For individuals in New York and across the United States
Psychological Assessment
Have you found yourself wondering...
Do I have Autism? ADHD? PTSD? Borderline Personality Disorder? Why do I struggle so much with relationships? Why can't I focus in class?
Perhaps you find yourself wondering, why is school so difficult? Why can’t I keep up with all my responsibilities at work? How can I learn to focus better? How do I get clearance for bariatric surgery? How do I make sure my loved one stays in this country? Maybe you’re wondering, why have I struggled for so long? Or – what do I even call what I’ve been struggling with? Things haven’t felt right for a while but it’s hard to know what it even is.
Polaris Psychology offers comprehensive, psychological assessment, tailored to your unique needs and get the answers you need to move forward.
Our psychological assessments are comprehensive and broad, looking at the whole person to best understand what is going on, what to call it, and what to recommend. They are also specific and narrow, tailored to what you want to understand better.
Here’s what I offer
You’re a complex human being who deserves a highly individualized, personally tailored assessment to understand the many layers and facets of you.
When you go to your primary care physician’s office for a blood test or an x-ray, you’re looking to better understand what is going on inside you. Psychological testing goes many steps beyond this in complexity, time, and understanding. Unlike your primary care physician, a psychological assessment invests many hours into you, learning about your history, your life, your strengths and weaknesses, and how to help you best move forward on a path towards living your best life. It’s likely the most comprehensive type of evaluation that exists today in the healthcare field.
We all have strengths and weaknesses. Psychological assessment can help you identify in a comprehensive, in-depth way what your strengths and weaknesses are, what your challenges are, and how to most effectively help you overcome your challenges, without the years of trial and error.
Better understand what is going on inside you without years of trial and error.
A Psychological Assessment can help.
Take the first step towards understanding yourself and unlocking your potential. Contact us today to schedule your comprehensive psychological assessment. Gain clarity, overcome challenges, and live your best life. Don’t wait, start your journey now.
Psychological Assessment Services
Comprehensive Assessment
The most broad type of psychological testing, aimed to look at all or nearly all aspects of a person. Comprehensive psychological testing often is focused on looking at many different aspects of a person to best understand how they live in this world. We look at how you think, what your strengths and weaknesses are, how you experience feelings, how you behave, how your social relationships are, and more.
Diagnostic Clarification Assessment
This type of testing can be like comprehensive testing in that it looks at a wide range of different aspects of a person’s life, but is often focused specifically on particular diagnoses. Sometimes, this testing can be broad because it looks at whether an individual fits multiple diagnoses or not and determining this can involve looking at a wide range of different aspects of the person’s life.
Personality-Focused Assessment
This type of testing is more focused, specifically looking at a person’s personality. This type of evaluation is looking at what unique personality traits, characteristics, and patterns of behavior one possesses. This type of assessment is focused on learning what makes you you.
Academic Assessment / Cognitive Assessment
This type of evaluation is focused on learning how a person performs in an academic or work based environment. It can also be focused on specific types of learning, thinking, memory, or focus based challenges. This evaluation will conclude with helping you learn what your strengths and weaknesses are, what factors may be impacting your ability to succeed in a work or school environment, and recommendations to help you succeed.
How much does an assessment cost?
You are worth the investment.
A comprehensive psychological evaluation is an investment of time, energy, and money. The cost for an assessment is $6,985, which covers the cost of the clinical interview, testing, the comprehensive written report, and the feedback session.
Investing in a comprehensive psychological evaluation is a valuable tool that can support your mental health journey by providing professional analysis. Our comprehensive assessments allow for the considerable complexity that often develops in the assessment process and can adapt with you in examining your unique qualities.
Where does the assessment happen?
At our practice, we go above and beyond to ensure your borderline personality disorder evaluation experience is both seamless and tailored to your needs. We understand that distance can be a barrier. That’s why we offer the flexibility of traveling to a location near you, bringing our expertise right to your doorstep. But that’s not all – we also want to make the process as comfortable as possible for you. That’s why we’ve made parts of the assessment, such as the comprehensive intake and feedback session, available for remote participation, so you can complete them from the comfort of your own home. With our commitment to accessibility and convenience, your path to understanding and support becomes that much smoother.
It’s possible to get answers. Imagine a life where you could…
- Figure out who you are and what direction to go in next.
- Gain a greater understanding of yourself and those you choose to share yourself with.
- Create a more meaningful life based on who you are and what you desire.
The Assessment Process
Step 1: Get Started Today.
Book a free 15 minute consultation. We will talk about your unique needs in an assessment and whether we can provide you with the type of assessment you need. Click here to schedule some time on my calendar today.
Step 2: Begin the assessment process.
An assessment begins with a comprehensive look at you, your current life, and your history. This whole person perspective helps us best understand you and what we are attempting to better understand.
Step 3: Complete the testing.
Complete a variety of different types of tests. These are highly varied and could include things that look at how you think, what you feel, how you focus, how you function in everyday life, work, and school, other people’s perspectives of you, etc.
Step 4: We analyze the results and complete your report.
