Evaluation

A multi-day evaluation, usually two to three days. It’s long, it’s tiresome, and it’s a lot of questionnaires and answering questions.

There are one-on-one interviews with an evaluator, sometimes a therapist or psychiatrist, and sometimes someone just obtaining basic demographic information.

There’s going to be blood and urine testing, looking for drugs and alcohol, obviously.

There’s something called a PEth test that almost everyone has run on them. It looks for signs of alcohol use; binge drinking or chronic drinking is what the PEth test is designed to detect.

And sometimes, depending on the situation, a hair test as well, where they take some hair samples. That one looks much further back into your history.

If you are suddenly bald at your evaluation and you had a full head of hair when you were assigned to go to an evaluation… that is going to be a huge red flag. Better to just tell them at those first meetings and phone calls what they are going to find and let them confirm it during testing.

As someone who started this process by lying about almost everything I could, I can tell you from experience that it doesn’t work and will only cost you time and effort you could be putting toward yourself in a positive way.

A lot of it feels very sterile and perfunctory. There’s not a lot of feeling like you’re a patient in this process. It’s a stepwise progression, and it’s multiple days, so it’s going to be tiresome.

I’m telling you that so the tone of the place doesn’t surprise you. It’s the same for everyone who walks through it.

Usually, yes. The recommendations don’t get delivered right there and then. Most people go home and have another meeting with their physician health program, or lawyer assistance program, or whatever the equivalent is in your profession, to discuss the recommendations and decide what to do next.

The recommendation is the next page, including how long it takes to come back and what your options are when it does.

Whether yours runs two days or three. Which tests they run in your case, and how far back they look. What it costs, and what your insurance will cover. And the biggest one: what they’re going to recommend.

Those genuinely vary. The questionnaires, the interviews, and the tiredness don’t vary much at all.