neuropsychologist...

[howlongto18]

My son has never been to a neuropsychologist, and I'm wondering what to expect if we make that move.

What does a neuropsychologist do? What types of evaluations should one expect to occur? How long would it take? What are costs like? How was your insurance on handling it? Does the neuropsychologist send the info to your psychiatrist, or do they recommend a course of treatment themselves? What would I be hoping to discover with this evaluation?

Thanks in advance, sorry for all the questions, I just have no idea what it is that they do, or what the goal is with it.

 

[Jena]

Hi,

Our neuropsychologist exam was given over the course of 3 days at a hospital. It was roughly 4 - 6 hours per day with breaks for difficult child in between for lunch, etc.

The hospital did not accept our insurance so we submitted the claim form and recvd. partial reimbursement. You have to search various hospitals, I'm sure there's some out there that accept insurance I unfortunately wasnt' able to find any where we live. The total cost of it was somewhere in the vicinity of $4,000.

It was a ton of testing ranging from attention testing, to standard testing for learning disabilities, iq testing. It was very comprehensive, and I was enlightened by the report. In the end we recvd. a diagnosis of major depressive disorder and severe anxiety disorder, our BiPolar (BP) diagnosis came later. The dr. who performed the evaluation made suggestions on how to proceed with my difficult child. The report was not forwarded to our pyschdoc I requested the report be sent to me directly.

I am grateful that I got it done, it gave me some insight into difficult child her emotions her feelings about herself, her negativity. Part of it is a self exam thing that the kids fill out regarding their own emotions, they range it from i think it was 1 to 10 dependent upon how they feel.

It's what began our understanding of my difficult child, also it ruled out any major learning disabilities as well.

Are you thinking of getting one done for your difficult child?

 

[howlongto18]

We've been considering it for a while, but I'm not sure. We are having to switch docs again because ours is leaving due to health issues. This will make the sixth one we've seen for him. I'm just wondering if it's necessary or beneficial. All of the docs have said unofficially that it looks like BiPolar (BP), except the first one who just said basically that it was above his pay grade. We've been going for about 2 1/2 years or so. My son is 6.

 

[Jena]

it's hard, especially when their young. I think we started our roller coaster ride around age 6 or 7 also. Have you ruled out any type of learning disabilities with other evaluations? or have you had any other evaluations done? problem by the treating pyschdoc, right? did you find them to be thorough?

 

[Wiped Out]

My son's nuero-phych. exam was done over the course of a few weeks. Due to difficult child's ADHD, the neuro-pscyh. thought it would be best to do only a bit of the exam at a time. We received a very detailed report (17 pages) and met with the nuero-pysch to go over the results. He also gave a copy to the psychiatrist (their offices are right next door).

Our son had already been diagnosis'd with-Bipolar and ADHD but much more was added and the current dxs were agreed with. It really helped us learn much more about our son.

Our insurance paid for the entire exam but we do have good insurance and Medicaid as a back up to the insurance.

 

[meowbunny]

Honestly, given you adopted I would have the neuropsychologist evaluation. You really have no idea whether there are drug or alcohol issues regardless of what a biomom might say. It really can make a huge difference in treatment plans. It is one of the few ways to determine whether there neurological issues such as foetal alcohol effect or syndrome, etc.

I wish I had heard of it when my daughter was young. By the time I did, it was pretty much too late to do anything anyway. However, I'll always wonder if it would have made a difference in her treatment when she was younger and possibly helped her in later years.

So, if you can find a way to have it done, I'd run, not walk to do so regardless of the cost. It may be one of the best investments you can make for your child.

 

[Nancy423]

I can't say how good the exams are because we haven't seen our neuropsychologist yet (school district is paying!!!) but I can say that we've been to about a dozen psychiatrists and therapists and I feel like we've really gotten no answers. I hate the fact that we seem to go thru docs like water, but on the other hand, they really didn't do us much good either. We've also had a doctor or two that unofficially threw out the words "BiPolar (BP)", but that diagnosis just isn't sitting right with me. My motto is, keep digging!! Oh and, try to always get a copy of the reports yourself, and then deliver them to the psychiatrists. (same with- any test results from any other medical doctor!!) that way you have all your medical records in house instead of trying to track them down.

 

[BusynMember]

This is a good site explaining a neuropsychologist evaluation for a child:
http://www.pediatricneuropsychology.com/

 

[howlongto18]

Thank you all, that gives me a good idea of what to expect.