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I also wanted to reannounce The Testing Psychologist mastermind group. If you don’t know what a mastermind group is, it is a group coaching experience where you will be in a group with no more than seven other testing [00:01:00] psychologists. I facilitate the group and we will talk about whatever is important to the members that day.
Three to four people will get a 20-minute hot seat experience during the group where you get to focus specifically on the issue of concern for you and basically get group coaching and support from the other folks in the group. The group starts on March 1st. I think at this point we have four of eight openings left. So if you’re interested, you can learn more at thetestingpsychologist.com/mastermind. We’d love to have you there.
Today’s guest is Dr. Brenna Tindall. Dr. Tindall is a licensed psychologist, Full Operating SOMB evaluator/provider, domestic violence Battery evaluator, and Certified Addiction Counselor. She has extensive experience evaluating and treating adult and adolescent clients who are [00:02:00] involved [00:02:00] with the criminal justice system.
She has a number of certifications in this field. You can find her full bio in the show notes, but suffice it to say that Brenna specializes in forensic evaluations across the criminal justice system. She does psychological evaluations, insanity evaluations, competency evaluations, sex offense-specific evaluations, and domestic violence evaluations, she does it all.
Anything involved with the criminal justice system; she either has a certification, is a trainer, or has presented at a conference on relevant topics in those areas. Particular presentations include sex offender risk assessments, juvenile sex offender risk assessments, cumulative career traumatic stress and vicarious trauma, and the ins and outs of psychosexual evaluations. So I’m really excited to have Brenna on the show today and I think you will enjoy it as well.
[00:03:00] Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Testing Psychologist podcast. I’m Dr. Jeremy Sharp. Today, I am talking with Dr. Brenna Tindall. Brenna, like I said, in the introduction is a, Brenna, I don’t know, would you call yourself a forensic psychologist or what’s your title?Dr. Brenna: Criminal psychologist, forensic evaluator, and then obviously, a licensed psychologist as well.
Dr. Sharp: Sure. Like I said, happy to have you on today. We’re going to talk all about like you said, criminal assessment, a little bit of forensic assessment, and particularly with sex offenders and that population. First of all, welcome to the podcast, Brenna. Thanks for being here.
Dr. Brenna: Thanks for having me. I always love talking [00:04:00] about this topic. It usually has a captive audience because it’s a very interesting world.
Dr. Sharp: Absolutely. I think that’s probably a good place to start because my question at least is, how do you get into this area of assessment in the first place?
Dr. Brenna: It’s a very good question and I’m not sure of the answer. I always look back and I’m like, oh my goodness, how did I get into this? Just like when people go to medical school and obviously from getting your PhD, the last year of our training, we have to do a residency or an internship for a year. I applied to multiple places and then wherever you match and they match up is the place that you end up.
I had applied to a certain place because I was interested in getting into more testing. I would say it wasn’t necessarily my first choice. I was a little bummed to have matched there because I was like, no, I don’t want to work with offenders at that point in my life because I had no prior [00:05:00] experience.
I think they liked my personality because it takes a certain type of personality to work in this field with a criminal. And so after doing my internship there for a year, I obviously fell in love with it and it made it very difficult to do anything other than work with that population. So I absolutely love my job.
I think a lot of people; they do fall into it. At least our agency that we work at, a lot of interns come over from different graduate programs to get the testing experience really, because when they’re trying to apply for internship, they have to have a certain number of testing batteries and we do a lot of evaluations.
So I think initially they come in looking to do that and then they get hooked on the subject matter, the interest stays. You can tell right away who’s going to stay and who’s not.
Dr. Sharp: Oh, I bet. Yeah, because it’s pretty, I don’t know if controversial is the right word, but I could certainly see it being overwhelming [00:06:00] or overstimulating or something like that for some people.
What do you think it is that drew you in or maybe some of your interns? What is it that makes you love what you do to work with such a difficult population or what I perceive to be difficult? I don’t know if that’s true.
Dr. Brenna: Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, depending on who’s referring the client and under what circumstances they’re being required to do the evaluation or whether it’s voluntary or not. For me, there’s something about it. It’s a privilege to be able to go in and try to help figure out what is it that is creating somebody to make decisions like that.
It’s such an amazing opportunity to be able to go in and help figure that out. I think people are not just their crimes, I suppose. I think that there’s a lot more behind it most of the time.
For me, it’s very [00:07:00] rewarding to be able to look at different types of crimes, whether it’s murder case or sex offense, and figure out if there are issues that are potentially mitigating and can help explain the behavior for the court system to help them make the right decisions when it comes to the level of containment or level of intervention. I feel it’s a privileged thing to be able to do.
I think right away, with people coming into this field, if there is judgment then it just is not going to work out because it’s the whole, like people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones idea. If we see judgment and you can tell by the language that people use when they’re interns and figuring out if this is going to be the right fit for them or not. Does that kind of answer your question?
Dr. Sharp: It does because like I said, I perceive this to be difficult work for any number of reasons. And so that makes sense to me, though. It’s a [00:08:00] lot like any other assessment we do or therapy where you get to have this window into someone’s life granted the circumstances are maybe a little more extreme than other people’s lives, but you get that window and you get to see what’s going on for them and what’s driving them, and maybe how to advocate for them or not advocate.
