Psychological Services

Psychological Testing

The Psychological Department (PD) at Multilingual Psychotherapy Centers (MPCI) is a clinical consultation service, offering psychological evaluations, assessment and testing in native English, French and Spanish, as well as most other languages with the use of trained translators. Patients referred to our department (PD), often have a multitude of presentations, including complex or confusing clinical presentations, a history of compromised functioning at home, work, in interpersonal relationships, or at school, and sometimes presenting with co-morbid medical conditions and/or legal involvement.

Evaluations are specifically designed to answer important clinical questions, including differential diagnosis, appropriate placements when needed, optimizing treatment strategies, and progress monitoring.  All of our professionals are specialists with extensive training and experience conducting psychological evaluations, assessments and testing. We collaborate with referring and treating professionals, to ensure that our evaluations address the specific concerns of each patient.

To help understand our services, it may be helpful to consider psychological testing and assessments are similar to medical tests. If a patient has physical symptoms, a physician may order X-rays, blood or other medical tests, to understand what’s causing symptoms. The results of the medical tests are used to develop a more clear and targeted treatment plan.  Psychological evaluations serve a similar purpose. Psychologists use tests and other assessment tools to measure and observe a client’s behavior to arrive at a diagnosis and help guide treatment, services and rehabilitation when needed.

Tests and assessments are two separate but related components of a psychological evaluation. Psychologists use both types to arrive at an understanding of the patient, diagnosis and a treatment plan.

Testing involves the use of standardized, norm referenced  tests including questionnaires or checklists.  As an example, a norm-referenced test of a child’s reading abilities can rank the child’s ability compared to other children of similar age or grade level. Norm-referenced tests have been developed and evaluated by researchers and proven to be effective for measuring a particular trait or disorder.

-Assessment can include different components such as norm-referenced psychological tests, informal tests and surveys, interview information, school or medical records, medical evaluation and observational data. A psychologist determines what information to use based on specific questions being asked. For example, assessments can be used to determine if a person has a learning disorder, is competent to parent, has a psychiatric need, or has a traumatic brain injury.

When blended together, testing and assessment allow a psychologist to see a clear picture of a person’s strengths and limitations, and answer referral question.

At MPCI, our Psychological Department offers a wide variety of testing and assessments; we accept many major insurances (please double check by contacting us through a telephone call or email). When services are not covered by insurance, we have a lowered and scaled fee, that offers significant savings for patients interested or needing our psychological services, with significantly lowered costs relative to the community, making it more affordable to most; please inquire directly with our department.

We have been serving our community with psychological testing and assessment, full time, for the last 17 years, and offer a list of services too large to be comprehensively described; we strive to serve the community within 2 to 6 weeks.

Our psychological Department addresses conditions that include the following:

• Difficulty in learning, attention, behavior, socialization or emotional control
• A disease or developmental problem that affects functioning
• Anxiety disorders
• Mood disorders
• Oppositional defiant disorder/conduct disorder
• Post-traumatic stress disorder
• Neglect/Abuse
• Substance abuse
• Autism spectrum disorders
• Attention deficit disorder
• Language disorders
• Learning disabilities
• Intellectual impairment
• Prenatal substance exposure
• Developmental difficulties that may be associated with factors such as removal from nuclear home, adoption, malnutrition, prematurity/ low birthweight, etc
• Psychosexual evaluations
• Psychoeducational evaluations
• Parenting Capacity Evaluations
• Court Mandated Psychologicals