He­len Shair-Singh

Ms. Anal­isa Wit­tet, neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist and daugh­ter of the soil, com­plet­ed her un­der­grad­u­ate stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham and post­grad­u­ate stud­ies at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. She opened the prac­tice in part­ner­ship with Flori­da-based Dr Ge­of­frey Kan­ter, who is dou­ble board-cer­ti­fied in Pe­di­atric and Adult Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy in the Unit­ed States. Dr Kan­ter runs the largest pri­vate be­hav­ioral med­i­cine group in Flori­da, with a staff of over 40 psy­chi­a­trists, coun­selors, psy­chol­o­gists, and neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists.

Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy rep­re­sents a high­ly spe­cialised dis­ci­pline with­in the field of psy­chol­o­gy. It en­tails com­pre­hen­sive eval­u­a­tion of all pri­ma­ry ar­eas of brain func­tion­ing as it seeks to iden­ti­fy and eval­u­ate the ex­act na­ture and ex­tent of re­port­ed con­cerns or changes in be­hav­ior. Brain func­tion is as­sessed through the use of non­in­va­sive tests, pri­mar­i­ly ver­bal and pa­per and pen­cil type tasks. Cog­ni­tive ar­eas as­sessed for po­ten­tial dys­func­tion in­clude: at­ten­tion, mem­o­ry, vi­su­al-spa­tial func­tion­ing, lan­guage skills, high­er lev­el prob­lem-solv­ing, and vi­su­al-mo­tor speed and co­or­di­na­tion. The as­sess­ment al­so ex­am­ines emo­tion­al and mo­ti­va­tion­al is­sues.

For ex­am­ple, a pa­tient may seek to de­ter­mine the ex­tent to which their brain func­tion has been af­fect­ed fol­low­ing an in­jury (e.g. a blow to the head, stroke, tox­ic ex­po­sures, brain dis­ease, sub­stance abuse, etc.), but very of­ten there is no known med­ical con­di­tion that would ex­plain the symp­toms or be­hav­ioral changes. Anal­isa & her team, us­ing pre­cise meth­ods of eval­u­a­tion, can at­tempt to iden­ti­fy the root cause of the prob­lem and there­by de­ter­mine what treat­ment is most ap­pro­pri­ate.

In an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the use of neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy, let's say there are 3 chil­dren in a class­room, all la­beled as "inat­ten­tive". The teacher re­ports this to the par­ent, who is then con­cerned as to whether the child may have a true at­ten­tion deficit dis­or­der or AD­HD. How­ev­er, this be­hav­ior could be the re­sult of sev­er­al things, such as:

1). The child may in­deed have gen­uine at­ten­tion dis­abil­i­ties which are out of their con­trol, meet­ing the cri­te­ria for AD­HD

2). The child may have in­tact at­ten­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties but is sim­ply op­pos­ing by re­fus­ing to pay at­ten­tion

3). The child may be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing sig­nif­i­cant de­pres­sion/anx­i­ety, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for them to fo­cus on their work.

Once the source of the prob­lem is iden­ti­fied, the rec­om­mend­ed treat­ment is more like­ly to be ef­fec­tive. For ex­am­ple, giv­ing an op­po­si­tion­al child AD­HD med­ica­tion is not go­ing to solve the prob­lem.Wit­tet be­lieves that there was a def­i­nite need for open­ing her prac­tice in this coun­try as cas­es of neu­rocog­ni­tive dys­func­tion is very preva­lent here but the fa­cil­i­ty to eval­u­ate them was ex­treme­ly lim­it­ed, and she was al­ways aware of the fi­nan­cial strain im­posed when seek­ing such ser­vices abroad. It was ac­tu­al­ly that fact that made her se­lect neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy as her spe­cial­ty. She hopes to see an in­creased aware­ness and avail­abil­i­ty of spe­cialised ser­vices that sup­port the work of our med­ical pro­fes­sion­als.

In ear­ly 2012, when Dr Kan­ter agreed to come on board, Wit­tet wast­ed no time in set­ting up her prac­tice in Trinidad. Dr Kan­ter him­self, when asked his rea­sons for agree­ing to part­ner with Anal­isa in set­ting up Caribbean Med­Pysch, re­spond­ed:"Af­ter re­ceiv­ing ex­cel­lent neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy train­ing in the UK, Ms. Wit­tet moved to Flori­da to work with our group where her tal­ent and pro­fi­cien­cy soon be­came quite ev­i­dent. We de­cid­ed to set up a neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy eval­u­a­tion prac­tice in Trinidad and I was par­tic­u­lar­ly keen know­ing the lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty of such ex­per­tise and prac­tice of neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy in Trinidad. We there­fore de­vel­oped a unique col­lab­o­ra­tion project, Caribbean MedPsych, where­by my group, Com­pre­hen­sive MedPsych Sys­tems, and I would be im­me­di­ate­ly avail­able to work with Ms. Wit­tet. This pro­vides Ms. Wit­tet's clients the ben­e­fit of ad­vanced ex­per­tise from a di­verse group of prac­ti­tion­ers".

Caribbean MedPsych of­fers eval­u­a­tion across a wide range of pe­di­atric and adult neu­ro­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal ser­vices.In Pe­di­atric ser­vices, they deal is­sues such as dif­fi­cul­ty in learn­ing, at­ten­tion, be­hav­ior, so­cial­i­sa­tion, or emo­tion­al con­trol; Ill­ness, dis­ease or de­vel­op­men­tal prob­lems af­fect­ing the brain; brain in­jury from an ac­ci­dent; birth trau­ma; neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions where brain func­tion­ing may be com­pro­mised (e.g. epilep­sy); AD­HD and Autism/As­perg­er's Syn­drome.

In Adult ser­vices, they deal with con­di­tions such as trau­mat­ic brain in­jury; con­cus­sion; De­men­tia; Alzheimer's; the cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al im­pact of Mul­ti­ple Scle­ro­sis and Parkin­son's Dis­ease; Stroke; Epilep­sy/Seizures/Pseu­do­seizures; Dif­fer­en­tial Psy­chi­atric Di­ag­no­sis (Bipo­lar, De­pres­sion, Anx­i­ety); the psy­cho­log­i­cal im­pact of chron­ic pain and oth­er neu­ro­log­i­cal and psy­chi­atric con­di­tions.

Caribbean MedPsych al­so of­fers Foren­sic/Le­gal neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tions such as ad­dress­ing cog­ni­tive and psy­chi­atric im­pact of in­juries or claims, as­sess­ing cau­sa­tion & pre-ex­ist­ing con­di­tions, with state-of-the-art eval­u­a­tion of ef­fort, ex­ag­ger­a­tion, mo­ti­va­tion and symp­tom va­lid­i­ty.You can find Caribbean MedPsych, at 9-11 Fitt Street, Wood­brook (or call 224 3460 to make an ap­point­ment).