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Person-Centered Psychological Testing Services for Adults and Children

Offering Neurodiversity-Affirming Autism and PDA Evaluations for Adults, Adolescents, and Children, Pre-Adoption Evaluations, and Testing of ADHD, Learning Disorders, and other needs.

In the back of your mind, you know something is different.

You have always felt like you had to work harder than everyone else. Other people just seem to pick up on things that you have to spend hours analyzing and memorizing. You’ve figured out strategies to get by and accomplish what you need to, but you’re constantly exhausted afterwards. Privately, there are things about yourself that you share with almost no one.

Whether you have been wondering about a particular diagnosis for years, traits have recently been brought to your attention by others, or it is something you are newly considering due to a family member’s diagnosis, having answers can be life-changing. The adults we work with often want to know if they have Autism or ADHD for their own peace of mind. Many have taken online tests or quizzes or found information online about Autism, PDA, or Asperger’s that has resonated with them.

Woman looking thoughtful

We understand that teens and adults with a lifetime of masking look different than the typical stereotypes of autism and ADHD. We are proud to offer neurodiversity-affirming evaluations to people who want to better understand themselves. We take the time to understand what you are experiencing, and we specialize in adult autism evaluations for those who have been previously undiagnosed. Having information may help you understand yourself and also how to approach differences with others. It can help with choosing a career path, being able to discuss difficulties with friends and partners, and lead to accommodations in school or work.

You are not alone. And all that hard work and masking has gotten you where you are today—but maybe things could be easier and better.

Or maybe it’s attention

Maybe you can’t figure out why the same task takes you three hours one day and ten minutes the next. You’ve bought all the supplies for your new venture and then never took the supplies out of boxes. Deadlines sneak up on you even when you wrote them down. You constantly lose and forget things, or you have a meticulous system of where, when, and how to place reminders so you can keep it together.

ADHD in adults gets missed constantly, especially in people who did well in school or who learned to mask their symptoms with sheer effort. It sometimes gets misdiagnosed as anxiety or written off as a personality trait. A thorough evaluation looks past the surface at what’s actually driving your difficulties, so you get an answer instead of another label that doesn’t quite fit.

Or PDA

Clients often find us after their child was diagnosed with PDA (Pathological demand avoidance / persistent drive for autonomy/ pervasive drive for autonomy). Or after hours scouring the internet, trying to figure out what makes them do the things they do. PDA people have often had really challenging lives, sometimes with multiple previous diagnoses and intense feelings of being misunderstood and invalidated by others.

Whether clients have heard about it or not, understanding PDA traits can help them better understand their personal profile. All standard evaluations include screening for PDA to determine if that framework may impact any specific recommendations.

Support for parents seeking answers

If you are a parent who is searching for answers for your child, you are tired of seeing your child struggling. Without knowing how to help them, they are falling through the cracks. It might be the way they interact with other kids, information they seem to be missing when listening or reading, difficulty in a particular school subject, debilitating anxiety, or extreme behavior either at home or at school. You might be getting notes home from teachers about your child’s behavior or attention, or your child may hate school and refuse to go. If the school does not recognize or understand why your child is acting in a particular way, they cannot provide the supports they need to be successful.

Your child is not getting the help they need, and every day they are falling further behind. You have tried to support your child, but without knowing exactly what the difficulty is, it’s been a lot of effort for minimal results. You need to get to the bottom of things so you can form a plan and get your child back on track. Many of the families we’ve worked with have wondered about diagnoses like Autism or PDA, but haven’t known where to turn. Others have gotten evaluations but felt that they were “cookie cutter,” failed to miss more subtle symptoms, or were not personalized to their child’s needs.

When done well, psychological evaluations can be powerful and help change the trajectory of one’s growth and development. Comprehensive evaluations can identify areas of strengths and weaknesses and justify IEP goals in particular areas. They can provide information and evidence to determine whether a school is the best fit for a student’s needs, or whether adaptations or accommodations are needed so a child or adult can be competitive with their peers. They can also identify the most effective interventions and take the guesswork out of it.

Appointments are available over telehealth and in-person.

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Child and adult playing with building blocks together

Psychological testing

An Evaluation From The Help & Healing Center Can Help

The right evaluation at the right time can lead to years of treatment and help, additional resources available to you and your family, and insight that can dramatically impact both prognosis and self-esteem. It can help you advocate for the tools in school or work that you need to be successful, and if you are struggling due to a mental health condition, it can help detail your situation in an independent medical exam (IME) so others can understand your difficulties.

Service areas

Serving families on the Chicago North Shore — and across the country

In addition to seeing clients locally, we work with families who reside in:

  • Alabama
  • Arizona
  • Arkansas
  • California
  • Colorado
  • Connecticut
  • Delaware
  • Florida
  • Georgia
  • Idaho
  • Illinois
  • Indiana
  • Kansas
  • Kentucky
  • Maine
  • Maryland
  • Massachusetts
  • Michigan
  • Minnesota
  • Missouri
  • Nebraska
  • Nevada
  • New Hampshire
  • New Jersey
  • New York
  • North Carolina
  • North Dakota
  • Ohio
  • Oklahoma
  • Pennsylvania
  • Rhode Island
  • South Carolina
  • Tennessee
  • Texas
  • Utah
  • Virginia
  • Washington
  • Washington DC
  • West Virginia
  • Wisconsin
  • Wyoming

We offer both in-person and telehealth evaluations.

