Psychotherapists have to focus on a wide range of diagnostic, treatment and medication options when working with clients. Sometimes, this work can be enhanced by the use of a consultant: psychiatrists, neurologists and neuropsychologists, to name a few. This three-hour course will focus on how neuropsychological evaluation can add useful information. For example, a client might complain of poor concentration at work. Is this ADHD, anxiety or a poor “fit” of the client’s skills with the demands of the work? Neuropsychological testing can help to clarify a problem like this.

The course will address how to read and interpret the findings. Neuropsychological testing is very quantitative, but the narrative should make sense in the context of the client’s past history and the client’s presentation in psychotherapy. We will discuss how neuropsychological testing tries to address the client’s needs in psychotherapy, changes in the school/vocational setting, and (sometimes) medication.

I think my biography can be summed up with the idea that I have been very lucky in my career to work with many people who helped to develop my ideas about mental health and neuropsychology. Soon after college, I was a math teacher and it struck me that many bright and capable students did not “get” algebra. I went to graduate school interested in learning differences but I was soon exposed to many other areas of psychology. At Cambridge Hospital, I interacted mainly with social workers, psychiatrists and neurologists, and there was a lot to learn from all of them. After 25 years at Cambridge Hospital, I worked with several other agencies and my own private practice. Along the way, I was exposed to the more social aspects of mental health: The juvenile court system, the DCF, a wide range of special education services and a residential treatment center (St. Ann’s Home and School). My basic work life has been to try to make neuropsychology useful and relevant in all of these different settings.