Bariatric Surgery Evaluation
The decision to improve your health and focus your efforts on losing weight is commendable. Choosing to utilize bariatric surgery (gastric bypass or lap band surgery) as a tool to achieve weight loss and better health is a serious decision.
Undoubtedly, you have Googled it and read a lot about it. You may have already met with a doctor or surgery team to start the process. You will likely have to meet with a variety of experts to evaluate whether weight loss surgery is right for you. This will include things like testing your cardiac health, respiratory health, and psychological health.
Why do I need a Psychological Evaluation for Bariatric Surgery?
Surgery of any kind is a serious matter. Your surgeon will want to know that you understand the risks and benefits of surgery. Are you ready to make the significant lifestyle changes required of you after the surgery?
Your psychological evaluation will cover this and other aspects like your motivation for surgery, you level of social support, and mood or eating disorder symptoms. Topics will also include attitudes you have about yourself and your body, and any stressors in your life that might keep you from adhering to post-surgery lifestyle changes.
You may also be able to identify small steps of change you could make now, long before surgery, that will increase your success rate in the long term.
All of this information will help inform your surgeon about whether you would benefit from ongoing supportive counseling after surgery. This may help you stick to dietary changes and develop action plans around known triggers. Having a game plan helps you make consistent lifestyle changes to support your weight loss and health goals for life.
What to Expect
Before we meet, I will speak with you on the phone and send you a packet of background information to complete. This is more extensive than most new patient packets you may have completed for other specialist.. However, it will save you time and provide invaluable information to me. You have the option of completing it online if you wish.
When we meet, I will speak with you for about an hour to go over your background and relevant information. Then you will complete a questionnaire specific to weight loss surgery. This will be done on the computer, and takes 20-30 minutes.
That’s it!
With a signed release of information, I will send a report to your doctor within 48 hours. You may also have it sent to any other medical providers you wish to receive it.
Related Articles
7 Strategies Better Than Willpower
Relying only on willpower can often feel like a losing game. We beat ourselves up when our motivation fails, which makes it even harder to get back on track. When you think of willpower, the first thing that probably comes to mind is dieting or fitness. People joke...
6 Ways Mindfulness Helps Physical Pain
If you have chronic pain or you can’t seem to resolve the discomfort from an injury, how can mindfulness help you? Mindfulness has become quite a “buzzword” in recent years. It signals a way to help with everything from anxiety to depression. But, that isn’t to say...
Coping with a Diagnosis of Breast Cancer
Over 250,000 women get diagnosed with breast cancer each year in the United States, alone. While there have been huge strides in breast cancer research and treatment options, receiving that official diagnosis from a medical professional is never easy. Any type of...
How To Cope When A Diagnosis of Cancer Changes Everything
Hearing the words “you have cancer” can make it seem as though your whole life has come to a screeching halt. Those words confirming a cancer diagnosis affect you and the people who love you profoundly. Instantly, you are faced with challenges and decisions that no...
8 Tips to Stick to Your Healthy Resolution
Let’s Get Healthy! It’s that Resolution time of year again! After a month of extra food indulgences, loosened adherence to diet and exercise, and increased stress-eating and social-eating, people across the globe commit to getting healthy in the New Year. Top goals...
Sleep – How to Get a Good Night’s Sleep
Sleep is an essential part of a balanced and healthy life, but is often considered a luxury or after-thought, until you are stuck in a cycle of poor sleep! Then it becomes clear how important it is to everything else that is important to us. Everyone has an...