DevPed and neuropsyche team won't talk to MH team.

Shari

IsItFridayYet?
Short history...I agreed to another evaluation on wee difficult child, with 2 conditions. 1- they test for the big picture, not a specific little area of diagnosis, and they complete the testing, and 2 - they talk to the MH team working with wee difficult child and take their input and concerns into account prior to the testing.

Well, the testing lasted 4 hours, and they did not talk to MH before the testing. Wee difficult child had another appointment with behavior therapy today. At the last appointment, the evaluation team still had not talked to her (evaluation was almost 3 weeks ago) so she made a note to contact them. I asked her about it today, and guess what? She called and they politely told her they'd give her a copy of the report when it was finished. They wouldn't take any info from her.

I may have a meltdown Wednesday at the report meeting.
 

timer lady

Queen of Hearts
Shari,

As frustrating as this is, it's taken me years to put together teams that would communicate with one another. We have so many factors in the tweedles treatment teams that we are using psychiatrist (who kindly volunteered) as the head of the treatment team & mental health case manager as the teams lead.

If & when there is an issue I will contact psychiatrist, who in turn contact mental health CM (they work in the same bldg). Mental health CM in turn pulls the team back into place - both wm's & kt's teams.

And it's taken a long time to pull this coordination together. I've fired people who didn't work with the treatment team & pulled new people in. I've made everyone who works with either kt or wm that this is a team effort & to expect quarterly staffings.

Now our situation may be a bit more complex, however it sounds like you need to use the same attitude to the professionals treating your difficult child. If the professionals can't be professional I wouldn't want them treating my difficult child.
 

smallworld

Moderator
I'll be the dissenting voice here. I'm not sure this is all that unusual. In our experience, neuropsychologist testing is supposed to be "objective." In other words, the neuropsychologist draws diagnostic conclusions based on the actual test results and his own clinical observations. The neuropsychologist report then guides the treatment for the psychiatrist, therapist and any other professional involved with your child.
 

Shari

IsItFridayYet?
Thanks for listening to me gripe yet again. I'm doing a lot of it lately.

Linda, if anyone has been there done that, you have. Thanks for the "push", if you will. I think you're right, I may have to get uglier to get these people to work together.

SW, I am certain what was done in 4 hours is not in any way a complete neuropsyche evaluation, and I appreciate that it should be an objective review, however, before they even began, they told me they had talked to devped to see what they needed to be looking for. Yet it was the MH side that is seeing something different than devped, and ALL of this resulted from asking that the MH side's request for behavior interventions for autistic tendencies be granted instead of continuing to throw medications at him (as devped wants to do). Devped's response to that request was another neuropsyche evaluation, which devped had input to, and MH did not. Does not seem very objective to me.

I dunno. Might be another earthquake at 2pm central tomorrow.
 

dreamer

New Member
It can be so frustrating getting things rolling well.....and complicated by - sometimes- the availability and accessability of resources, enough docs etc.
I do tend to agree with smallworlds explanation about input for testing stage....
and I know until I began to travel so far for docs, we had little choices in who we had to deal with for testing, treatment etc.
 

smallworld

Moderator
Shari, did YOU tell neuropsychologist that autism was something that needed to be ruled in or out?

My understanding is that the younger the child, the shorter the neuropsychologist evaluation. I'm not positive, but it may be as complete as they can get at your difficult child's age.
 

Shari

IsItFridayYet?
They didn't ask me, either.

I let them know that there's a lot of folks who feel that's the appropriate diagnosis, tho. The only info they gave as we left were other causes of his autistic-like traits. Kids with adhd self stimulant, too, etc.
 
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