Dr. Brenna: Exactly, yes. I think going in with objectivity is super important. There’s a lot of times when I try not to look at the news ever, because I don’t want to be tainted, going into it with how a person is displayed in the media, potentially.
And then also even the police report, sometimes I like to chat with the client before I even read a police report because I want to get a sense myself of who the person is and then you match it up with what is being alleged.
Dr. Sharp: Absolutely. We can dive into so much of this. There’s a lot to talk about, but let’s back up just a little bit. [00:09:00] Can you generally say what your practice looks like these days, what kind of clients you’re working with, what kind of assessments you’re doing, and maybe what you mean by criminal or sex offender evaluations?
Dr. Brenna: Yeah. It’s the gamut of evaluation. Like I said, the place that I did my internship, it’s called Treatment and Evaluation Services. Dr. Rick May started the agency. And then I stayed on with him and then I opened up an office in Greeley and then in Fort Collins. So we have the three offices in the state.
Truly, I tell people I’m rarely in my office, I’m either in court or I’m in prison or I’m in jail or in transition between them. So there’s not a lot of sitting at a desk sometimes. There are four licensed psychologists, and all of us do this work.
And then we have a lot of, like I said, interns from various doctoral programs, master’s programs, and then several staff members who have master’s degrees in [00:10:00] social work. Some of them have marriage and family therapy. It’s a good mix of people that work for us and get that experience.
When it comes to the evaluation side of things, there’s so many. Honestly, the only thing that I probably don’t do are neuropsychological evaluations. We’ll do the screens, but refer those out.
In terms of the process, maybe it would be helpful to explain because people ask what I do and I say, okay, let’s pretend that you get charged with murdering somebody tonight. I hope not, but let’s pretend, that you have the money to hire a private attorney, for example. You’d hire an attorney and then usually the good attorneys will hire experts to either testify about not even meeting the client, sometimes just about facts of a case, or about facts about healthy sexuality, for example.
The other instances they would hire somebody for what potentially could be a mitigation evaluation. So they’d say, oh, I have no idea what’s going on with this person. I have no clue. There must [00:11:00] be something here. I know they have a history of trauma. Can you go and take a look?
And so sometimes they don’t even tell you what type of evaluation they’re looking for because they may not know. And then we’ll go with the whole kit and caboodle and figure out once we can meet with them what kind of testing they need; is it cognitive? Do we have concerns about their cognitive, their adaptive functioning? Is there, like I said, a history of trauma? That sort of thing.
We do some sort of piecemeal psychological evaluations and almost everyone can include different things, which is also a cool process to be able to not have just a blanket assessment. We try to use a lot of different things to do that.
And so sometimes we’ll be hired directly just to say, this person, we know they’re a low IQ, they had an IEP, whatever and we need a cognitive assessment with adaptive testing and achievement testing and whatnot. Sometimes it’s just hey, we need a general run-of-the-mill psychological evaluation [00:12:00] with a Rorschach and a TAT and that sort of thing, and a WAIS.
And then also we do competency evaluations. I can talk a little bit about that. And then I’m working on an insanity evaluation right now. So with the competency, the people that do them always, they have to be working for the state hospital. That’s the ones that are court-ordered, but a lot of times I’ll get hired for a second opinion one to say, okay, this doctor found the person competent, we don’t think they are.
And so competency is about whether an individual understands what they’re being charged with, if they can assist their attorney with the defense of their case. It’s do they understand how the court system works? Do they understand who the prosecuting attorney is and whatnot? I do those on anyone, I did one on a kid who was 10 or 11 all the way up to older folks.
So that’s another part of that practice. It’s neat to see the [00:13:00] varying levels of comprehension that people have about that. And then you had mentioned the sex offense-specific evaluations. In the state of Colorado, we have probably one of the most well-established management boards for sex offenders in this state.
Other states are totally following suit now because there’s a lot of evidence and a lot of research on sex offenders that goes on, and so there’s a lot of validated risk assessments. And so Colorado has done an amazing job of setting up a very standardized system.
If you’re charged with a sex offense in Colorado, you’re required to do what’s called a sex offense-specific evaluation, which is a fancy name for a psychological evaluation light with sex testing in there as well. As I mentioned with the previous murder case scenario, a lot of times, if you’re able to hire a good defense attorney and they know what they’re doing, they will hire an expert to do what’s called a [00:14:00] pre-plea sex offense evaluation.
What they want to know is they want to get a window into might be there in order to help figure out if this is a case where there are mitigating factors, the client’s a low risk, and then they can use it to negotiate with the district attorney in terms of either getting a better deal in the case or not. So sometimes they use them, and sometimes they file them in their cabinet, and nobody ever sees them, obviously, if they’re not something that’s favorable.
And then if somebody doesn’t have one that’s pre-plea, they plead guilty, they never have one, they automatically are ordered by the court to do one. So at that point, it’s not voluntary. They have to do it. We can get hired for those from various parties. It can be defense attorneys. It can be probation. It could be the department of Human Services. So there’s a variety of places that the referrals come from.
