Clarity, Confidence, and Care: How Thallo Health Uses the PAI to Support Family Building Journeys

Summary: In fertility and third-party reproduction settings, clinicians and decision-makers face challenges ranging from emotional complexity to operational risks such as defensibility, stakeholder scrutiny, and liability exposure. The Personality Assessment Inventory® (PAI) empowers professionals to deliver clear, consistent, and clinically justified evaluations, helping them navigate nuanced situations while supporting informed decisions for families and organizations. If you need an assessment tool that stands up to medical, legal, and organizational demands, the PAI solves for these problems. 

The PAI Deepens Support of Third-Party Reproduction Patients

Building a family through fertility treatment, surrogacy, or other forms of third‑party reproduction is a profoundly meaningful experience, but it is also emotionally complex and high‑stakes. Intended parents, gestational carriers, and donors must navigate medical, legal, ethical, and psychological considerations at the same time. In this environment, psychological assessment plays a critical role in supporting readiness, safeguarding everyone involved, and helping ensure informed decision‑making throughout the process. 

Thallo Health is a mental health practice specializing in psychological evaluations and clinical support for adults involved in third-party reproduction, including intended parents, gestational carriers, and donors. Their work frequently intersects with fertility clinics, agencies, legal teams, and international partners—settings where assessments must be both clinically rigorous and clearly defensible. 

That’s why Thallo Health relies on the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) from PAR. Designed to provide a comprehensive and nuanced view of adult personality and psychopathology, the PAI helps Thallo Health move beyond surface-level screening to deliver evaluations that are ethical, efficient, and clinically meaningful.  

Meet Andrea Bryman, CEO and Founder of Thallo Health 

For Thallo Health, psychological assessment is not a box to be checked, but a meaningful part of supporting families through deeply personal decisions. That approach reflects the leadership of Andrea Bryman, CEO and founder of Thallo Health, whose expertise in behavioral health and psychological assessment is closely informed by the realities of third-party reproduction. Andrea’s work is driven by a commitment to ethical clarity, emotional nuance, and clinical rigor—recognizing that fertility and family-building evaluations carry profound weight for multiple people and systems.  

In this customer success story, Andrea shares how the PAI has become a cornerstone of Thallo Health’s evaluation process—strengthening evaluations and building trust among clinicians, providers, and intended families alike. 

The Challenge: High-Stakes Decisions Demand More than Interviews 

In today’s fertility and third-party reproduction environment, psychological evaluations do more than guide clinical decision-making—they also shape operational risk and business outcomes. Every assessment impacts not only the well-being of individuals but also the integrity of medical processes, the enforceability of legal agreements, and the long-term reputation of clinics and agencies. For clinic directors, business managers, and clinicians alike, these evaluations must stand up to intense scrutiny from multiple stakeholders, including legal teams, referring physicians, and even insurance providers. 

As Andrea explains, “Third-party reproduction involves significant emotional investment, vulnerability, and trust.” But beyond emotional considerations, operational risks are real and growing. Evaluations must offer clarity in situations where anxiety, uncertainty, and situational stress are expected—ensuring no red flags are overlooked while also defending against misinterpretation and costly disputes. 

Without standardized, data-driven assessment tools, organizations expose themselves to subjectivity and inconsistency, opening the door to disputes over defensibility, increased liability exposure, and challenges to the validity of decisions made.  

Andrea recalls a case in which a candidate presented with significant anxiety during the evaluation process, a common experience in third-party reproduction settings. The difficulty lay in determining whether that anxiety represented a disqualifying concern or a natural response to the pressures of the process. “The distress was situational and directly related to the pressures of third-party reproduction,” she explains. In such scenarios, inconsistent or poorly documented outcomes can lead to stakeholder challenges, legal risk, and reputational harm. 

For Thallo Health, the challenge is clear: conduct evaluations that respect the emotional realities of family building, while delivering the clarity, consistency, and robust clinical justification needed to protect both families and organizations in a complex, high-stakes field. 

The Solution: Providing Comprehensive Insights with the PAI 

To meet the clinical, ethical, and operational demands of third‑party reproduction evaluations, Thallo Health needed an assessment approach that could deliver critical information without losing sight of the human experience behind each evaluation. For Andrea and her team, the PAI provides that foundation. 

“We chose the PAI because it’s comprehensive, clinically sound, and practical for real-world use,” Andrea explains. “In third-party reproduction, assessments need to go beyond surface level screening. The PAI gives us the depth we need while remaining efficient and ethically defensible—especially when multiple stakeholders rely on the results.” 

Administered as part of Thallo Health’s comprehensive evaluations for intended parents, gestational carriers, and donors, the PAI helps clinicians systematically assess emotional functioning, stress tolerance, interpersonal dynamics, and potential risk factors. Its strong validity indicators are particularly important in fertility and surrogacy contexts, where accuracy and defensibility are essential.  

“The combination of strong validity indicators and broad clinical insight sets it apart,” Andrea notes. “That level of clarity and confidence is essential in third‑party reproduction evaluations, where decisions affect multiple people and have long‑term implications.” 

One of the PAI’s most significant contributions to Thallo Health’s work is its ability to clarify context. “The PAI allows us to distinguish between situational stress and more persistent clinical concerns,” Andrea explains. “It helps us understand how individuals manage stress, relate to others, and cope with emotionally complex situations, leading to more nuanced recommendations and better matched support.” 

Delivering Reliable Results and Lasting Impact 

Providers in the fertility and surrogacy space frequently seek assessment tools that are repeatable, scalable, and defensible—particularly when evaluations must withstand scrutiny across medical, legal, and organizational boundaries. The PAI supports these needs by providing standardized data that complements clinical judgment rather than replacing it.   

“This work truly matters,” Andrea reflects. “Our assessments help bring clarity, reduce anxiety, and support people through high-stakes, emotionally charged decisions.”  

By integrating the PAI into its evaluation framework, Thallo Health has strengthened both the quality and consistency of its psychological assessments in third‑party reproduction settings. In practice, this has meant fewer ambiguities and a reduced need for additional testing, allowing clinicians to focus their time and attention where it matters most—on interpretation, recommendations, and client support.  

With the PAI as a cornerstone of its assessment approach, Thallo Health continues to raise the standard for psychological evaluation in fertility and surrogacy.