Saludos Psychology Group

Dr. Kimberly Fitzgerald González

Licensed Clinical Psychologist

Florida #10967 - California PSY31536

Saludos Psychology Group — telehealth psychology serving Florida

Psycho-diagnostic Evaluation.

A comprehensive psycho-diagnostic evaluation before treatment is a best standard of care.

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Psycho-diagnostic evaluation

It's where treatment for a mental health disorder begins.

Step 1
Psycho-diagnostic Assessment

A psycho-diagnostic assessment is a comprehensive evaluation conducted by a doctoral-level psychologist. It is a deep and structured clinical process — one that examines who you are cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally, explores your history, identifies your strengths and challenges, and considers the full breadth of the DSM-5 to arrive at an accurate diagnosis through careful differential analysis.

Beyond diagnostics, we identify the reasons — known to you or unknown — as to why you are seeking change and how we can facilitate that development.

The scientific approach means looking into the back trajectory: how you were raised, significant life events during developmental stages, significant relationship structures, family systems and attachment patterns, cultural and community influences, experiences of loss or trauma, the narratives you inherited and the ones you created, and the ways your mind and body have learned to protect you over time.

Step 2
Treatment Plan

Your treatment plan is designed specifically for you — not a generic checklist, but a clinically informed roadmap that addresses the reasons you are seeking therapy, effectively manages any presenting clinical symptoms, and helps you achieve the type of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are congruent with your goals.

Treatment planning at SaludosPsych is a collaborative process. Drawing from the Rosenberg approach, your plan is developed with you — not handed to you. You are the expert on your own life. We bring the clinical expertise. Together we build the roadmap.

Progress is measured along the way — not because we are checking boxes, but because seeing progress matters. Tracking it allows us to celebrate what is working, adjust what is not, and ensure that treatment continues in a meaningful direction until your goals are met.

Step 3
Research-based Mental Health Care

The approaches we use are research-based. They have been developed and tested by the scientific community, with significant evidence to support treatment efficacy. What this means to you is that if you are ready, willing, and able to change, we can help you make that happen.

Our treatment is grounded in a biopsychosocial theoretical framework — meaning we consider the whole person, not just the symptom. To learn more about the specific evidence-based modalities we use, visit our therapy page.

Depression & Bipolar Disorders

Depressive & bipolar spectrum

Personality disorders

Clusters A, B & C

Substance use

Alcohol, opioid, stimulants

Neurodevelopmental

ADHD, autism, learning

Dissociative disorders

DID, depersonalization

OCD & related disorders

OCD, hoarding, body dysmorphic

Anxiety disorders

Phobias, GAD, panic

Psychotic disorders

Schizophrenia spectrum

Somatic symptoms

Illness anxiety, conversion

Neurocognitive disorders

Dementia, Alzheimer's, delirium

Disruptive & conduct

ODD, conduct, explosive

Trauma & stress

PTSD, adjustment
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Ready to get started?

Contact Dr. Fitzgerald González
The Neuroplastic Brain and How Therapy Helps
Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's intrinsic capacity to modify its structure and function in response to experience, learning, and environmental input across the lifespan. This reorganization happens at every level — from individual connections between neurons being strengthened or pruned, all the way up to entire regions of the brain rewiring themselves after injury or prolonged change in behavior. Simply put, the brain encodes what we repeatedly do and experience: connections that fire together regularly grow stronger, while those that go unused gradually fade. Critically, neuroplastic change is not passive; it is activity-dependent, requiring sufficient frequency, intensity, and temporal consistency of input to produce lasting structural adaptation. Supporting cells in the brain, particularly a type called astrocytes, also help regulate how and when these changes take hold — a role science is only beginning to fully understand. What this means, fundamentally, is that the brain's architecture is a record of its history — shaped by every pattern of activation it has ever sustained. Therapy works because it is, at its core, a structured and repeated practice of doing things differently — thinking differently, responding differently, relating differently. Every session is an opportunity to activate new patterns with enough consistency to produce real, measurable change in the brain. The insights you reach, the skills you practice, and the relationships you build in treatment are not abstract — they are neurological events. Healing is not a metaphor. It is biology.
The Brain's Soft Wiring
Not everything in the brain is fixed. While genetic hardwiring governs the subcortical structures we are born with — the architecture beneath conscious thought — the cerebral cortex operates differently. This is the brain's soft wiring: a vast, experience-shaped network of cortical connections that forms over time in response to what we live through, what we are taught, and what we repeatedly practice. Neurowiring refers to this cortical layer — not permanent, not genetic, but deeply grooved by history. The patterns that feel most automatic, most "just the way I am," are often not hardwired at all. They are soft-wired — written in cortex, not in code — and that distinction matters enormously. Because what experience shaped, experience can reshape.
How Therapy Rewires the Brain
This is where therapy enters. If neurowiring is the cortical record of everything you have lived through, then therapy is the deliberate practice of writing something new. Through repeated engagement — new ways of thinking, responding, and relating — therapy activates cortical pathways with enough consistency to produce lasting structural change. This is not self-help. It is a clinically guided, neuroscientifically grounded process of cortical reorganization. You are not trying to forget what shaped you. You are building the capacity to no longer be ruled by it.
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