We put together the multi-faceted layers of the information we’ve collected from you throughout this process. Understanding all of this information and how it fits together takes time, training, and an investment. This step encapsulates well how important and valuable it is to have a doctoral level, highly trained testing psychologist. (See more in the FAQ Section)
Step 5: Meet for a feedback session with Dr. Amanda Mead.
We will sit down together to make sense of the final product of the psychological evaluation – the assessment report. Meet from the comfort of your own home to ask questions, seek clarification, and learn where to go from here.
This feedback session is an opportunity to help you gain clarity and ask questions, helping you determine where to go next with this information and how to help you seek next steps on your path to healing. With greater clarity, direction, and personalized recommendations, next steps towards healing should be visible – to name a few examples: that could look like obtaining a diagnosis that can help you receive accommodations, or identifying what diagnoses are capturing your experience and what type of therapy treatment is best in addressing those challenges.
Step 6: Go out into the world with greater clarity and direction, with a highly customized evaluation of your unique strengths and needs
Dr. Mead is happy to pass on your evaluation to other treatment providers at your direction to facilitate transition of care
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a psychological assessment?
A psychological assessment is a comprehensive evaluation conducted by a highly trained doctoral level clinical psychologist to gain a deeper understanding of an individual’s thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and mental well-being. It involves a series of standardized tests, interviews, and observations that help assess various aspects of a person’s psychological functioning, such as cognitive abilities, personality traits, emotional patterns, and social skills.
The assessment process aims to provide valuable insights into an individual’s strengths, challenges, and potential areas for growth. The results of the assessment can inform treatment planning, offer personalized recommendations, and assist in developing strategies to enhance overall well-being and personal development.
Ultimately, a psychological assessment serves as a valuable tool to better understand oneself and make informed decisions to support mental health and overall quality of life.
What makes a clinical psychologist so unique in providing psychological assessments?
Clinical psychologists specializing in psychological assessment possess unique, extensive experience, rigorous training, and ongoing supervision, making them uniquely qualified to conduct formal psychological evaluations. Unlike a cursory understanding gained from a brief workshop, these professionals have dedicated years at the highest level of psychological training to mastering the intricate nuances involved in interpreting diverse data gathered during the assessment. Their expertise enables them to analyze and synthesize complex information, draw accurate conclusions, and provide comprehensive insights into an individual’s psychological functioning. Trusting a clinical psychologist for a formal psychological evaluation ensures that the assessment is conducted with the highest level of professionalism, expertise, and ethical standards, resulting in accurate and meaningful findings that can guide treatment decisions and foster personal growth.
Where will a psychological assessment take place?
This will depend upon what kind of assessment you are seeking. If you are seeking a type of evaluation that requires cognitive assessment, like IQ testing or academic testing, then you will need to be assessed in person. If your assessment does not include this type of testing, then your evaluation can take place completely virtually.
If your evaluation needs to be conducted in-person: Psychological assessment services will involve meeting in person at our office in Milford, New Hampshire. Meeting in person to perform these services ( administration of certain assessment measures) is important to ensure the accuracy of the testing measures. The comprehensive intake sessions and feedback sessions can be conducted virtually or in person.
The testing process can involve 1 to 3 meetings, depending on the complexity of the assessment and unique needs of the individual. The location where psychological assessments will be administered is at our office at 52 Nashua St, Milford, New Hampshire 03055
What does a day of testing look like?
We typically schedule testing days on Thursdays with an hour long break lunch. These days are often many hours long in length. The testing day depends on the areas we will plan to take a look into, but generally, testing days may consist of brain games, puzzles, academic-type work like reading and writing, and perhaps some clinical type interviews. We will make sure to walk you through what the testing day will look like and how to prepare yourself or your child for it. These days are often many hours long in length.
How much does a psychological evaluation cost?
We offer many different types of psychological assessment, each of which is customized to the needs of our client. Because of this, no single price can fit every type of assessment.
To find out how much an assessment would cost for your unique needs, please get in touch with us so that we can get you the information you need.
To get started, fill out our contact form or send us an email at info@polaris-psychology.com
Do you accept insurance for psychological assessments?
In order to best serve you and your unique needs for a psychological assessment, we are not currently accepting insurance. By not accepting insurance, we are able to fully invest our time, energy, training, and expertise in best serving and understanding you and your unique needs without limitation. This means we can spend however much time might be needed to best evaluate, understand, and provide for you.
Depending on your personal preferences and insurance plan, you may be able to use your insurance provider to pursue full or partial reimbursement for our services as an “out-of-network provider”. We can provide you with documentation to seek reimbursement for these assessments.
Will I get a diagnosis from this?
Possibly. Psychological assessments are focused on evaluating you and finding the best ways to describe what is happening in your life. This often does involve finding a diagnosis or diagnoses that best capture your experience. However, it is important to consider that evaluations are focused on evaluating you and if fitting, giving you a diagnosis. Sometimes, we think we might have a particular diagnosis (like Bipolar Disorder or ADHD) and after an assessment, we learn that our struggles are actually better described and captured by other diagnoses or labels. A diagnosis is not guaranteed, but they are often a product of an evaluation.
