How can psychotherapy help me?
We provide support, problem-solving skills, and enhanced coping strategies for neuropsychological changes, depression, anxiety, adjustment to life changes, trauma, grief, stress management, creative blocks and optimal performance. Catskill Neuropsychology integrates existential behavioral therapy approaches with psychophysiological self-regulation, and cognitive rehabilitation. We help you manage your emotional arousal and self-control, set goals, and implement the behaviors and strategies you feel are most helpful to you. As psychologists we do not use medication in our treatment approaches. Sometimes medication can be helpful and we will consult with you and your medical doctors if it is appropriate.
Catskill Neuropsychology can help you:
- Improve your neuropsychological functioning
- Improve your self-management
- Improve your emotional self-regulation
- Help you get back to life after major injury or illness
- Learning new ways to cope with stress, anxiety, and changes in life
- Managing anger, grief, depression, and other stress reactions
- Improve attention, memory, executive functions,
- Improving your sense of well being
What is Neuropsychology.
Neuropsychology is a psychological approach that integrates clinical psychology and neuroscience. Neuropsychology focuses on brain behavior relationships. How our brains are working are the foundation for our experience as living beings. Neuropsychology has two main aspects, measuring cognitive and psychological functioning, and identifying brain-behavior relationships that relate a person's functioning. Neuropsychology can help hypothesize which areas of the brain are related to a person's symptoms. QEEG analysis is a tool that helps in studying brain area and behavior correlations. We can see if areas of brain dysregulation relate to symptoms. We can also see areas of the brain that are exhibiting compensatory patterns. The ability to relate symptoms to dysregualtions in specific areas or networks of the brain is important because when we understand the neuroscience of the symptom better, we can develop more focused treatments. This is also important in identifying and evaluating psychological injuries after an accident of illness. This knowledge helps in understanding the challenges a person is facing, and what might be done to help.
Neuropsychologists often work with neurologists, doctors of physical medicine and rehabilitation, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and psychotherapists. Neuropsychology can help document recovery of function after a brain injury or illness. Catskill Neuropsychology works intimately with these rehabilitation providers in coordinated referral and treatment. In addition Catskill Neuropsychology offers neuropsychological evaluations including QEEG analysis, psychotherapy, multimodal biofeedback, neurofeedback, and cognitive rehabilitation services for individual coping with brain injuries or illness.
What is a neuropsychological evaluation?
In a neuropsychological evaluation we assess attention, concentration, working memory, visual memory, auditory memory,verbal reasoning, visual-spatial perception, visual-spatial reasoning, executive functions, sensory-motor, social/emotional awareness, emotional/behavioral patterns, and self-regulation. We compare an individual's functioning on these dimensions with other people the same age. We also compare a persons current performance to the performance that would be expected given their history, and prior levels of functioning. We look for evidence of injury and changes from prior levels of functioning. We then relate these functions with areas of the brain that are showing a loss of efficiency and coordination found in a QEEG.
What is a QEEG?
QEEG or Quantitative EEG, is remarkable neurological imaging tool. We record brain wave patterns simultaneously from 19 different locations (standardized 10-20 locations) and compare the recording to a standardized database of EEG recordings of healthy age peers. From this comparison we can identify which areas of the brain are showing significant differences from the norm. We look at a number of metrics that gives us information about what areas are working too hard, which areas too little, and communication and coordination patterns between areas. A QEEG is used for neuropsychological-brain efficiency studies. We do not use the QEEG for diagnosing medical conditions. Catskill Neuropsychology shares its QEEG recordings and findings with referring doctors, so they can be examined from a medical perspective. The use of the 19 brain recording locations, allows sophisticated software to reconstruct the signals in a three dimensional manner that allows for location of the signal within about 7 millimeters of the actual location the cerebral cortex. A QEEG can localize brain activity about as well as an FMRI. A QEEG is better than an FMRI for electrophysiological analysis of brain function, and for imaging brain events in real time. It is inexpensive enough to be used in non-institutional settings.
The findings from the neuropsychological evaluation including the QEEG can help in determining treatment options, and tracking return of function. We can see the connection between cognitive / behavioral function and brain function.
The QEEG and neuropsychological evaluation are also used to guide neurofeedback therapy to locations related to symptoms. The QEEG can be integrated with biofeedback to allow for realtime training of specific structures and networks within the brain. When the structures in the brain that were dysrgulated become more stable and flexible, and better coordinated with other brain regions, the processes that are supported by those structures usually improve as well.
Do you take insurance, and how does that work?
To determine if you have mental health coverage through your insurance carrier, the first thing you should do is call them. We participate with few insurances directly. Many of our clients use their "out of Network" option to get reimbursed for services when we are not in their insurance network.. Check your coverage carefully and make sure you understand their answers. Some helpful questions you can ask them:
- What are my mental health benefits?
- What is the coverage amount per therapy session?
- How many therapy sessions does my plan cover?
- How much does my insurance pay for an out-of-network provider?
- Is approval required from my primary care physician?
We work directly with NYS Workers Compensation and NoFault auto insurance carriers.
Does what we talk about in therapy remain confidential?
Confidentiality is one of the most important components between a client and psychotherapist. Successful therapy requires a high degree of trust with highly sensitive subject matter that is usually not discussed anywhere but the therapist's office. Every therapist should provide a written copy of their confidential disclosure agreement, and you can expect that what you discuss in session will not be shared with anyone. This is called “Informed Consent”. Sometimes, however, you may want your therapist to share information or give an update to someone on your healthcare team (your Physician, Naturopath, Attorney), but by law your therapist cannot release this information without obtaining your written permission.
However, state law and professional ethics require therapists to maintain confidentiality except for the following situations:
* Suspected past or present abuse or neglect of children, adults, and elders to the authorities, including Child Protection and law enforcement, based on information provided by the client or collateral sources.
* If the therapist has reason to suspect the client is seriously in danger of harming him/herself or has threatened to harm another person.
