Muir Meredith, Head of School, Westmark School
“Dr. Chidekel is fabulous! She has helped many students and families at Westmark and has even spoken here gratis just to be of service to the broader community! She is an amazing Neuropsychologist who has helped children and adults in so many ways such as finding the right school, identifying their learning issues accurately, and counseling the families. I especially admire her for her direct, unvarnished advice to her clientele and indeed to the educators at Westmark School.”
Vanessa Silver, MS, BCET, Educational therapist
“I have been supporting students for over 20 years as a Board Certified Educational Therapist. I often rely on the report material I obtain from others. I know that I can trust the information I read in Dr. Chidekel’s reports. After meeting the student myself, I have come to realize that she reports on the child and not the numbers. I appreciate her thorough, thoughtful, and meaningful insights. If is important for me to have highly professional and incredibly competent allied professionals to which I can refer or on which I can rely. Dr. Dana Chidekel is definitely one of those referrals.”
Arnold Purisch, PhD, Neuropsychologist
“I have known Dr. Chidekel for several years first as her mentor in her postdoctoral neuropsychology program and since then as a valued colleague. I have only positive experiences with her. She is incredibly intelligent and a wonderful clinician. Her caring and concern for her patients is without reproach. I have never hesitated to refer patients to her. She is an extremely valuable resource for me as a neuropsychologist.
Peter Brian Andersson, MD Neurologist
“I am neurologist in Tarzana and have worked with Dr Chidekel for at least a decade with multiple different patients, both adolescent and adult, and some extremely challenging. My patients without exception in all these years have reported to me only the very highest of compliments for the consummate skill and efficiency with which she administers her testing and the therapy and training services which she has provided. The reason is because she is not just very, very good at what she does, she really, really cares about the clients she treats.”
Paula Glickstein, Esq Certified Family Law Specialist
“Dana Chidekel has chosen to work in a highly emotional area of psychology where her patients are often unable to share their feelings at all; some do not even know that she is trying to help them. In that situation, the parents of her patients are so anxious to make their child better that they fall prey to the hucksters of the latest “cure” for autism, leaving Dr. Chidikal with the difficult task of explaining there is no scientific support for the “cure” the hucksters are selling. It isn’t surprising that when a parent learns the miracle cure is nothing more than a money grab, he or she is often angry at the person who dashed the dream rather than the one who was trying to take advantage of the parent and child’s vulnerability; those parents who need to keep believing sometimes respond by vilifying the messenger. Fortunately, that hasn’t stopped Dr. Chidekel from always telling the truth and always recommending what has the best chance of helping the child.”
“I’m a family law attorney who sees far too many cases where the parties’ child has autism. Often one parent is “reality” based and the other needs his or her fantasy to get through the day. But those fantasies come with a very high price tag that may even be dangerous to the child. When my client is the one paying for the child’s treatment he or she needs to know how the limited resources will have the biggest impact on the child’s life. Although some attorneys hire an expert to say whatever they are told – to jack up the amount of money the other party has to pay, in the case where we hired Dr. Chidekel my client genuinely wanted to know what treatments had the greatest likelihood of helping the child. Dr. Chidekel seems to have read every article that exists regarding every possible treatment – the good, the bad, and the ugly. If she is asked about something she hadn’t read, within a few hours of hearing about it she has learned everything there is to know about it and determined if it’s snake oil or has a good chance of positively impacting the child’s life. And in my profession where it is not easy to sort out the lies from the truth and it often feels like getting to the truth is all but impossible, it was amazing to be able to rely on someone I knew would tell the truth and would make recommendations that were always in the best interest of the child.”
“While the people who are critical of Dr. Chidekel were probably angry because she was not willing to tell them that the snake oil was”
“In that same case I took the deposition of the other party’s expert – the counterpart to Dr. Chidekel – and while she also did not believe in snake oil, her knowledge and reasoning was so vastly inferior to that of Dr. Chidekel that it became even more apparent that we had selected the right person to help this child.”
“Please don’t think I’m criticizing those who need their hope, even to the point of vilifying someone who was just trying to help their child; none of us know how we would react in that situation. But don’t be swayed by them. Talk to Dr. Chidekel and find out for yourself what you can do to give your child the greatest opportunity to attain his potential.”
Shelley Marshall, BA, BCET, Educational Therapist
“Dana Chidekel, PhD has been a colleague of mine for nearly two decades. I am so grateful to have such a consummate professional like Dr. Chidekel to refer to for Neuropsychological Assessment and Consultation. Dr. Chidekel is not only a keen diagnostician but she is extremely well-respected by her peers and the community at large. To complement her busy private practice as a Neuropsychologist, she maintains an active presence in the professional and educational community by delivering well-researched, relevant presentations, along with publishing books and articles about what educators, therapists, and parents need and want to know. Anyone who has had the pleasure of meeting or working with Dr. Chidekel will undoubtedly speak to her unwavering high standards, ethics, morals and principles not to mention how personable and approachable she is.”