I think it’s really important to do work for all parties in order to remain unbiased. If you do [00:15:00] all the work for just referrals from defense attorneys, certainly, there’s concern that maybe you’re writing for the referral source just to get paid kind of thing. I think it’s important to make sure that you’re doing work for all sides so that there is still that objectivity and you’re not getting paid to write an opinion.
Dr. Sharp: Right. That’s one of my main questions when you first started to talk about this is how do you maintain that objectivity?
Dr. Brenna: That is a good question. We have checks and balances set up in our office, where we never release a report without at least two of the other psychologists reading it. So I think that that’s great. And then I also have an amazing proofreader that is on staff that she looks at everything as well.
Honestly, sometimes her opinion is almost more important because she’s a lay person, and whether it’s the language being used or she’s confused about why I’ve come to a conclusion, she’ll let me know. [00:16:00] It’s very interesting because it’s almost helpful to have somebody who’s not involved, but we definitely have checks and balances because it’s tricky.
I definitely think that there are a lot of people who can be swayed by the person who’s referring them, but in general, people do a nice job of remaining objective because I think we all understand the seriousness of what we’re doing and how much it could change somebody’s life if you do it wrong. That’s why I always say it’s as serious as a heart attack what we do, because if you put…
I’m not saying that it’s not important if you mess up some data on someone’s IQ and in the normal sense, but it could make the difference what types of risk assessments are used on a client. To give an example, I had a client I did a sex offense-specific evaluation on, and there was no record indicating that he had a low IQ at all.
And so as I was meeting with them, I was like, oh my gosh, this guy clearly has intellectual disability, but there’s no [00:17:00] records. So I can’t do the specific, there’s another certification that I have that some people have, there’s not a lot in the state where to be certified to do sex offense evaluations on clients with intellectual disabilities.
So I’m like, oh my gosh, this guy, I know he has one, but there’s no records and so unless I have some records indicating it, I can’t do the risk assessments normed on intellectually disabled clients. I got to use the regular ones. And so if I score the regular ones, he’s coming out as a high risk.
I’m like, this doesn’t feel right. Ethically, I don’t feel good about this because this guy’s probably going to go to prison because of his risk level. Even though probation referred the client, I contacted their attorney and said, hey, I’ve got some concerns about this client and it could change things for him with regard to the risk level because there’s a very different lens when you’re looking at somebody that has an intellectual disability.
To make a long story short, we did the testing. His IQ was 65 or something [00:18:00] and very low adaptive scores. So then I have to shift the evaluation to one that’s geared towards somebody with an intellectual disability and it completely shifts where their risk level is at because you’re looking at different factors and making very different recommendations because you have to address accommodations in trying to get them into adult services as well.
So I think all those things are important. There’s a lot of flexibility that has to come with doing these types of evaluations because there’s so many variables going on at once.
Dr. Sharp: Absolutely. As you described what you do, it sounds like you don’t have the benefit of what I would usually call a referral question. You get a lot of folks who are just like, okay, I’m here. Even the referring party might be like, we don’t really know what’s happening, can you just check it all out and see what’s going on? So you got to be thinking on your feet and being willing to adapt right in the middle of an interview [00:19:00] or evaluation.
Dr. Brenna: Absolutely.
Dr. Sharp: Take some flexibility, it sounds like.
Dr. Brenna: Yeah. I feel like the way, and you know this with regard to psychological testing, I feel like the court system is giving experts, they’re paying attention to them and what they have to say, because they know like oh yeah, we got to look at the research in terms of how do we make decisions about whether we’re putting them in prison or whether we’re giving them a probation sentence.
Because again, I think ignoring data about that, obviously, it could create a new victim, for example, and so I feel like even if it’s a defense attorney or a probation officer, everyone’s really looking just to get the right guidance on what to do and to have somebody who allegedly knows what they’re doing is helping guide that process.
The same is true with the domestic violence world. There’s also a domestic violence management board, and I do those as well. I just got certified to do the domestic violence [00:20:00] evaluations, and that’s been really awesome because usually domestic violence offenders have the highest rate of re-offense of any kind of offender.
And so it’s been really neat to do those evaluations as well and tease out that risk level. And then as you can imagine, there’s a lot of crossover sex offense, domestic violence individuals. So being able to combine those two lenses and help tease out, is this somebody who’s more of a sex offense risk or domestic violence risk has been a pretty neat process as well.
Dr. Sharp: Yeah. I can imagine. You’re living in this world that a lot of people don’t tread in. I think about complexity in my population, which these days is primarily kids in adolescents, there’s a lot of layers, certainly.
It’s like you dive in and you keep peeling back those layers. You have a similar experience, it sounds like, because there’s so much overlap in a lot of the issues that you’re working [00:21:00] with; delinquent behavior, trauma, mood issues, cognitive issues, violence, victimhood, all of that stuff. It’s all tangled up, right?