Areas we serve Contact us

Dr. Jessica Myszak, Licensed Psychologist at Help and Healing Center, smiling in a professional setting

About Help and Healing Center

Dr. Jessica Myszak, Licensed Psychologist

If you are looking for someone to complete a psychological evaluation, you want someone who can understand what you need and take the steps to look at all of the information and provide you with answers.

I have done thousands of evaluations for children and adults over the years for a variety of referral questions. This experience helps me understand the needs for different types of evaluations. The assessments used, the language of a report, and the recommendations can mean the difference between a good report and a great report.

If you are wondering about autism, ADHD, or a learning disability for yourself or your child, a psychological evaluation can provide answers and guide for next steps.

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Our Specialties

Psychological Testing Can Be Used To Determine Whether an Individual Has:

  1. Autism
  2. ADHD
  3. Learning Disabilities
  4. Intellectual Disabilities
  5. Other Communication Disorders
  6. Behavior Disorders
  7. Other Psychological Conditions

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Google Reviews

Help and Healing Center

Based on client reviews

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Grateful Client

Recently

Thank you for this. It is bringing tears to my eyes because I wish we could have had this conversation 30 years ago. We finally have someone who understands. You are doing good work.

Parent Client

Recently

I don’t have the words to describe the way you have helped our family. It has taken me over 30 minutes just to figure out how to write this because words like help, healing, gratitude, respect, and appreciation don’t even come close to what you’ve actually given us. It’s so much bigger than that. You’ve changed our lives, and I don’t say that as a figure of speech. I truly wish I had the words to express the magnitude of what you’ve done for us. This diagnosis isn’t just about receiving labels. It’s about finally understanding who I am. It’s about giving myself permission to stop trying to become someone I was never meant to be. I realize now that I spent most of my life hiding my true self. I’ve always felt like my brain was broken. It’s like the world I’ve been living in speaks a language I only half way understand. But the world thinks I’m fluent because I can speak the language but I don’t always understand everything they are saying. In my mind I see it playing out like the world took a baby dolphin out of the ocean after it was born and put it on dry land and expected the dolphin to thrive on land. But the baby dolphin spent its life trying so hard to survive on land and was so close to death until you found the dolphin as an adult who somehow managed to grow on land and put me back in the ocean where I can live a more comfortable life and where I’m supposed to be. I can now find other dolphins and be myself. Not only do I have the chance to survive, I can live now with the hope of being able to actually enjoy life and maybe even have the chance of being truly happy sometimes. My whole life I have believed things about myself that simply weren’t true. Those beliefs shaped the way I saw myself and made life feel unbearable a lot of the time. Every day often felt like pain, suffering, and survival, so I found ways to cope, and they weren’t always healthy. When I first found your videos and saw how thoughtful and thorough your evaluations were, I knew you were different. I could tell your goal wasn’t simply to diagnose people — it was to help them understand themselves. In doing so it allows them to access the world in a way they haven’t been able to before. Your work didn’t just help me understand my daughter. It led me to question my own childhood, my own experiences, and the way my brain works. Most importantly, you validated feelings I’ve had my entire life but never understood. That validation has changed everything. For the first time, I feel like I’m allowed to build a life that actually works for me instead of constantly trying to force myself into one that never did. I also feel hopeful that I can help my daughter grow up with that same understanding and acceptance. Tonight, I’ll go to bed excited to wake up tomorrow instead of dreading another day. That is a gift I can never repay. Thank you. Thank you again for everything you’ve done and continue to do. I am beyond grateful that our paths crossed and that I had the opportunity to work with you.

Sarah M.

2 months ago

Everything about the process was great, regardless of the diagnosis. All of the communication, your approach, and your demeanor. I really commend you.

Michael R.

3 months ago

Dr. Jessica made me feel at ease throughout the consultation and assessments. It has changed almost every aspect of my life – relationships, self esteem, how I view myself.

Jennifer L.

4 months ago

We brought our son to Dr. Myszak recently; she was patient, flexible and kind and helped him feel comfortable. At first he was very anxious but she was willing to meet him where he was.

David K.

5 months ago

The experience felt validating, compassionate, and non-judgmental. I was able to reveal information that I wasn’t comfortable revealing to previous psychologists.

Amanda T.

6 months ago

I felt heard, understood, and not judged. It totally changed my life. It validated my experiences and took away the guilt and shame that my challenges were just character flaws.

Chris P.

7 months ago

I was really intimidated to start this process but you made it easy and comfortable, so thank you. This was a 10 out of 10.

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Get Started Today!

Book your appointment or stop by our Glenview office — send a message and we’ll get back to you soon.

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