Mark Westerfield, Psy.D.
Psychological and Educational Assessments in Menlo Park, CA
Comprehensive Evaluations For children, Teens, and Young Adults: ADHD, Dyslexia, Autism, Depression, Anxiety, and More.
Meet Dr. Mark Westerfield
I specialize in neuropsychological and educational assessments for children and teens. I commonly evaluate kids who may have learning disabilities, ADHD, autism, depression, anxiety, or other mental health conditions.
Comprehensive assessments in my practice help identify your child's strengths and challenges, providing evidence-based recommendations tailored to their needs. I'm passionate about helping kids and young adults build confidence, achieve goals, manage stress, and nurture positive relationships.
Our Goals
While we will develop your specific goals for an assessment, we almost always seek to answer the following questions that are common to most families we work with:
What are my child’s strengths and weaknesses?
Why are they struggling?
How can I help them be successful and happy?
we are passionate about answering these questions thoroughly and accurately for each child.
When you gain a better understanding of how your child’s brain is unique, you will improve your ability to manage their behavior and foster their well-being. Teachers will be more informed about how to support your child in the classroom. Most importantly, your child will understand how to leverage their many strengths and know that support is available for academic or mental health challenges.
Our Philosophy
We believe that kids will do well if they can.
If your child is struggling, it is not because they are lazy, defiant, or don’t care. Challenges are likely due to skill weakness or mismatch with the environment. Maybe they need support for reading, writing, or math. Maybe they have difficulty with attention and executive functioning. Maybe they do not know how to effectively cope with stress, anger, or anxiety. In any case, we know that these challenges can be overcome when they are accurately identified and met with appropriate intervention.
We believe that assessments must focus on the whole child.
This means that giving you a clear diagnosis is only a small part of our work. It is also important that we identify what your child does well. In the long run, we want your child to thrive academically, socially, and emotionally in an environment that is well-suited to their unique strengths and personality. Every child can be happy and successful in the right conditions. Our job is to help you determine what those conditions are.
we believe Our work with you should be efficient and accessible.
We will schedule appointments as quickly as we are able. While ensuring a comprehensive assessment, we will only administer tests that answer referral questions and deepen our understanding of your child. We will provide verbal feedback 1-2 weeks after testing has concluded, and a comprehensive report will follow within 1-2 weeks of our feedback session. This report will be thorough but succinct and written in plain language.