Assessments:
General Information
If you’re feeling the impact of mental struggles in your life, or if you’re noticing it in your child, it can sometimes feel impossible to even begin the process of recovery. You may not know where to go, or what kind of therapy will be most beneficial. These decisions can be challenging at the best of times, and it feels even more difficult when dealing with anxiety, depression, trauma, anger management issues, or any other mental hurdle.
How Assessments
Can Help You
The first step in our process at Hopewoods is always a mental health assessment. This is how our team begins to uncover what might be causing distress in your or your child’s life. Through the assessment, we identify your strengths, vulnerabilities, and struggles.
With over a decade of serving our community, we’ve perfected the assessment process. It acts as an entry point to getting detailed and comprehensive care, made faster and simpler for people in need.
What's included?
A mental health assessment can help you get clarity, healing, and wellness in many different ways. These include:
- Understanding issues that are directly impacting your quality of life, which may lead to a psychological diagnosis and provide vital information for your treatment plan
- Gaining an understanding of your personality and how to proactively target vulnerable areas in your life
- Identifying issues related to behaviours, emotions, cognition that you may be unaware of
- Identifying your strengths and how we may use your strengths to benefit your healing journey
- Assisting with creating a roadmap of treatments that are curated for you and be provided with treatment options to pursue
- Helping you learn about your strong suits and weak points and embracing who you are
- Gaining recommendations that you may implement in your daily life that will contribute to overall well-being
- Being provided with resources for your specific problems and issues
If you’re searching for a way to gain a deeper understanding of your mental health, identify potential mental health problems at play, and get a first foothold on your way to recovery and wellness, a psychodiagnostic assessment should be your first move.
How the Assessment Works
We offer mental health assessments for both adults and children ages 6 and up who are struggling with their mental health. Each assessment is split into two sessions, which are 3-4 hours each.
The assessment consists of a semi-structured clinical interview with you. If the assessment is for a child, we’ll interview their parent(s) or caregivers. Additionally, for children, depending on the purpose of the assessment, we may also need to interview their schoolteacher to gain insight of the child’s behaviour in class and interactions with peers in order to get a complete understanding of the child’s issues, learning style, and strengths.
Throughout the interview, we collect as much information as we can, ensuring we’re able to provide the best, most precise mental care.
Topics covered include:
- Background
- Education history
- Social history
- Psychological history
- Medical history
- Present issues
From here, we continue to learn about you through a series of sophisticated tests. These measures are psychometric, meaning they have been researched, are evidenced-based, and are reliable in gaining accurate and valuable insights into your mental health. The tests we perform in an assessment may vary, but usually include questionnaires, activities with reading, writing, number sense, as well as activities with blocks for children.
When we’ve finished with the interview and the testing, we compile everything we’ve learned, analyzing and interpreting the results in order to create a detailed report. If we have a diagnosis, we’ll include it in this report, along with an array of recommendations and supports. We’ll sit down with you for another 1-2 hour session to go over this report and answer any questions you might have as well as begin a discussion on treatment options.
What happens after my assessment?
Think of a mental health assessment as the first doorway on your path to recovery. It can sometimes feel intimidating to begin, but we have always strived to make our process, our environment, and our team as supportive and welcoming as possible.
And when our final report is finished, we’ll be able to point you in the direction of a brighter future. Depending on your situation, we’ll provide you with a list of suggestions and support to help. These can include:
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)
- Online Psychotherapy Services
- Community resources
- Behavioural modifications that may be implemented in your daily life
If you’re not sure which of these services is the best choice, we offer a free 30-minute consultation offered by our psychometrists prior to the assessment services. Please call to book an appointment.
We are here to help
Our team of experienced counsellors is dedicated to providing you with a safe and supportive space to explore your thoughts and feelings.
We understand that taking the first step can be difficult, which is why we offer free consultations to help you get started. You can book online or contact us directly. Please call our staff if you have any questions.
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