Dr. Brenna: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s why when I’m looking to hire somebody or for somebody to come in for a placement, it’s very important for me to get a gauge of whether they’re able to do that objectively. Especially when it comes to adolescence, I think it’s so important to make sure we can frame what they’ve done in the context of where they’re at in their developmental level.
The research that they always cite for and the standards related to sex offenders is that kids’ brains are really not even developed until age 26, and so the reason that they’re committing offenses is very different than somebody who’s more established in their identity, emotional, and cognitive development.
So I think having that lens when we’re doing psychological evaluations or sex offense evaluations on [00:22:00] children or adolescents is really important because I think there’s a much more systemic issue. Like you said, peeling back the layers and figuring out what’s going on with the system that’s creating this person to make these choices.
Dr. Sharp: Sure. That makes sense. Let’s maybe back up a bit and dive into some nuts and bolts of the actual practice if that’s okay with you, because a lot of folks are probably curious about the whole process. It sounds like you get referrals from a lot of different sources, I’m curious how you connect with those referrals in the first place to have them know to refer to you.
Dr. Brenna: It’s a good question. There’s two ways, but it’s introducing yourself to different people. So when I first broke into the world in Fort Collins, I remember setting up a meeting with the head of probation. It’s obviously a little intimidating to have to do that and say, hey, [00:23:00] here’s who I am. This is what I do.
And to have them say, oh, you’re this new person I don’t even know. Plus, I was younger at the time. But obviously, he was amazing and he’s a great person. He gave me a chance and then got on their referral list.
I think from there, it is word of mouth and the quality of work that people do. It’s a very small world. Even though there’s a lot of attorneys, there’s a lot of probation departments, it becomes a very small world in terms of knowing who to refer to, I suppose.
I’ve always said to people that are like, why do people hire you a lot for valuations? I’m like, there’s two reasons:
1. I return phone calls right away.
2. I respond to emails right away.
3. I know how to write.
4. I get my work done on time.
I know that sounds so basic, but I think the legal system is, a deadline is a deadline. If you can’t spell and write, and things are wrong in a report, it’s a big deal. [00:24:00] I’ve found that that’s how I get a lot of referrals is just because I’m dependable.
Dr. Sharp: I’m totally with you. I’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast. I’m so glad that you reinforced that, that a lot of our “marketing” is just doing a good job, like responding to people, writing a good report, and staying in contact. I know that takes time, but it’s straightforward, you just do a good job and that helps a lot.
Dr. Brenna: It is. It’s word of mouth for sure. I can’t remember, with the Department of Human Services, I think they got their hands on a report I had written for maybe an attorney, and then they contacted me and said, hey, we liked your work. Can we set up a contract to have you as a core provider?
It sounds easier than it is in terms of they’re obviously betting their providers as well to make sure that they’re doing a good job. That’s one way. I have found that the other way, I think direct marketing sometimes doesn’t [00:25:00] work very well. I don’t like the knocking on the door thing. In that case, I had to, but I think as I’ve gotten more experienced, I have realized presenting at conferences and giving training, and getting certifications to make myself have something to offer that somebody else doesn’t have to offer.
I love coming up with new ideas for training and presentations and whatnot. I think making yourself available to people that need trainers, it obviously gives you that. You’re in front of a captive audience who sees you as an expert, so certainly after anytime I give a training or presentation, I get phone calls from people who are like, oh, I’m going to call you to do this or can you answer a question about this?
I think making yourself available to answer questions for people all over without saying, okay, now you have to pay me $500 to talk or whatever, is also helpful. So giving training and presentations definitely helps get you out there in terms of people knowing who you are.
[00:26:00] Dr. Sharp: I would imagine you had to have some amount of training yourself or certification before you jumped into that. This is a very naive question, but is there a national training body or I’m thinking of someone who might be listening right now and they’re like, this is interesting, I want to get trained in this stuff, where do I go?Dr. Brenna: Absolutely. In Colorado, it’s a very specific process. The Sex Offender Management Board, what we call the SOMB, it’s very easy to go to the SOMB website. They list what one would have to do to get in this field.
People are like, oh my gosh, sex offenders, they don’t realize that coming in, it’s actually probably a lot more complicated than they might think, I suppose. It never turns out the way they think it is. So they have to go through, obviously, they get a job with a provider who does it and they start off like an intent to apply to the process. [00:27:00] They have to go through making sure they’re doing the therapy, they’re having supervision and that sort of thing.
They used to have it where it was like, for me, it was three years. I had to be an associate level provider, they call it, and then I could apply to be what’s called full operating, which is the highest level with sex offenders. That’s what the certification is, but then they’ve changed it now, they call it competency-based.
They’ve approved a few of us, I don’t know how many, but people had to get approved to be the competency police in terms of we can decide if somebody is competent and make the recommendation to the board that we feel like, okay, they don’t need to wait two years. We’ve seen their work. We feel like they’ve met all of the qualifications for a full operating or to move to associate. And so then we’re able to sign off on them as supervisors.
And then still the SOMB board goes through, there’s an application review committee, they go through [00:28:00] the person’s application. You have to turn in samples of your reports, treatment plans, trainings you’ve been to. It’s a pretty extensive process because I think that it’s a serious job and it’s important to make sure the providers are well-trained and know what they’re doing.
