3 Questions to Determine: Therapy or Testing Appointment?

Often clients come in and are unsure if they should be seeking testing or a therapy appointment. Here are three questions to help identify which is the right fit for you:

1. Did someone refer you or your child for an evaluation?

• Children or adolescents may be referred by a teacher to understand behavior concerns, attention or hyperactivity symptoms, or academic difficulties. If this is the case, then testing is a good first step to identify the concern and get some ideas on what may be helpful.
• Sometimes a primary care physician recommends psychological testing prior to prescribing medications for depression, anxiety or ADHD. If so, then testing is indicated to help your doctor identify specific symptoms and severity to help them determine if medication is needed.

2. Has there been a recent change in yourself or child?

• Are you feeling sad, nervous or having trouble focusing or remembering things? Is this different from how you normally function?
• Does your child seem sad, withdrawn or angry? Have their sleeping, eating or socializing patterns changed? If so, then testing may be the right step to help identify what is going on and identify what to do about it.
• If there is any concern about suicidal thoughts, then therapy is a better first step to help address these concerns right away.

3. Are you interested in learning about some struggles that you’ve been having for some time, but just never quite understood?

• For adults, you may notice that you’ve struggled with paying attention, but it may not have really impacted your daily life until the demands on your time have increased.
• You may have been struggling with sadness, anxiety, or anger for years and never really considered it a problem until now.
• Or, you may have a pattern of relationship choices that you wonder about. If so, then testing would be helpful in identifying some longer term things that may be going on and what steps to take to make some changes if needed.

Whatever your answer may be to these questions, letting our staff know what you are looking for is a great way to further narrow down whether testing or therapy is the best fit at this time.

Dr. Kokoris