Dr. Tamar Apelian (Psy.D.) is a licensed psychologist with nearly 20 years of clinical experience who founded A.M.P. Autism to provide leading clinical services and produce the reports used to help children benefit from critical interventions, therapies, and funding. Before starting her own practice, she conducted diagnostic evaluations at the renowned Child and Adult Neurodevelopmental (CAN) Clinic at the University of California, Los Angeles, for nine years and has trained many clinicians and researchers at UCLA and other university-based autism centers. Dr. Apelian’s diagnostic and testing methodologies have met the industry's gold standard for reliability, and her focus with A.M.P. Autism is to make her services affordable and accessible to families.
Dr. Apelian joins me today to share how she conducts neuropsychological assessments, why she looks at developmental differences to identify children’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as looking at brain behavior patterns. She dives into how to get a neuropsychological assessment even if your health insurance doesn’t cover it and how her patients get referred to her from outside agencies. Dr. Apelian also discusses what drew her to become interested in autism and developmental disorders and decide to pursue a career in the field.


“A lot of times when a child does have undiagnosed and untreated, developmental differences, they'll also have co-occurring mental health needs. It's kind of a chicken or an egg type of situation, what came first, a lot of times at the core is the developmental issues.” - Dr. Tamar


This week on The Different Learners Podcast:

●How Dr. Apelian does the tests that lead to a diagnosis, how long an assessment takes and why she also spends time with the parents to get some background on the child
●The types of data she collects and why she is looking at social communication, behavioral functioning, and play skills
●How Dr. Apelian is currently structuring her assessments over Zoom, and why she builds time to play into her assessments
●The danger of leaving developmental differences untreated and the factors that mean that addressing underlying developmental needs is really imperative.
●What kinds of processing disorders she diagnoses and why it can help to have those extra details on a child’s IEP
●Importance of auditory integration training and what parents can do to help their child
●Barriers to diagnosis and treatment and how to navigate finding the right doctor for your child

Resources Mentioned:

●Vista Del Mar
●Autism Speaks
●Self Advocacy Network
●Neuro Diversity Network
●International Dyslexia Association
●John Tracy Clinic


Connect with Dr. Tamar Apelian:

●A.M.P Autism website
●Dr. Tamar Apelian on LinkedIn


Connect with Different Learners:

●Different Learners on Instagram