The same is true with the Domestic Violence Management Board, the same process. They require certain training, a pretty thorough application, and then a certain number of evaluations that you’ve done that have been reviewed, and a certain number of supervision from people.
The process isn’t as easy as one would expect, but super rewarding. It’s a great group of people. I always tell people, the individuals that work in the forensic field, they have to be outgoing and they have to have a sense of humor. So there’s a very cool population, whether it’s attorneys or the therapists or the evaluators that work in this field. I don’t think anyone ever minds the [00:29:00] process really.
Dr. Sharp: That’s funny. I know that you have a certain personality, let’s say, you’re a very dynamic individual.
Dr. Brenna: I’m not shy.
Dr. Sharp: Do you think that personality type is more helpful in this field?
Dr. Brenna: I definitely do. I think one to engage with the client, when you’re meeting with a client too, I think that I’m not what they expect necessarily. It’s disarming and it helps. I do believe that they come in the room very embarrassed and ashamed, or when I see that somebody who’s incarcerated, I definitely make sure that they do not feel judged. I don’t judge them nor do I treat them like an offender, and I think that helps a lot.
And then in interactions with professionals, you know this, in order also to get referrals, people need to like you and like working with you. So being outgoing, friendly, respectful, polite, and [00:30:00] communicative, that goes well when you have an outgoing personality but that’s not to say that people who are shy and reserved can’t survive in this world.
Dr. Sharp: Right, for sure. My assumption is that it takes a little bit of ability to just roll with it and like you said, not be super judgmental. I would guess you hear a lot of things that most people don’t hear on a daily basis, so being able to sit with that.
Dr. Brenna: Yes, definitely, you’re exposed to a lot of things. I think that that might be a good segue into, I always tell people when they’re like, yeah, I want to do this. I think it’s so exciting.
I’m thinking, okay, I want to make sure they’re not just doing it because they’ve seen Silence of the Lambs and they think they’re going to be a profiler or they watch a lot of CSI because there is a lot of vicarious trauma and then something that’s called Cumulative Career Traumatic Stress that happens to people that work in this field.
It’s an area of interest to me. I’ve been [00:31:00] presenting and training on it recently just because the stuff to which you’re exposed, whether it’s having to watch videos of things happening, or just to read police reports, or hear clients talk about that stuff; it’s a lot.
That’s another piece where people have to be able to compartmentalize in order to in order to survive in this world and be able to find ways to manage that trauma because it can be a little rough on people or cause burnout pretty quickly.
Dr. Sharp: Absolutely. I want to get back to the nuts and bolts of the reports, billing, and all that stuff, but I am curious, I think other people would probably be curious too, how you maybe compartmentalize and not take this stuff home with you or look at your kids differently, how do you do that?
Dr. Brenna: It was a funny story, but I was talking to somebody the other day, they work in the field and they had their home office. Their kid [00:32:00] has just gotten old enough where they’re starting to read barely. They went into the office, picked up some papers and they were like, no, get out of here.
Dr. Sharp: Oh my goodness.
Dr. Brenna: That moment that you realize you can’t have conversations with people in the car about a referral or something with the phone on speaker. You have to wait to be outside of the kids. That is a very interesting area.
That’s why I said, I started this presentation proposal a little while ago about how working with sex offense-specific populations impacts parenting and also sexual intimacy with your partner. It’s an area that hasn’t been studied as much.
Bob Emmerich is a researcher that’s looked into it a lot, but I sent out some survey to a lot of people in the field and asked the question, it was very clear from the results of it, whether it was people who were attorneys or caseworkers or therapists or [00:33:00] parole officers or judges, that:
1. The answer was, yes, it does impact us.
2. They’ve not talked about it with anybody.
3. They’d like to.
4. They wouldn’t know where to go to be able to discuss something like that.
If you can imagine, what would it be like to walk home to your partner or to go to a playdate with your friends and be like, today, I had to go and watch a video of this murder in process or whatever it was, and then go and have a glass of wine at play date. It can definitely mess with people a little bit.
You said, how do you compartmentalize? Another funny story, but I had to do that, I had to watch this video to add my expert opinion about something. It was pretty awful. And so then I had to drive to go to my kids’ school. I have six-year-old twins. I drove to their school because I had to go in and I’m the classroom volunteer coordinator or something.
So I go in, I parked my [00:34:00] car and I wasn’t even thinking. I get to the first set of doors and all of a sudden I was like, okay, hang on a second, that was too fast of a shift to go from this horribleness to this school.
As I was between the two sets of doors, I spun around like how Wonder Woman does that in the old school, I literally between the two sets of doors, spun around in a circle, imagining that whole Wonder Woman shift, and then walked in and I was like, Sally, okay, we need to talk about the cookies. Let’s get this ready to go. It is because it can be a really big switch.
What’s been really neat about doing these trainings is we started applying an intervention component of it and trying to help people deal with that trauma, it’s very simplistic and it’s been a neat process to see that even just talking about it with another professional and saying, yeah, this can impact my intimacy with my partner.
