A Guide to Neuropsychological Testing for Health Care Professionals

Neuropsychological assessments are now widely used to identify learning disabilities and shape educational intervention. However, many special education teachers, speech therapists, lawyers, pediatricians, psychiatrists, rehabilitation counselors, and a host of other "helping" professions know very little about how to interpret and act on information contained in neuropsychological assessments. The neuropsychological evaluations discussed in this text help shed light on a wide variety of psychiatric and medical conditions, including learning disabilities, severe and persistent mental illness, traumatic brain injury, neuropsychiatric disorders with accompanying chronic cognitive deficits, and acquired or congenital neurological conditions.

This book emphasizes the breadth and depth of neuropsychological assessments and the many practical uses they have, such as treatment planning, diagnosis, interventions, and many more. The authors offer practical guidance on neuropsychological testing and assessment across the lifespan, from pediatric through geriatric patients. The book is designed specifically for those professionals with little to no training in neuropsychology that need to apply knowledge gleaned from neuropsychological assessments.

Key topics discussed:

• Neuropsychological testing and psychoanalysis
• Using neuropsychological instruments in school settings: possibilities and limitations
• Using neuropsychological information in vocational rehabilitation planning
• Neuropsychology and speech/language therapy

Eric R. Arzubi, MD is a second year resident in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. He plans on completing a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry in hopes of working with school-aged children who struggle with mental illness and co-morbid learning dysfunctions. Dr. Arzubi graduated with a bachelors of science from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 1991. He completed his pre-med requirements at Columbia University and graduated from the Yale School of Medicine in 2008. During his time at the Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Arzubi was a three-year member of the School's Education Policy and Curriculum Committee. Also, he was also a three-year member of the Schools Committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry during that time. He was an active member and a student leader of the Donald J. Cohen Medical Student Fellowship in Child Psychiatry for five years. In 2008, Dr. Arzubi was named a Leadership Fellow of the Connecticut Health Foundation; the goal of the Fellowship is to train future leaders to tackle racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare.

Elisa Mambrino, PhD, is a psychologist licensed in Connecticut and New York. Her clinical training, experience and interests focus upon individualized psychological, psychoeducational and neuropsychological assessment, primarily with children, adolescents and young adults. Dr. Mambrino worked as a Marie Kessel Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She also completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Yale University School of Medicine's Child Study Center. In 2003, Dr. Mambrino received her PhD from Columbia University's Teachers College in School Psychology, a program accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA). She completed an APA-accredited, pre-doctoral internship in Clinical Neuropsychology and Rehabilitation Psychology at Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan. In her career as part of a multidisciplinary treatment team, Dr. Mambrino has performed individualized neuropsychological assessments in a variety of hospital settings: outpatient clinics, day hospital, day treatment, locked inpatient psychiatric units, as well as spinal cord and brain injury rehabilitation settings.