2 mins

The differences between a psychological and psychiatric assessment

Video Description

Elena Touroni, a private psychologist based in Chelsea, describes the differences between a psychological and psychiatric assessment, in particular that a psychiatrist will also look into your physical health. https://www.thechelseapsychologyclinic.com Chelsea Psychology Clinic are a group of London psychologists and psychiatrists offering private psychological therapy and psychiatry treatment from their premises across central London and Chelsea. The private therapy sessions cover the following areas: – Acceptance & Commitment Therapy – Cognitive Analytic Therapy – Cognitive-behavioural Therapy – Couples Therapy – Dialectical-behaviour Therapy – Mentalisation Based Treatment – Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy – Schema Therapy

Video Transcription

A psychological assessment is an assessment in which we focus on your presenting problems and a lot of the background history to those. We try to understand your family, your relationships, whether you’ve had therapy before, what kind of difficulties you’ve had historically in your life, and we try to build a picture of you. So just to get a bit of a sense of how you’ve come to have the difficulties that you have just now in the context of your life story. And on the basis of that, we develop what we call a formulation of your difficulties. So it’s a little bit like putting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together and trying to come up with a new picture that gives you a better understanding of yourself. A psychiatric consultation has some added components to it which is that if you have a mental disorder that might benefit from medication, we will also look into your physical health. And we’ll look into whether your symptoms, perhaps, have the level of severity that psychological therapy alone might be too difficult to treat with. Hence, we will look at medication and how that could be of help. So that’s the additional component of a psychiatric consultation. Also in a psychiatric consultation, people can be given a diagnosis of their difficulties. Whereas, in psychological assessment, we focus much more on formulating your difficulties in a very individual way, so much more understanding you as a person rather than giving you a particular diagnosis.

Dr Elena Touroni

Dr Elena Touroni

19 June 2022

"Dr. Elena Touroni is a skilled and experienced Consultant Psychologist with a track record of delivering high-quality services for individuals with all common emotional difficulties and those with a diagnosis of personality disorder. She is experienced in service design and delivery, the management of multi-disciplinary teams, organisational consultancy, and development and delivery of both national and bespoke training to providers in the statutory and non-statutory sector."

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Dr Elena Touroni

Dr Elena Touroni is a skilled and experienced consultant psychologist with a track record of delivering high-quality services for individuals with all common emotional difficulties and those with a diagnosis of personality disorder. She is experienced in service design and delivery, the management of multi-disciplinary teams, organisational consultancy, and development and delivery of both national and bespoke training to providers in the statutory and non-statutory sector.

Having obtained a first degree in Psychology (BSc) at the American College of Greece, she completed her doctoral training at the University of Surrey. Dr Touroni is highly experienced in the assessment and treatment of depression, anxiety, substance misuse, personality disorder, eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder, adjustment disorder and relationship difficulties. She works with both individuals and couples and can offer therapy in English and Greek.

She is trained in several specialist therapeutic approaches such as Schema Therapy for individuals and couples, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness-based approaches and Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT).

Dr Touroni has held a variety of clinical and managerial positions including as Head of Service in the NHS. Further she has held academic positions for the University of Surrey and the Institute of Mental Health lecturing on specialist postgraduate Masters and Doctorate programmes. As well as holding a variety of NHS positions, Dr Touroni is the co-founder of a private practice in Central London that has been a provider of psychological therapy for all common emotional difficulties including personality disorder since 2002.

Dr Touroni has a keen interest in developing preventative approaches for psychological well-being and has been involved in the co-creation of bespoke wellness retreats for transformative change for the past 5 years. She is the founder and one of two directors of The Chelsea Psychology Clinic.