Teen Brain Program™️
The Teen Brain Program™️ is our innovative and unique comprehensive evaluation process developed to assist families with children and teens who have struggled with complex issues and incorrect previous diagnoses. Our goal with The Teen Brain Program™️ is to provide families with answers, clarity, and direction once and for all.
Our specialists independently evaluate the entire family system and utilize a collaborative integrated approach to identify what is truly the primary diagnosis. Working together, the team provides joint treatment recommendations to each teen’s identified needs. A final evaluation and detailed report and analysis is provided at the end of the evaluation that can be passed on to pediatricians, teachers, school administrators, outside therapists, and/or others involved in the lives of your child.
There is not a more helpless feeling than seeing your child struggle and being powerless to help them. Things become worse when you seek insight and advice with a specialist and end up going nowhere. When families continue to struggle and are not getting answers about what is going on with their child or how to fix the problem, the lack of clarity and direction can become maddening.
The Teen Brain Program™️ evaluation is designed for families with children who struggle with complex psychological and behavioral issues, complex medical problems, head injuries, co-occuring issues, and those who have had multiple different diagnoses by various providers or for parents who simply want to truly know what is occurring with their child beneath the surface and how to treat it.
PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION
Parents will meet with our Teen Brain Program™️ psychologist to outline a detailed history, an account of previous treatment and diagnoses, and to acquire the necessary psychological, relationship and family system information. In a second session, the adolescent will come in for an individual intake where similar information will be required but from the perspective of the patient. The sum of this information allows us to have an idea for the individual issues, necessary parenting adjustments, as well as the family system perspective.
NEUROLOGICAL EVALUATION
Neurological problems can often be overlooked in mental health assessments and can contribute directly to what is incorrectly interpreted as psychological issues. The family will meet with our pediatric and adolescent neurologist who will assess for structural abnormalities, metabolic functioning, familial heritable issues, seizures, movement disorders and other neurological issues that could be leading to the presenting symptoms to ensure the psychological symptoms are not part of a bigger picture and neurological disorder. Sometimes more extensive evaluations are ordered during the exam and examples would be MRI, EEG, and metabolic testing.
PSYCHIATRIC EVALUATION
Our adolescent psychiatrists play a key role in the physiological as well as psychological portions of the Teen Brain group consultations. The psychiatrist assigned to the case will review relevant history, take the required vitals, look at the client from a physiological perspective and will often conduct psychogenetic testing in order to know what medications will have a higher likelihood of being effective should we determine that medication is warranted and/or the current medications need to be adjusted or changed. We often find that Teen Brain patients arrive to our practice misdiagnosed and thereby mismedicated due to less comprehensive assessments.
NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT
Your family will meet with our neuropsychological tester to determine the approximate number of testing sessions necessary for us to conduct a thorough evaluation. Neuropsychological testing allows us to better understand your child's thoughts and feelings as well as underlying issues which can contribute to your teen's current challenges. The assessment further provides detailed information about how your child is functioning cognitively and will point us towards what is the primary psychological issue.
The cognitive portion of the assessment enables us to examine your child's attention, IQ, memory logic and reasoning, processing speed, whether they are a better auditory or visual learner and how wide of a discrepancy there is between the two as well as identify any potential learning disorders.
The psychological testing portion of the evaluation allows us to gain insight into your child's behavior, personality and capabilities. The results allow us to have the clarity to be able to determine what are and are not the primary psychological issues that your child is exhibiting.
Combining the subjective rating forms with the validity testing from our psychological portion of the assessment in combination with the cognitive testing information enables us to be able to identify what is and is not an issue with your child as well as what is the primary issue and we will also have the data to support our findings.
GROUP CONSULTATION
Once our individual evaluations are completed, the entire team meets together to discuss your case and our respective findings. The team often uses the results of the neuropsychological testing last in order to confirm our diagnosis and also support it with data.
FAMILY FEEDBACK MEETING
When all of the stages are completed, our entire team will meet with you and your child to discuss our findings. You will be given a written summary to follow as our team discusses the information with you. The information will be presented in a way that is understandable and digestible to you and your son or daughter.
In some cases our findings will necessitate solely meeting with the parents. Should this occur, we will let you know this in advance of our meeting and we will recommend a separate meeting for your child with our neuropsychological tester so that your son or daughter can understand our findings in a clear and concise way at a later time.
In addition to the summary, you will receive a full report some time after the family meeting. This report will not only be more detailed and contain our written recommendations but it can also be used to secure accommodations for your child at their respective schools and can be used to create or amend a 504 or IEP if applicable.