[ImNotHere]

So when being diagnosed with mental illnesses has anyone been psychologically tested? How is this done?

Is this a better way of determining mental illnesses or is being diagnosed by a therapist a better way? Or a combination of both? How does someone get psychologically tested? My therapist never brought it up.

[Rapunzel]

Testing is more thorough and can detect things that might not come up otherwise, that is if the right tests are used. Testing also provides more specific and less subjective data that can help to support a diagnosis. This is helpful if you are trying to qualify for services based on a diagnosis or level of functioning. Sometimes testing can be used to measure progress and treatment effectiveness, particularly for research purposes but it can be useful in regular treatment to know how well you are progressing too.

I've been through psychological testing three times (not counting when I was in graduate school and we were practicing as my class learned to use psychological testing). All of the times that I was tested were because I had applied for services through vocational rehabilitation. Each time, there was some kind of IQ test (although not the same one each time), some kind of general personality inventory (used to identify possible problem areas - personality inventories are pretty general and designed to get an overall picture). Beyond that, it varies. The first time was the most thorough, and included some subjective types of testing (like Rorschach, or ink blots), which tells something about your insights and how you make sense of the world. Other tests look more in depth for specific things, like depression, anxiety, ADHD, etc.

Testing does not guarantee an accurate diagnosis. The first time for me had a lot of things right, like severe depression and social anxiety. But those things would have been just as easy to determine without any formal testing. It was about ten years before I applied for VR again and had the second round of testing with a different psychologist. Some of the tests were the same, and the results were very similar. There will usually be at least a few new insights. The first psychologist, I also saw for therapy, and he knew me pretty well (this was after the testing). The second, I never went to for therapy. I didn't feel any connection with him at all. He did identify some useful things, such as some cognitive functioning problems like lack of short term memory and problems with organizing thoughts. These were things that wouldn't have come up without testing. I compensate too well, and it doesn't show. I didn't know that I had those problems. He suspected ADHD and probably personality disorders. Most therapist I went to for treatment have thought that I had personality disorders (two or three of them).

I went to the third psychologist for EMDR initially, and through talk therapy with him identified that I have Asperger's syndrome. I had been in therapy like eight times or more over the past 20 or so years (starting after I left home, as my parents didn't support anything related to mental health). Nobody brought up Asperger's before. I did relate to it, but the therapists I went to didn't let me talk about that or even consider it. They all preferred to think that I had something they were more familiar with like PTSD or BPD. Anyway, I continued to have problems and eventually went back to this third psychologist, this time for testing. He used testing to consider whether I had ADHD (no - ruled that one out), and to establish that I do have Asperger's. As well as depression, anxiety, and also PTSD (which surprised me).

I am a therapist myself. I started graduate school in between the first and second times that I went for testing. When I went to the second one, I was already a licensed therapist. Therapy and my own self-observation were enough to identify the more common and more easily recognized diagnoses, but testing did help to find the real root that was underlying the whole time.

Mood disorders and anxiety and substance abuse disorders are pretty easy to diagnose. Bipolar disorder is a bit trickier. Personality disorders, psychosis, autistic spectrum disorders, etc. are more difficult. Sometimes more time is enough to identify them and sort them out. Sometimes testing can help with that. I would recommend testing if you have been in therapy for a long time and don't seem to be making as much progress as expected. The big drawback is that it is expensive and takes a lot of time to do testing. I hope this helps.

I just had it done and found it enlightening. I think it's only as good as the tester, though, and I fortunately have a good one. It was never offered to me either. I was the one who had to mention it and ask to be tested.