Friday, January 29, 2010

CIA option: IACP Conference 2010 through my eyes

For those of you who wanted to, but could not attend DC sir's meeting with Subbu and me today, here's the gist:

All students willing to take up the assignment- 'IACP Conference 2010 through my eyes' should select one of the main sessions and one of the Paper or Poster sessions.
To see the see the lists of topics for the conference click HERE for main sessions, HERE for oral presentations and HERE for poster presentations.
You can put up their choice as a comment to this blog posting. Also, write your name and topics chosen on the list put up on the noticeboard in class. Try and make sure your topics don't coincide with another person's. If there are any such overlap issues to solve, please meet DC sir tomorrow after the exam.


The submitted report should have two parts:

a) Brief summary of the 2 sessions that I attended- why I choose those two- who the resource persons were- what they said (1000 words max.)
b) Student's reaction to the sessions- what you liked/disliked about the session- questions provoked in the mind- questions remained unanswered- any follow-up of the sessions by personally talking to one/two of the speakers later on- how is the session topics related to our course (1000 words max.)
You can be as innovative as possible, fulfilling the basic requirements as stated above.

DC sir would like us to enjoy the whole process rather than taking this CIA as a burden. And, of course, do not miss the lunch and the banquet ;-)

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

CLASS SUMMARY: 8th , 11th, and 18th JAN.’10

GENERAL ISSUES IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
• DOES PSYCHOTHERAPY WORK?
Hans Eysenck after reviewing some of the early empirical studies on psychotherapy outcome, concluded that’s most clients got better without therapy and is of little benefit.
He was criticized for his claim and inspired thousands of subsequent empirical studies since then.
In 1970s and 1980s meta-analysis was the method of research. It statistically combines the results of many- in some cases, hundreds-separate studies to create numerical representation of the effects of psychotherapy as tested across massive number of settings, therapists and clients.
There are two types of psychotherapy research:
1. OUTCOME – comparing with other types of therapies
2. PROCESS- what actually happens at a micro-level in the session.
• WHO, WHEN AND HOW SHOULD RESEARCHER ASK?
As different people have different view points on the result of the therapy, the researcher has to decide on whom to consider. HANS STRUPP gave the tripartite model according to which there are three parties to be taken in account .
1. The first is the client
2. The second is the therapist
3. The third is the “society” i.e. any outsider to the therapy process who has an interest in how the therapy progresses.
As to when to ask one can ask question just after a session when the memory is fresh or after some time lapse after a week or month to test the effectiveness of therapy over time.
• EFFICACY V/S EFFECTIVENESS
Efficacy studies typically feature well-defined groups of patients usually meeting diagnostic criteria for a chosen disorder but no others; manualized treatment guidelines to minimize variability between therapists and random assignment to control and treatment groups.
It is more homogeneous and thus internal validity is high
Effectiveness studies tend to include a wider range of clients, including those with complex diagnostic profiles: allow for greater variability between therapists’ methods and may or may not include control group for comparison to treatment group. Thus internal validity is low and external validity is high and is more a heterogeneous group.
• WHICH THERAPY IS BEST?
Though there are many schools of psychotherapy each one is competent enough as all of the have some similar characteristics thus in psychotherapy the “dodo bird verdict” applies perfectly. Some of the common characteristics common among are as follows:
1. Relation between therapists and client
2. Support to client
? Affective experiencing
? Cognitive mastery
? Behavioral regulation
3. Some kind of learning
4. Action orientation- something to be done

UNCOMMON FACTORS:
? Patient/client’s characteristics
? Therapist’s characteristics
? Interaction/relationship between the therapists and clients

EXPERT’S ROLE
? Release of emotion
? Therapeutic alliance/relationship building

CLIENT’S/PATIENT’S CHARACTERISTICS
? The degree of patient’s distress
? Intelligence includes emotional intelligence, insight, willing to change, connecting things, verbal processes etc.
? Age – young adulthood
? Motivation
? Openness i.e. psychological mindedness
? Race, ethnicity and social class

THERAPIST’S CHARACTERISTICS
? Gender, age, and ethnicity
? Personality
? Empathy, warmth & genuineness
? Freedom from personal problems
? Experience & professional identification
According to Wolberg following are the desirable traits of a therapist
? Therapeutic personality
? Objective – less neurotic
? Flexible
? Level of ego strength
Undesirable traits are:
? Emotionally detached
? Excessive hostility
? Professional ego

• PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC RELATION
? Background/Context (rf-encyclopedia of psychotherapy)
Therapeutic factors in the total range of psychotherapeutic intervention.
1. Non-specific : a. Affective Experiencing
b. Cognitive Mastery
c. Behavioral Regulation
2. Specific: a. Analytical Schools
b. Behavioral Schools
c. Experiential Schools
3. The Relationship As Therapeutic Factor: Psychotherapeutic changes always occur in the context of an interpersonal relationship and are to some extent extricable from it.
Simultaneous occurrence in different combination and emphasis.
? Transferential Relationship & Working Alliance
-special relationship between the therapist and the patient. Constitute both the subject and object of analysis
-primary stance: (original Freudian Room) transferential relations (therapist as a deliberate dispassionate observer and reflector of the patients feelings)* which many of us would not agree with.
-assymetrical therapeutic relationship
-secondary (more recent) stance: working or therapeutic alliance (holding the env., corrective relationship, empathic relationship)
Therapist aims at forming a real and mature (more satisfying) alliance with the conscious adult ego of the patient and encourages him/her to be a scientist partner in the exploration of difficulties (transference, resistance etc.)
? Teacher-Pupil Relationship
-used in behavior therapy
-deliberately structured
-therapist directly and systematically manipulates, shapes and inserts individual values in the therapeutic alliance (like a learning technician/social reinforcement machine)
-deliberately doesn’t dwell on the therapist-patient relationship. Secondarily done as relationship skill. *(this makes it easy for the behavioral therapist to leave the patient and transfer him to another’s care which is not so easy in any psychodynamic form of therapy, which is basically based on feelings and runs on time schedule)
-cognitive therapy : collaborative empiricism – tutorial approach
- patients share elements of both psychodynamic and cognitive approaches
? Person-to-Person Relationship (No power hierarchy)
-Rogerian/Expirential Approach
-here-and-now therapeutic dialogue or mutual encounter
-Egalitarian treatment model: alliance of human being to human being
“ I ENTER THE RELATIONSHIP NOT AS A SCIENTIST, NOR AS A PHYSICIAN WHO CAN ACCURATELY DIAGNOSE AND CURE, BUT AS A PERSON ENTERING INTO AN INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIP.”

• COURSE OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
? Initial Contact known as INTAKE
? ASSESSMENT PLAN both formal and informal. (first few sessions is to figure out what is the area of concern and major problems)
? TREATMENT PLAN that is GOAL SETTING. (every school has specific goal setting method)
? ACTUAL WORKING
? EVALUATION (home work, feedback etc). it is continuous in all session
? TERMINATION & FOLLOW UP
Even after termination the client will always has the right to come back.
Norcross has done research on the subject and has given changes of steps
? Precontemplation
? Contemplation
? Preparation
? Transformation/Action
? Maintenance
? Termination
Click HERE to download the article from Encyclopedia of Psychotherapy (Supplementary for MSE, but essential for ESE).

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Chapter 1 of Sommers-Flanagan

Click HERE to download the 1st chapter of Sommers-Flanagan (Supplementary reading for module 3).

Module 3 Reading List for MSE

Essential:
1) Chapters 11 of Pomerantz
2) Chapter 11 of Trull and Phares
3) Chapter 1 of Wolberg
4) For psychotherapies, please refer to sir's slides (click HERE) or refer to any basic text book. You should be in a position to write short notes on each of the perspectives, if required. You may read Pomerantz if you'd like, even though there are extra details in that text.

Supplementary:
Chapter 1 of Sommers-Flanagan (Click HERE).

