Psych Eval

Jul 15, 2013

Please note, this is only based on my personal experience. Your experience may vary.

To begin, I filled out a rather lengthy questionnaire about my weight, my eating habits, and any addictive behaviors I may have. That was sent home with me when I got my initial paperwork. I filled it out and brought it in with me for my appointment today.

Once I got there, I sat down with the psychologist and she did an IQ test. It consisted of three groups of pictures. She called out a word that was either represented by the picture, implied by the picture, or included in the picture, and I had to point at the photo that applied the most. There were probably 50 questions. I'm honestly not sure how it was scored, but she scored it before going on. The IQ test was essentially to decide whether or not I have the mental capacity to make the decision to have surgery, and whether or not I have the mental capacity to follow after-care instructions.

Once I did the IQ test, I moved on to a personality test. There were 360 questions total, and several of them were repeated multiple times and phrased differently to make sure I wasn't trying to fool the test. The questions were like, "I have had difficulties with work due to drug use." or "I have never thought about suicide." Other tests included questions about dealing with anger, how I interact with other people, whether or not I hear voices, etc. Basically, it's to screen out to make sure I don't have any underlying psychological issue that could affect my outcome. - This one was a bit ridiculous, and I had to laugh at a lot of the questions. But, I get why I had to take it.

The next two screenings included a depression screening, and a stress screening. Both were fairly short, but would've been longer had there been any red flags.

The longest screening came when we went through the initial questionnaire. She asked me several follow-up questions to my answers, and quite a few questions that weren't on the questionnaire. She did a more in-depth questioning for suicidal ideations and addictionology. She evaluated my coping mechanisms, my willingness to change, and my capacity to follow medical directions.

At the end, she went over all the information with me. She told me I was a good candidate, and encouraged me to seek additional help if I should need it later in the process. I was very nervous, like most people likely are. But, it was a very pleasant experience, and I am happy to say that I made it out to be way scarier than it needed to be. Your mileage may vary!

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