A comprehensive psychiatric evaluation may be necessary to diagnose emotional, behavioral, or developmental disorders. An evaluation of a child, adolescent, adult, or aging adult is made based on behaviors present and in relation to physical, genetic, environmental, social, cognitive (thinking), emotional, and educational parts that may be affected as a result of these behaviors.
The common parts of a psychiatric evaluation-although each evaluation is different and each person’s symptoms and behaviors are different-your psychiatric exam evaluation may include in the hour long interview:
- Describing your behaviors, how long do they last, what triggers them
- Describing your symptoms; both physical and mental health symptoms
- Describing how the behaviors or symptoms affects work, school, and relationships
- Providing your personal and family health and mental health history
- Completing a health history, including a description of the person’s overall physical health, list of any other illnesses or conditions present, and any current treatments
- Obtaining lab tests, in some cases. These may be used to find out if you have an underlying health, emotional, educational condition and these may include:
- Blood tests including (functional testing with inflammatory markers)
- Educational assessments
- Psychological assessments/CNS-VS
- Genetic testing