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Integration Paper Outline

SIMPLICITY COMPLEXIFIED
Evolution and changes are usually seen as indicators of growth in any area and it is no different for the field of clinical psychology. Since the first DSM has been published, 4 further developed versions of it have come into existence and soon would the furthur refined DSM V come into existence. For most of its part, the DSM V promises to have improved upon its information with furthur empirical backing and validations, but it also includes certain new disorders within its diagnostic criteria. The disorders that are being included are so close to the 'normal behaviour' that it furthur diminishes the already thin line between what can be termed 'normal' and what can be taken as 'abnormal. This paper would like to look into these inclusions within the diagnostic bible for mental health. The aim of this paper would be to understand how relevant are these inclusions of the disorders (like premenstrual dysphoric disorder,minor depressive disorder,binge eating disorder etc.) to the field of clinical psychology. Further attempts to understand the kind of therapy that would/could be provided and how would it be provided would also be made. The usability, singnificance and requirement of these new diagnostic criterias would also be explored. If , like the critics point out, it is nothing but diagnostic madness, then where is the field of clinical psychology heading, is it really evolving?
In order to get a better understanding regarding these questions and uncertainities revolving around inclusions in DSM V, interviews of clinical psychologists and psychiatrists would be taken.
Submitted by:
Malvika, Nesmita and Sarah

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Integration Paper

ABSTRACT

Do people who claim that God is speaking to them or that they can see God, so “out of line” that they must be slapped with the diagnostic label of a schizophrenic? Is it keeping in line with the mandate of this helping profession to condemn, to the categorical prison of OCD, an individual who prays excessively and becomes extremely distraught when kept from praying? Is it ethical, (or even scientific) to mistake what is probably just an unconventional way of living as a pathology? It is an incredible invasion of one’s personal freedom and dignity when medical treatment and interventions are forced on them by concerned family members (not that they can be blamed) and more sadly, by scientific doctors (psychiatrists) and clinical psychologists. In a culture such as ours, where stories of men-God rendezvous and encounters are passed on for generations with reverence, surely such a belief (or delusion, for the less enlightened!) should not warrant disapproval? When nexus with the Almighty, by way of dialogues or through visions, is endorsed by our society, how are they so lightly dismissed as madness in the common man? The main tenet of this paper is to explore the “rights” and “wrongs” done to individuals experiencing other worldly states and how clinical psychologists and psychiatrists address them in the clinic. We will be interviewing conventional practitioners as well as those mental health professionals who think about things a little differently so it will enable us to gain greater appreciation of the standpoint of both sides.

Suggestions and comments are so welcome!:)

Varun Vishwanathan, Jyothi Ravichandran

E-Counselling

For my integration paper, I propose to explore the recently emergent field of Online Counselling, by interviewing one professional in this field, i.e. an online counselor and at least one, if not two, other mental health professional who is not one.
Mostly, online counseling is predominantly found in the corporate sector where employees make use of the services of an online counselor, appointed by that corporation. However, I would like to explore the possibilities of extending similar services to the public, in any appropriate form.
The interview will, for the most part, revolve around the following:

  • Initiation of the professional into the field – shift from the mainstream mental health training to current profession
  • Need for online counseling
  • Nature of Problems which are dealt with, in online counseling
  • Anonymity – Advantages of this to the client, but at the same time, it is important to consider how to ascertain the credibility of the counselor.
  • Crisis Counseling – similarity/differences with phone counseling
  • As of now, the average age group of the clients, their profession, other similar characteristics
  • Impact of management enforced sessions (for IT employees)
  • E-counseling as initiation of face to face counseling – How it can be the first step towards rapport establishment, etc.

    I look forward to comments by the professor as well as my classmates, in how I can improve my plan of action, what more I can include, or any other questions they would like to ask (to the professional).

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Plan of Action for Integration Paper

Dont have much so far, but I'm trying to study the descent of psychology into the more medical fields such as neurology. While the burning issue in our field is 'is psychology becoming more and more medicine oriented', I thought (with DC Sir's guidance) it would be interesting to explore if the neurosciences are beginning to take up a psychological orientation.
I have interviewed one Neurologist who seems to be oriented towards introducing psychology into his practice and i plan to follow up through more interviews regarding his training (which has resulted in such an orientation). I might also interview a more typical neurologist so as to compare the differing opinions on the topic. Literature is scarce but its an interesting idea!!

PROPOSAL FOR INTEGRATION PAPER


ATTITUDE OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST TOWARDS SOCIETY AS INFLUENCED BY THEIR PROFESSIONAL WORK



Objective of the research paper is to understand the attitudes that clincial psycholosgist hold towards social issues and the influence of professional work on their attitudes. In other words we try to explore how clinical psychologists make changes and differentiate their attitudes inbetween the society or social issues and professional field. The founding question which makes us to do the research are what kind of attitudes do the clincial psychologist have about the social issues? what they think about the raising issues in society? how do they make changes in their attitudes between the society and professional field?.To get the answers to such question we are going interview 5 to 6 clinical psychologists,with doing an primary reading. At end of this paper tires to provide enough knowledge about the personality and attitudes of clinical psychologist, and also about their professional field.