So many people are afraid to say that because, in our field, we have the ethics code where it’s like okay, dual [00:35:00] relationships, boundaries, all this stuff making you imagine walking into a supervisor, if you’re an intern and you’re like, I am thinking about that child porn case today when I’m having an intimate relationship with my partner. So:
1. That’s a really hard thing to say.
2. We’re trained so well to keep those boundaries between supervisor and an intern or a staff member that a lot of people suffer alone and they don’t have that conversation and supervisors don’t know how to manage it as well because they’re like it’s not appropriate for me to be talking to this person about their intimate life with their partner, but it may be impacting their work. So what do we do here?
And so I think even just opening the door to have that conversation has been really neat to see people willing to step out and say, yeah, this is crazy. The other area, like I said, is parenting. We see a lot of people and the survey shows that, some people responded, I’ve never let my kid go to the [00:36:00] bathroom alone in a public place. I will never let my kids have sleepovers. There’s people that say, I would never having kids because of what I do.
I think when I do present on this, I’m like, it’s so sad because here we are people in this field that we’re supposed to be in the helping profession and understand it’s okay to talk about your problems, and we’re the ones getting the most messed up by it. We’re helping people have healthy sexual lives and get better, and then it’s messing with people’s parenting stuff. I think we’re in a good start of trying to help people manage that trauma and work through it.
Dr. Sharp: It sounds like it does take a certain amount of work and you have to be deliberate, right?
Dr. Brenna: Absolutely. Yes, it definitely does. That’s why I tell people not to scare them away, but it certainly requires the ability to compartmentalize but still realize, even if you’re the best compartmentalizer in the world, what ends up happening is more of a slow drip.
I was talking to someone the other day and they were like, oh [00:37:00] my God, I broke out in the hives and I’m like, I don’t even know what it was from. I was like, remember that training of mine you went to where we talked about Cumulative Career Traumatic Stress and how it can come out like a physical manifestation?
She’s like, no, but it’s no different than ever before. Nothing happened. I wasn’t stressed. I don’t feel stressed. I’m totally fine. I’m like, okay, hang on a second, let’s go through all the things that you’re doing, blah, blah. I was like, maybe you just didn’t realize that you were having all this stress, and now this is the accumulation of it with no instigating factor right in that moment.
I see that almost more than anything that people suddenly have, something happened to them randomly; a physical manifestation, marital problems, whatever. They don’t attribute it to maybe the trauma from what we do and how that’s impacting them.
And so I think having that conversation and making people aware and even myself, every time I give the training, I’m like, oh my gosh, I wondered why I skipped working out yesterday. I always get up early and work out.
I remember I was giving this training and I [00:38:00] was like, I just skipped working out this morning. That’s the first time in forever. And then I realized I did because I’d had a lot of stuff going on that was very traumatic at work, and that was the manifestation for me. But even just recognizing that as a sign was really helpful and just stopping it right there.
Dr. Sharp: It sounds like it’s important to have folks that you can check in with or maybe folks that would check in with you more than anything else; someone you trust who could say like, you’re doing all right? Do we need to talk about anything? Just to give that prompt.
Dr. Brenna: But the problem is that a lot of the people that work in this field and especially, I think there’s a lot of very high functioning people, most of us just suck it up and do what you do. What I’ve heard people say is, we feel bad complaining about being traumatized from this. Wait, I’m traumatized by reading a story about a sex abuse victim, come on, how about the victim?
[00:39:00] It doesn’t seem fair to complain about my stress from reading it when somebody was actually victimized. So I think a lot of us are just like, suck it up because you can’t complain because people are really getting hurt and people are really suffering and yours is just nothing. I think that component makes us more at risk to have the trauma from itDr. Sharp: Of course. Yeah, that’s a game that we play with ourselves. Just being in this field period, y’all in particular, certainly folks that work with a lot of trauma, that’s ups the ante with that vicarious trauma.
Dr. Brenna: Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Sharp: My gosh. So there’s a lot going on when you’re in this area of assessment.
Dr. Brenna: Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Sharp: I appreciate you putting all that out there. I like diving into the personal piece. I think that that’s just as important, if probably not more important for folks to know about than the technical piece. [00:40:00] You’re stepping into a pretty unique world here.
Dr. Brenna: It definitely is. It is a unique world but very gratifying, very cool. It’s always very interesting. There’s never a day where I’m bored. And like I said, when you talk about working within a profession where you like everybody, regardless of whether they’re a probation officer or a therapist or an attorney, I find that it’s a really great community. Even though it’s large, it’s very small.
Dr. Sharp: Sure. Oh yeah, I believe it. I’m conscious of our time and being respectful of your time but I wonder if we could talk a little bit about some of the technical details of this. Do you have to deal with insurance at all from a billing perspective or is this all legally funded out-of-pocket kind of stuff?
Dr. Brenna: I think the latter. There’s some people that try to get it reimbursed out of network or something, [00:41:00] but we definitely, at least. I know most people that do this do not bill insurance; one, it can be a pain, but I also think there’s a lot of people that don’t want to open the door of confidentiality with their insurance company and a forensic evaluator because I can’t pass off a sex offense-specific evaluation as a psych evaluation for billing codes. It just isn’t ethical.
