Pediatric Brain Injury
Pediatric brain injury often goes unrecognized, especially when it occurs early in a child's life. Quite often, a child is mistakenly diagnosed with ADHD as symptoms first come to light. Too often, diagnosis proceeds to one of autism and then Oppositional Defiance Disorder. These diagnoses are too frequently reached without consideration of a brain injury.
Early brain injury quite often impacts the executive reasoning brain processes. It affects the developing child's ability to acquire language or to learn in an academic setting. When left untreated, a brain injured child is at risk of falling behind in school as they attempt to learn at the same rate as their peers. This child struggles to retain previously learned material with the compounded problem of applying that to newly learned information. Behavioral problems related to the brain as opposed to emotions result in class disruptions, inaccurate diagnosis, a lowered social emotional intelligence, bullying and eventual shunning by peers.
United Psychological is singular in its ability to evaluate and provide specific treatment recommendations for the following areas of brain functioning:
| Language | Overall language functioning, reading comprehension, reading level, oral and written language skills, pragmatic language, auditory reasoning, expressive and receptive skills, processing and comprehension and phonological processing. |
|---|---|
| Attention | Our process of evaluation will work to effectively rule out ADD/ADHD and/or another acquired attention problem such as information processing, distractibility and divided attention as well as processing speed. |
| Memory | Assessments for verbal and visual memory, retrieval and recognition, short and long term, and delayed. |
| Frontal Processes | We can identify factors of integration, selective attention, perseveration, word retrieval, expressive output issues, problem solving and adaptive functioning. |
| Social Intelligence | This aspect of the evaluation is the determining factor for adaptation in the environment. |
At United Psychological Services we can:
- Diagnose in an accurate and scientific manner using brain behavior tests and neuropsychological assessment to determine the presence of brain impairment from a neuropsychological perspective.
- Determine intervention and treatment plans based upon the deficits found in the evaluation.
- Develop specific treatment plans from emotional or behavioral intervention to cognitive/brain training.
- Work with medical professionals to determine need for further medical interventions and testing.
- Work within the child's academic setting regarding behavioral and teaching intervention, development of an IEP plan and specific methods using brain behavior principles to teach the brain injured child.
- Work with the family and school on emotional, social behavioral interventions.
- Ongoing social skills group to foster social emotional intelligence and social skills with same age peers.
- Offer brain/cognitive training to address the individually specific deficits found on the neuropsychological evaluation.
- Rule out sleep disorders related to pediatric brain injury and/or refer for medical evaluation if further diagnostics are indicated.
- Address insomnia that may be related to the brain injury using a behavioral treatment program. Address sleep environment factors hindering sleep.