PLAN OF ACTION
we have plan to interview maximum 5 clinical psychologist who are practicing. we would ask question about their professinal field, question mainly on four contemproary issues of society, such as homosexuality rights in india, cohabitation in indian society or lifestyles changes in indian society, disputes and conflicts of states, environmental issues, with this we will have primary reading.

kiran kumar ctl and merin sampath
plz send us suggestion to make it more sharpening effective

Clinical Psychology and Pseudo-Scientific Procedures: A Critical Review (INTEGRATION PAPER)

ABSTRACT:

Apart from regular assessment procedures used in mental health settings, clinical psychologists are increasingly relying on controversial and popular assessment techniques like graphology, numerology, hypnotherapy & past-life regression. These techniques have also gained acceptance amongst masses of India. This may be due to the fact that

  1. Methods such as numerology, astrology have been deeply rooted in the Indian tradition and culture.
  2. Lack of awareness of effectiveness of other treatment procedures such as psycho therapy creates perceptual blinders.

This paper thus attempts to critically evaluate the above focal points and tries to bring out the rationale for the above mentioned procedures from the view point of mental health practitioners, advocates of alternative practices, as well as non professionals.

PLAN OF ACTION ABOUT INTEGERATION PAPER

TITLE: OVERLAP BETWEEN PSYCHIATRIC SOCIAL WORKER AND CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST IN TRAINING, PRACTICE AND PSYCHOTHERAPY.

There is a clear and accepted identity for psychiatric social worker and clinical psychologist as mental health professionals. But in current scenario we find a lot of controversies related to lot the role of both professionals. There are similarities, dissimilarities and overlapping areas for both. As clinical psychological students, we felt there is a need to clearly realise about the role and identity of both psychiatric social worker and clinical psychologist with respect to training, practice and psychotherapy.S0 we thought of interviewing practicing clinical psychologists and social workers in different settings to explore whether the competencies, skills, training etc matters in the successful healing of clients. And we also intend to interview trainees in both field to get to know about different type of training they receive in same institution. And also we intent to ask what will happen if integrated mental health education comes into practice.
Jinu Abraham, Firozna T.

plan of action for integration paper

Friday, January 8, 2010

Term Paper - Seema Misra

Topic For Research Paper : Animal Assisted Therapy

Aim: AAT is a new complimentary therapy. This paper provides a brief description of animal assisted therapy. A contextual understanding of this emerging therapy is aimed at by looking at:

· History of this therapy in India

· Applicability

· Ethical issues surrounding the use of animals in therapy

· The nature of the relationship between the therapy animal, the Mental Health Professional and the Client

· Brief description of the Organizations/ NGO’s that use this therapy

· How is AAT practiced in India different from that in America where it originated

Methodology: Books, and articles written on the topic. Information from some websites and discussion forums. Interviews with people who are involved in this.

So far I have interviewed Ms. Rohini Fernandis who started Animal Angels Foundation in Mumbai and Mrs. Pushpa Bopiah who runs Healing Horses in Bangalore.

plan of action for integration paper

SPIRITUALITY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

spirituality and psychotherapy are two different entities that are always in conflict. Moreover spirituality cannot be totally separated from religion. For the purpose of our paper we consider spirituality as "the personal ,relational aspect of religion.it is about an individual's innerlife, ideals, attitudes, thoughts, feelings and prayers towards the Divine , and about how he or she expressess these in daily way of life". If this is the case therapist would have a difficullt time in handling clients coming from different religious backgrounds. so we thought of focussing on whether the spirituality of the client and that of the therapist conflict. If it conflicts how does the therapist handle it? Whether the therapist has the right to introduce spirituality even without the consent of the client? How does the therapist face the clients with different kinds of spirituality? We thought of interviewing psychotherapists and clinical psychologists .
Stennis and Melbin

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Summary of the class of 5th January, 2010

