How can a psychologist help someone with Specific Learning Disability?
A psychologist can help diagnose someone with Specific Learning Disability based on teachers’ and parents’ referrals regarding a child’s low academic performance in one or more subjects. The psychologist can conduct interviews and psychometric assessments to diagnose the child with a learning disability and understand its graveness. Then the psychologist can devise a treatment plan tailored to the child’s learning disability along with teachers, parents, and special educators to help the child gradually improve his/ her learning ability.
What are the common learning disabilities that psychologists can help with?
The common forms of learning disabilities that a psychologist can treat include Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Dyslexia, language processing disorder, dysgraphia, visual motor deficit, dyscalculia, etc.
How can a psychologist help change the family interactional patterns for helping a child with learning disability?
When a child is diagnosed with a Specific Learning Disability (SLD), the parents often may experience a variety of emotions such as grief, shock, or anger, etc. Thus, parents may require time to adjust to this new diagnosis, during which time the caregiving and parenting could get affected. Parents may also unintentionally end up carrying this frustration onto their child, which can negatively impact the child’s emotional well-being. A psychologist can help the family accept the diagnosis, learn healthy interactional patterns, and learn specific parenting skills or actions that a child with SLD may require.
How does a psychologist help in the diagnosis of a learning disability?
After ruling out issues related to hearing, vision, or development, a psychologist would conduct psychometric assessments, which would include measuring intellectual capacity as well as academic achievement testing. This would help the psychologist understand if the academic performance issues are due to individual factors or due to a learning disability.