And so I think there’s that component where trying to get the insurance company and convince them to pay for something that’s a legal issue, something that’s court ordered is difficult. In terms of how do we get paid, essentially, money is what it is with regard to the state funds and whatnot.
What happens is whether it’s a probation department or department of human services, they have a certain budget and when you negotiate your contract, talk about okay here’s my rate, and then they’ll say this is what we can pay and then you choose to either take it or [00:42:00] not.
Dr. Sharp: Is there any negotiating in there or is it just you take what the state will pay.
Dr. Brenna: I don’t know that question, it’s something that probably people don’t talk about in terms of how much do you get for that or how much do you get. So who knows? The person next to me could be getting $400 more for an assessment, I probably wouldn’t know it. So I think there’s that piece.
In general, my guess is that they’re all pretty standard in terms of how much they pay providers for specific things, and so it’s all set up in a contract like this is how much we pay for a regular evaluation. Here’s how much more we pay for it being someone with an intellectual disability. So you just set those rates up and then they pay you after you do them.
What ends up happening now? So the Department of Human Services, they pay for the family in Larimer County and Weld County. I don’t work as much with the departments in [00:43:00] other parts of the state as much.
They’re so generous with the funding that they have for their clients and especially for the juveniles and children to get them the services they need. So that’s really awesome. They fund all the therapy for the clients and all the evaluations for the juveniles that are involved with them. And that’s amazing. That doesn’t happen everywhere.
With probation, my understanding, of how it works is if a client can’t pay for an evaluation like I was saying, the sex offense and the domestic violence valuations if they’re court-ordered; if they can’t pay for them out of pocket, they end up vouchering it and give money for it but then that money is added on to the court costs for the clients.
So then at the end of the day, when they’re finished with their probation or whatnot, they could not finish probation if they haven’t paid off their court fees. One of those items that are tacked on there is, there’s victim restitution they have to pay and then they also pay for the evaluation.
[00:44:00] To some extent, that’s slanted a little bit towards people that have the money to be able to pay for good representation and experts in terms of if you get charged with something, you certainly have a better chance if you’re able to have somebody that negotiates well and can get experts to do a testing and evaluations and stuff.When you get hired by a private defense attorney, it’s definitely a different ball game because you’re coming into court with a lot more ammunition, I suppose,
Dr. Sharp: I believe it.
Dr. Brenna: There’s two other kinds of routes with attorneys. So if you meet a certain income bracket and you can’t afford an attorney, and there’s this weird thing because people in the middle have a hard time getting an attorney because people that are indigent or that have a very low income, they qualify for a public defender, which is state-funded and then there’s also the alternate defense council. So a public defender would be assigned to somebody.
People always think oh, public defenders, they [00:45:00] work for the government. They’re not great but I will tell you that Colorado has a fantastic group of public defenders who are very skilled and very dedicated.
And then the alternate defense council, if you and I are charged with a crime together and neither one of us can pay for a private attorney, they’d give one of us a public defender and then the other one would have somebody from the alternate defense counsel because the public defenders can’t represent two people in the same case because it’s a conflict of interest.
So the alternate defense counsel is basically a group of attorneys who’ve been screened and they’re in that group where they, it’s almost like volunteering their time. I think they get paid a little bit, but essentially, they’re private defense attorneys who are setting up contracts with ADC as it’s called. They help out with cases and stuff. A lot of it is that almost like pro bono time. So there’s a few things.
Dr. Sharp: Sure. We’ve talked a little bit about different batteries and it sounds like it really depends on [00:46:00] what you’re trying to assess, but you have to adjust depending on what’s going on and what happens over the course of the contact with the client.
Dr. Brenna: I think except for the, sorry to interrupt, but the sex offense specific and then the domestic violence evaluations in particular, like I said, because of the management boards, they have very clear standards of what the minimum requirements are in those evaluations.
And so that’s really cool to have because there is at least a minimum standard of things that are being looked at that are all evidence-based as being important for a risk assessment item. There’s a very extensive list like on the SOMB website and the DVOMB website that says, here are the things that you absolutely have to have. And then certainly you can do more, but there’s like a minimum standard of battery that has to go on.
Dr. Sharp: Can master’s level folks do these independently or do you have to have a doctorate?
Dr. Brenna: Some of the best evaluators in the state [00:47:00] have a master’s degree and obviously, you have to be licensed. If you’re an associate-level provider, you have to have supervision from a full operating and if you’re full operating, you do not. And so yeah, there are definitely people with master’s degrees. They’re not doing the other specialized testing.
There’s one evaluator who’s just fantastic. Her name is Missy Gursky. She’s great. She knows her boundaries of her competence and she’ll say, hey, I’ve got this client, can I send them to you for a cognitive evaluation? I’m concerned about this, that, or the other. And so then she’ll refer them for like extra testing to consider with her evaluation.
It’s just people understanding the boundaries of their competence in doing this field because it’s super important. If you don’t know how to score something, you don’t know how to administer testing, it can really be a significant issue with regard to the results and how it affects the client.
