chance to get evidence-based recommendations and accommodations to ensure that individuals are able to succeed in their environments.
During the evaluation process at MindWell NYC, you or your child can expect to learn more about your unique constellation of strengths and vulnerabilities. Our licensed psychologists will use standardized tests that are validated and research-based to assess various developmental domains such as memory, communication, cognitive functioning, language skills, visual-motor skills, and executive functioning.
The tests we provide are often deeply engaging, especially for young children who may have trouble sitting still for long stretches of time. Many evaluations are done digitally and include fun activities like puzzles involving numbers, shapes, and different visual patterns.
Our practice offers two different types of testing: neuropsychological and psychoeducational. Neuropsychological assessments evaluate current functioning across a wide variety of different domains and aim to identify the presence of autism, ADHD, giftedness, learning disabilities, and various mood and developmental disorders. Psychoeducational assessments, meanwhile, are narrower in scope and more focused on academic recommendations. They can provide an updated IQ score and an accurate snapshot of a client’s educational challenges. Our clinicians will help you figure out which assessment is best for you.
With so much information available, it can be challenging to determine the root causes of these issues. Neuropsychological testing offers a vital opportunity to uncover underlying conditions, helping you gain a clearer understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, and guiding you toward effective solutions and support.
All assessments start with a thorough clinical interview. We’ll look at relevant school reports, current medications, prior evaluations, and general mental health history. If you’re seeking an evaluation for your child, you will generally meet with your child’s specialist alone for the intake session, although you won’t be present with your child during the assessment.
The testing process is typically done in two to three appointments that are three or four hours in length. We encourage you to bring any assistive devices or medical equipment you need, such as eyeglasses, hearing aids, etc. You are also welcome to bring snacks and drinks, as there will be plenty of breaks throughout the day.
In total, an evaluation takes about six to eight weeks to complete from the initial interview until the feedback session is held. A final report will be given after the feedback session that has a full list of diagnostic impressions, recommendations, and accommodations. And as part of the evaluation process, we may collect observations from other professionals involved in you or your child’s care and education (with your consent, of course). Upon request, we may also conduct classroom observations to further inform our assessments.
In the end, our ultimate goal is to provide you with useful and clinically meaningful information about your struggles and a holistic picture of your strengths and vulnerabilities. We want to help you make significant growth and skills development and set you on the path to thrive in your current environment.
All information gathered during the evaluation process is entirely confidential, meaning that the results are only shared with the client (and the parent/guardian if the client is a child/minor). If you want to have your evaluator share the results with another relevant party, such as a teacher or family member, that can certainly be arranged, but we will only do so with your written permission.
Many people worry that an evaluation will reveal an undesired diagnosis. As evaluators, we take great care to share the results of the evaluation in a way that ideally helps you feel validated, understood, and hopeful about the future. Our reports are designed to be digestible to the reader and free from too much clinical jargon and pathologizing language.
A neuropsychological evaluation is nothing like a school exam—you aren’t expected to “ace” it, nor should you be worried about failing it. The purpose is simply to understand how you process and utilize information—in other words, how you learn best. Your performance on tests will not impact your grades in school and won’t be shared with any outside organizations (e.g., admissions boards, workplace HR).
MindWell NYC does not bill health insurance directly. We are happy to provide you with statements at the end of the month which can be submitted to your insurance company for reimbursement as per your plan.
Phone: 646-809-5440
Email: intake@mindwellnyc.com
Address: 80 8th Avenue, Suite 600
New York, NY 10011
(NE corner of 8th Avenue and 14th Street)