A friend of mine at work is going through the process of getting approved for bariatric surgery. She's already had her initial surgical consult and just called a psych office to set up an appointment for her psych eval. She was told the evaluation will take - are you ready for this - TWO AND A HALF HOURS! WTH do they "evaluate" for two and a half hours?

What's everyone else's experience?

BTW: I had surgery in Mexico and my "psych eval" consisted in filling out a form online of maybe 20 questions. Shebang! I was "qualified" and got a call the next day asking when I wanted to have the surgery.

This first 45-60 mins is spent sitting and talking with the therapist about your history with food, family, mental health issues, etc. ; the next 60-90 mins is spent taking physiological tests that are 300+ questions. I had 2 tests one was 400 the other was 150 I think….that was what took the longest.

I was required to take the psychiatric evaluation as a pre op for my lap band. I'm sure it's going to be the same type I had. The first part was spent talking with a psychiatrist where he asked many situational questions so it was pretty drawn out. It took about an hours time. Then straight after I took some type of true false type bubble in questions exam. There were well over 500 questions involved and that really did take up to an hour and a half... so yeah 2.5 to 3 hours is pretty spot on.

Mine was 45 minutes tops. No test, spent much of my time explaining weight loss surgery to the therapist! Then she spent another 15 minutes telling me about her dad's experience with hospice (I've spend a lot of time as a hospice nurse and I think that triggered a lot of memories for her). Not a lot of time was spent exploring how I would do with the surgery.

I went through my work employee assistance program though so that I would not have to pay for a therapist so maybe you get what you pay for! I was just happy to get it over with...2 1/2 hours seems like a long time to me.

Amanda is correct about the actual tests. The MMPI was 370 questions and there was another questionaire also. However, my actual interview with the therapist was less than 10 minutes. She said I was very thorough on the questionaire and she didn't have any further questions because I had answered everything. So my advice would be to be very thorough on the questionaire and that will eliminate a lot of the interview time.

I have Kaiser and they just went over medical history. Asking lots of questions about drug use/abuse, mental history, w/l issues. No tests of any kind. Maybe the questions were tests. She wanted to know about my support at home and why I wanted to have this surgery.

It took about 45 minutes.

Kelly

I had 2 sessions an hour each. No written tests but could tell from the questioning she was looking for any signs of food addiction, past sexual abuse, or any other unresloved issues that could cause me to fail. So, I don't think 2.5 hours is too bad, and it can be helpful too.

Hope all goes well for her

I had the written test, which really didn't apply specifically to the situation. It was designed to detect mental illness, lots of questions on paranoia, compulsion all stuff like that. And it was 300 questions so it takes a good hour or hour and a half to fill out. Then I had the discussion w the doctor which was much more pertinent to the surgery. So I would say 2-3 depending on how long it takes u to fill it out and how much you talk to the doc.

Wow, I didn't realize some folks had to take tests. I just sat and talked to the guy about my history and if I was depressed, etc. was like 45 minutes at most.

Mine was a half hour. I was actually rather disapointed. the psych guy didn't even ask me about my background outside of a strictly medical context. "what kind of surgery are you having?" etc. And then I had a "fill in the bubble" test that took me 15min. and i was gone.

very anticlimatic.

I actually am glad there is some screening. My nutritionist said that she still has some patients who regret their surgery and I think the screening is important for making sure you understand whet you are doing.

Every psych does it differently it seems. The first one I called wanted me to come for FOUR visits at $200 each! I called around and found one that did it in one 45-minute visit. He asked me questions, he filled out a form and we chatted about my weight history and what I expected out of the surgery. No pain.

My psych evaluation lasted about 1 hr 15mins. No test. Just talking about my diet/weight "history" and what strategies worked and what didn't and why. It was very helpful and more like life coaching than an evaluation. She said she would then write a report and submit to my doctor.

I already had a shrink so for this it was 20 minutes. No test. That MMPI test is not accurate -- its used for a lot of other things as well. Usually your bariatric doctor will have a list of doctors for the pysch eval.

I had a one-hour (ie, 50 mins) session with the program's psychiatrist, we had a great conversation. He then wrote a letter of reco/approval to my GP and the bariatric doctors and surgeons. Easy peasy, and pretty good too.

My "doc" told me 2 1/2 hrs too, but honestly I was there maybe about an hr and 15 minutes total. He and I knew some common professional people and so because of that affiliation, I sort of had an automatic "pass". He did talk a bit about my past, history with food, expectations of the surgery, etc... Then, took 3 different tests including the MMPI. I do career counseling on the side and so I know all these tests quite well, it took me maybe 20 minutes to get through all the questions for the MMPI, and the other 2 tests were bubble type taking maybe 5 minutes each.

No biggie. One thing to keep in mind is that when the shrink can submit documentation in the form of tests taken, it can do nothing but help substantiate the person's mental readiness for the surgery when being presented to the insurance company.