How Surrogacy Psych Evaluations Really Work

I'm so excited to have you back and I'm just even more excited that we get to have Kristen join us as well.

I feel like it's a pretty common thing where you have a lot of intended parents and surrogates, they hear the phrase like psychological evaluation and immediately become super nervous.

What do you think most people are just commonly misunderstanding about the purpose of the evaluation?

So I think when we're talking about both intended parents and surrogates, there are two different types of sessions.

And I think people hear gatekeeper, they hear judgment, they hear looking for problems.

It's like a test.

It's a pass, fail.

And so I think if that's probably the most important thing that we could try to to change or augment with, it's really more about our role to help inform and guide and be a support and just make sure, you know, improve confidence, inform consent, make sure that people are as ready as they can be to have a successful journey.

And by successful, I think that looks like relationship, that looks like communication, that looks like getting their needs met from their team, from their intended parents, you know, that kind of thing.

What is the evaluation actually designed to accomplish?

So the evaluation, and I know that term sounds scary, but really, we like to call it more of just a time to chat, a communication time for both the surrogate and her partner.

So we ask them both to be able to participate.

And that looks like what we call a clinical interview, a clinical assessment.

And that's going to be with them.

It's usually about 60 to 90 minutes.

And then in addition to that, we do a personality assessment.

And that's typically with the carrier herself.

And so both of those, the interview plus the assessment are used to really help navigate and identify people.

What are their strengths? What is their understanding? What are their expectations? It also is for us to look and clarify stability and emotional strengths and things that they want to kind of talk through to make sure that they are a good fit in this timeframe and for this particular match.

Anything you want to add to that? Yeah,

no, just making sure that this is as much of a good fit for them as it is for the intended parents and the clinic and the agency and everybody involved so that we truly, we are assessing, but we also truly want them to feel supported as well, so...

And looking at their

coping resources, a lot of our surrogates coming in are the strongest women.

And some of them have been through things in their life.

And so we actually see that as a strength.