In a discussion of the ideal definition of psychotherapy on Monday (4.1.10), we had read Wolberg’s (1995) definition, being one of the most accepted ones. According to Lewis Wolberg "Psychotherapy is the treatment, by psychological means, of problems of an emotional nature in which a trained person deliberately establishes a professional relationship with the patient with the object of (1) removing, modifying, or retarding existing symptoms, (2) mediating disturbed patterns of behaviour, and (3) promoting positive personality growth and development."
A request to react to this definition brought forth several interesting comments from the class:
• We see that point (3) (“promoting positive…”) is not always the average psychotherapist’s primary concern. Perhaps this is not so strange: focusing on the immediate problems (symptoms) seems to do be a way to do away with the “road blocks” in the process of positive personality growth.
• Some may not be comfortable with the term “treatment” because it rings rather medical and dominant. We tried to understand why, by exploring the etymological roots of the term and found that, as a term used in medicine, it only meant “behaviour or conduct”. The term “therapy” was used much later, and in medicine, meant to “heal or to cure”. However, some of us in class felt that to discuss etymology did not seem so relevant to a discussion of the word’s present-day usage. Language is a tool. The fact remains that sometimes it may take on some borrowed power from its usage (sir used the example of “gay”).
• Most of us preferred the term “assistance” instead, which Ninad had mentioned in his definition in Monday’s class. Interestingly, we seemed to find Ninad’s definition more satisfactory than Wolberg’s one: Psychotherapy is defined as the process in which an expert viz. the psychotherapist assesses the client or patient in reviewing, reinterpreting and reconstructing his/her concerns, consistent with the psychological school of thought in which (s)he has received training. [Perhaps we will hold sir to his promise to grant us full marks for writing Ninad’s definition of psychotherapy in the exam. ;) ]
• It lays rather too much stress on the emotional side of problems than others.
• “Psychological means” is an ambiguous term, and has no mention of theoretical backing-up.
Positive personality growth is something that may differ from culture to culture.
Another definition we finally found satisfactory was the one given by Sommers-Flanagan and Sommers-Flanagan (2004): Psychotherapy is a process that involves a trained person who practices the artful application of scientifically derived principles for establishing professional helping relationships with persons who seek assistance in resolving large or small psychological or relational problems. This is accomplished through ethically defined means and involves, in the broadest sense, some form of learning or human development.
Moving on to the differentiation of psychotherapy from psychotherapeutics (a term coined by Tuke), we agreed that psychotherapy is ideally supposed to be generally helpful to anyone, whereas psychotherapeutics aids psychotherapy but may work for some and not for others (e.g. psychodrama, dance, music, etc).
The “ideal” patient/client for psychotherapy has the following characteristics (remembered by the mnemonic YAVIS): Young, Attractive, Vital/verbose, Intelligent and SuccessfulIn fact, it has been jocularly suggested that the most ideal client for psychotherapy is the one who doesn’t need it at all! Incidentally, there also exists an acronym for those qualities that make a “bad” client: HOUND, which stands for Homely, Old, Unsuccessful, Non-verbal and Dumb.
The primary stakeholders of psychotherapy are the therapist and the client. Several intervening factors that affect psychotherapy are qualities around these stakeholders, i.e client variables, therapist variables (like age, sex, etc) and the relationship between the two (which can sometimes be dictated by the school of thought the therapist belongs to).
The class was wound down with an interesting study by Farber et al (2005) who listed out 12 themes in finding out the reasons for why people become psychotherapists, most of which we could identify with. These reasons have implications for practice, which will be discussed next class.

Reading Material

Click HERE to download Sonu Shamdasani's article.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

ABSTRACT; INTEGRATION PAPER ON CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST IN THE FIELD OF TERMINAL ILLNES

Hi,

The current trainings provided to clinical psychologists are oriented towards abnormality, ie unlike other psychologists, counselling, education , industrial or any other psychologists for that matter clinical psychologists are taught and trained to diagnose and treat mental disorders or abnormalities. Whatever model of training we follow whether it emphasises on research or practice, clinical psychology has been looking at serious abnormalities. But there is a growing demand of clinical psychologists in the field of Physical health, especially in helping with terminally ill patients. Clinical psychologists working in this area are not dealing with serious abnormalities but are called to work on various psychological problems associated with terminal illness like anxiety ,depression ect. They are also asked to help out in breaking the bad news,end of life care ect . So this integration paper took at the present training of psychologists and try to see whether the training equip or help Clinical psychologist to work in the area of terminal illness.

Dear sir and friends we are expecting your valuable suggestions.

REHNA and SR.TINTUMOL