Dr. Sharp: Absolutely. One question about reports; [00:48:00] we talk a lot about reports and falling behind on writing reports and all that kind of stuff, how long is a typical report you might write or arrange?
Dr. Brenna: Oh, like how many pages?
Dr. Sharp: Or time.
Dr. Brenna: Oh goodness. Everybody wants me to shorten my evaluations. I’ve been working on that because I feel like the more information, the better. Some of my psychological evaluations, I’ve been doing this one that’s been going on for the last six months because we keep needing more stuff. It was 30 some pages.
I would say, in general, 20 pages for a sex offense-specific evaluation. And that’s cutting down a lot of the data about what is this test about and that sort of thing. Like I said, there’s a lot that goes into it in addition to certain tests. Then you have to do the risk assessment.
The most important part is the [00:49:00] conceptualization and then the recommendations obviously, and making sure that you’re really addressing the needs of the client to avoid another victim, for example.
Dr. Sharp: Absolutely. Do you find that in the court system, they prefer longer reports?
Dr. Brenna: It depends on the person. In general, the more thorough people are, the more it’s liked. Certainly, when I was getting my supervision for the domestic violence and for the intellectual disabilities, my supervisors were like, okay, maybe a little bit shorter, taking too long to read your report. For me, I’d rather have too much than too little. I’d always err on the side of having more information.
Dr. Sharp: I see what you mean, especially in those cases, it seems like it could be helpful.
Dr. Brenna: Yes.
Dr. Sharp: Brenna, gosh, our time has gone by really fast and I feel like we talked about a lot of really good stuff and really important [00:50:00] information.
Two last things; if someone is sitting at home, maybe somebody like me, a lot of assessment training, pretty versed in assessment instruments but I want to get into this field, what are the first two steps to do that?
Dr. Brenna: I would say probably call somebody that does what they want to do. So if they want to do domestic violence valuations, they should probably get in touch with somebody who does that and find out the nuts and bolts of that process. Certainly, I’m always happy to, for example, people can look me up and email me if they have questions.
I’m pretty involved in this world that I can probably direct them myself, but if they want to do sex offense evaluations, look up a provider who does it or contact the SOMB person, the training director, and they can get them an application to start the process.
The one thing real quick, I know we’re out of time, but with regard to people choosing to go into this field or not; realizing that in order to have contracts with those [00:51:00] various departments or whatever, or in order to be on a provider list, there’s background checks and all that stuff.
And so I think asking those questions, if you’re coming to the table with something in your history that doesn’t necessarily preclude you being on those areas of practice, but recognizing that all of those referral sources have to do extensive background checks in order to approve you, that’s obvious why that’s the case.
Dr. Sharp: Of course.
Dr. Brenna: That’s the final thing, but like I said, people are welcome to contact me if they have questions in how to get involved further.
Dr. Sharp: Yeah, thank you. That’s awesome. If people do want to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to do that?
Dr. Brenna: Probably through email. Do you want me to give that out now?
Dr. Sharp: You can if you’re okay with that. I can also put it in our show notes.
Dr. Brenna: I’m totally fine with that. It’s b.tindall@tescolorado.com. [00:52:00] Feel free to email me. If you guys, anyone listening has questions, I love bringing people into this world because it’s worthwhile and meaningful.
Dr. Sharp: Sure. On behalf of everybody who’s listening, I want to say thanks. I feel like this was fantastic information and you clearly know what you’re talking about and have been in this world for a long time as much as any of us do, I suppose.
Thanks so much, Brenna. This was fantastic. Take care.
Dr. Brenna: Okay. Bye.
Dr. Sharp: All right, y’all. Thanks as always for listening. I hope that you enjoyed this interview with Dr. Brenna Tindall. I learned a ton talking with her during this podcast and it’s so clear that she is just built for this work. You can, like I said, check out Brenna’s full bio in the show notes. You can get in touch with her if you have any questions. She’s a fantastic person and knows a lot about what she’s doing.
[00:53:00] Thanks again to Q-interactive, who’s sponsoring the podcast this month. Q-interactive is Pearson’s digital platform for test administration. We’ve used it in our practice. I was a very early adopter. We’ve had it for about five years now at this point, and it’s come a long way over those years, and it greatly improves the efficiency of our practice in many ways.Also, a final reminder to check out The Testing Psychologist mastermind group. If you are at all interested in group coaching and like the group dynamic, and would like to zero in and get laser-focused on some issues that are bugging you in your practice and get some support with that; a mastermind group could be a great option. You can learn more at thetestingpsychologist.com/mastermind. Like I said, I’d love to have you, we have a few spots left. Give me a shout if you [00:54:00] are interested in joining that group.
As always, if you’re in our Testing Psychologist Facebook group, invite your friends who aren’t in there. It’s great to see that community continue to grow. If you have not taken 20 or 30 seconds just to rate and maybe even review the podcast, I would be so grateful if you did that. That’s what helps to grow the audience and sponsorships and bring cool offers to y’all and allow me to keep doing this.
Thank you so much. It’s great to be here with y’all again, and we will see you next week. Bye bye.