If you do suspect your child has a medical or mental health problem that could be causing defiant behavior, it's best to find a qualified professional to conduct testing. You'll have a number of different options.

How to Choose a Professional

If you suspect your child has had brain trauma, has an allergy or sensitivity, sleep disorder, abnormal hormone levels, cognitive delay, or diabetes, consult a pediatrician for testing or referrals to a specialist. You may also wish to consult a pediatrician if you suspect your child is using drugs and would like a blood or urine test. If you suspect your child has a language impairment, ask for a referral to a speech therapist or speech pathologist (your child's school district may employ a speech pathologist).

If, however, you suspect your child could be suffering from depression, or any type of anxiety, consult a mental health professional. The choices are: a marriage and family therapist (MFT), a licensed clinical psychologist, or a psychiatrist. Marriage and family therapists have the least training, and psychiatrists have the most extensive training and are the only ones who can prescribe medications. Look for a mental health professional in the yellow pages, by using an online search engine, or by visiting FeelBetterNetwork.com or PsychologyToday.com. Check to see that the professional's credentials are current and their license number is displayed on their website or in their literature. Your child's school counselor can perform a behavioral assessment, and some graduate schools, clinics, and county mental health agencies can do low-cost assessments. Whomever you choose, it is extremely important that the clinician has extensive experience, if not a specialty, working with children.

Online Exams

There is a plethora of online exams to assist you in assessing behavioral and mental health problems. While these are helpful, and some are scientifically sound, it's best to consider them a starting point rather than a final diagnosis. You can take the online quizzes and show the results to a professional for follow-up, though, as you'll see in the section below, you may wish to hold off initially.

Some online assessments are free, while others, especially those that are empirically validated (meaning they have been scientifically proven to be effective) cost money. In fact, you may find some empirically validated tests to be quite expensive, largely because they are copyrighted documents that took years of time, research, and effort to perfect, so most institutions must charge for them. In addition, tests like these often require a mental health professional to complete complex scoring and interpret the results. For these reasons, it's best to hold off on taking anything but a simple, free online test until a professional instructs you to.