clinical psychology and assessment of children

[Una]

Hi! I am looking for more information on psychological assessment of children, especially those that have ADHD, autism, mental ******ation or other developmental disabilities. If anyone has had experience with this and can tell me more about what it looks like, I would be grateful. Is it true that all clinical assessement and treatment planning really comes down to is a bunch of pen and paper tests, and that it is really not that in depth or challenging? I am not interested in research or psychotherapy, so if I go into clinical psych, it will be only for the assessment, and only of those particular problems. Seeing as clinicians do not really diagnose, and what they do with assessment seems quite limited, I am wondering if it is quite worth it.
I am considering OT and speech pathology as alternatives.

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[50960]

First point: clinical psychologists diagnose.
I do what you are asking about, and it is MUCH more than paper tests. IM me and we can chat about it. I am better with give and take via e-mail rather than writing it all out at once...must have ADD

 

[twiggers]

Hi Una,

I work closely with clinicians and researchers diagnosing and treating children with autism. It is much more than paper tests, as psisci mentioned.

I'm sure psi will be able to help.

BTW working with autistic children is very interesting and very rewarding....especially when you are exposed to children with varying degrees of autism ...it is truly amazing to see what some of these children are capable of.

 

[lazure]

Crack open a good book on child assessment for example by Jerome Sattler.

http://www.sattlerpublisher.com/

 

[Una]

I just wanted to say thanks to all of you for your helpful thoughts, psisci, lazure, and twiggers. Psisci, I don't have IM, but I will get it. Twiggers, where do you work: is it a hospital setting or a private center? Are the professionals you work with mostly phD level clinical psychologists, or MS level professionals trained in ABA?

 

[50960]

You can use the built in IM through SDN's site.

 

[twiggers]

I work at a place called the MIND INstitute in Sacramento. It actually houses both a regular clinical and a research clinic. On the clinic side there are mostly MDs doing assessment related from autism to organic brain damage.
On the research side it is primarily PhD level professionals.
There are a few social workers who do some assessment for us (doing Vinelands, and Mullens), but it mostly the psychologists (both clinical and developmental) doing the testing.
In fact the social worker I have worked with is usually working pretty closely with psychiatrists when we have children in who need medications for mental illnesses, but I do not usually see her actually interacting with the patients...she's usually behind the glass watching and then giving the doctor input later.

Diagnosing autism is a bit more complicated than ADHD...but it is primarily done at our clinic through the use of ADOS and the ADI-R. We also rely heavily on parent reports. Most of the children we are diagnosing are between 18 mos. - 4/5 yrs. When doing the diagnosis of autism they do allow newer post-docs to conduct the assessment, but it is always watched later by the principal investigator for confirmation.