Psychological Reports for Egg Donor and Gestational Carrier Screening

Psychological tests and assessments provide valuable information that psychologists can use to determine the best treatment options. They help identify learning disorders, attention issues, or mood disorders.

Psychological Assessment

Psychological reporting is a scientific process for describing, diagnosing, and predicting behavior. It involves a wide range of variables and procedures, such as interviews, observations, standardized measures and projective tests, questionnaires, and drawings.

Standardized psychological tests or measures use a pre-defined set of questions, problems, or tasks to gather information from the person being assessed. The results are compared to the performance of a reference group (the "norm" group), and the data are reported in terms of a score.

Psychological assessments also include clinical interviews, which are designed to identify the nature of the client's presenting problem and to obtain relevant historical information. The psychologist then interprets these and the test data. The result is a written report with diagnostic impressions and treatment recommendations. This may take several sessions to complete. Each session will include a face-to-face clinical interview, a comprehensive psychological evaluation, and psychological testing. The evaluator will recommend the best tests to collect the information required for your assessment.

Tests

Psychologists use tests and other procedures to assess an individual's psychological characteristics. These standardized procedures, formal psychological tests, are administered under particular environmental conditions to obtain a sample of behavior for evaluation.

Psychological reports range from aptitude to personality to screenings for cognitive impairment. They may be given to children or adults to help a child in school or an adult in a professional setting or to determine whether a person has a mental disorder such as depression or anxiety.

Psychologists usually administer a battery of tests rather than one test in isolation. A battery of tests usually includes a projective test to assess personality, like the Rorschach or Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), an objective personality test, such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, and a semi-structured intelligence test, such as the Rotter Incomplete Sentence Test. In addition, examiner ratings and self-report interpretations are often included in a psychological report.

Interviews

Psychometric tests provide objective data useful for evaluating a client's cognitive abilities, personality traits, and mental health. Combined with clinical interviews, these tools allow psychologists to gain a fuller picture of the individual and make informed diagnoses and recommendations for treatment.

In addition to conducting the psychological evaluation, the psychologist will conduct a clinical interview or mental status examination (MSE). This is an opportunity for the patient to describe their symptoms and signs, such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicidal thoughts.

During the clinical interview, the psychologist will ask an array of questions to probe details about the client's history and current situation. A trained psychologist can identify when a person is not being completely honest or has fabricated answers. This is especially important for people struggling with addiction, who are often not fully forthcoming about their problems.

Results

Usually, the physician receives psychological assessment results in the form of a written report. It will be a few typed pages long enough to do the raw data justice but not so lengthy as to waste the physician's time. Since test interpretation requires a higher degree of clinical training than administration alone, most doctoral-level clinicians are trained in test interpretation as well. Bright Pine Behavioral Health provides comprehensive psychological reports regarding egg donor and gestational carrier screening.