Psychological Testing
Psychological testing offers a structured way to understand symptoms, emotional functioning, relationship behavior, and/or cognitive functioning. Psychological tests use standardized, scientifically validated statistical tools to measure personality style, clinical symptoms, and cognitive processes. Testing can clarify diagnoses, highlight patterns of strengths and difficulty, and guide more effective treatment planning.
The internet is filled with quick online quizzes that promise to tell you something about your personality or mental health. While these self-report assessments can be fun, thought-provoking, or offer a starting point for reflection, they are very different from formal psychological testing.
Online self-assessments are typically brief, unstandardized questionnaires. They rely on your own perceptions of yourself and often lack established norms or scientific validation. While they may highlight themes that feel relevant, they should not be considered diagnostic or comprehensive.
Objective psychological testing, by contrast, uses carefully developed and research-validated instruments. These assessments are administered and interpreted by licensed psychologists and are grounded in decades of scientific study. They include standardized scoring systems that compare your responses to large, representative samples, making the results more reliable and meaningful. Importantly, objective testing often combines multiple methods—such as self-report measures, performance-based tasks, and collateral information—to create a well-rounded, evidence-based picture.
Here are a few examples of questions that psychological testing can help answer:
I am having difficulty focusing and I feel unmotivated. Are these feelings normal or do I have a clinical disorder? If I have a clinical disorder, is it ADHD, anxiety, depression, or stress?
I can’t seem to make a romantic relationship last. Am I doing something wrong?
People keep telling me I’m selfish. Do I have a narcissistic personality? Do I have autism?
I feel different after experiencing a stressful event, and people are telling me I’ve changed. Do I have PTSD?
I’ve been through a lot in my life and I know I have complex trauma. What can I focus on for the biggest healing impact?
Dementia runs in my family. My doctor wants to know what my cognitive baseline abilities are so that we can tell if anything starts to change.
I suffered a head injury and now I’m a little bit different. What is going on with my brain?
I keep ending up in the same types of relationships even though I don’t want to. How can I change this?
What is my attachment style?