Neuropsychological

To meet the needs of a number of different areas. These can be required for:

• Medicolegal purposes, subsequent to a brain injury, looking at the person’s level of function in a broad range of areas. The intention is to determine how they are functioning currently and compare that to what is estimated to be their premorbid level of function and then make recommendations to the attending medical and legal personnel.
• Capacity Assessments – these are instigated when there is concern that a person may not be able to manage their decision-making or financial issues. The intention is to ensure that people are not taken advantage of and to find alternate decision-makers for people who can't manage appropriate decisions for themselves, while strenuously supporting people in their own decision-making if they have the capability.
• Dementia Assessments – dementia can present in a number of different ways and can be quite insidious and extremely debilitating. The intention is to assess the person’s function which better assists the Geriatricians and Neurologists in management, in that different styles represent different types of dementia and different types of dementia require different forms of management. More recent research has indicated that there may be biomarkers which can identify people at risk for development of dementia but possibly a decade or two before there is clinical evidence of dementia existing. While this is a rather frightening thought and needs to be handled extremely carefully with counseling support, it also leads to the possibility of early intervention with medications and also life-style changes which could possibly slow down the process or even hopefully avoid this outcome.
• Assessments subsequent to strokes or other neurological injuries – again the intention is to find out where the person is functioning and to provide a baseline for evaluation of any interventions. There are a number of factors which impact on a person’s to different neurological events and it is important to tailor the rehabilitation program to the person’s particular situation.