APAConvention Blog

Self-care in challenging times

Being empathetically engaged with clients who've experienced traumatic events brings the risk of vicarious traumatization -- but a therapist can take steps to manage that risk and stay focused on the larger goal of helping people heal, said Kit O'Neill, PhD, at a symposium on self-care for psychologists on Sunday at Convention.

Therapists helping people deal with horrible events might experience similiar symptoms, such as intrusive thoughts and nightmares, and may find themselves avoiding taking on new clients dealing with trauma, or skirting around traumatic issues instead of dealing with them directly during a session. To reduce those effects, therapists can practice relaxation techniques to calm the "fight or flight" reflex, get physical exercise, and stay connected with family, friends and colleagues, O'Neill said. 

A professor at North Dakota State University, O'Neill helps oversee APA's Disaster Response Network, serves as an instructor in disaster mental health with the American Red Cross and has responded to disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.

Besides addressing the physical effects of vicarious traumatization, psychologists need to also stay focused on the big picture of why they got involved in psychology in the first place, and remember that taking care of yourself will help you take care of others.

Building girls better, faster stronger -- we have the psychology!

At about the seventh-grade mark, girls tend to enter an egocentric phase. They distance themselves from their parents, compete for the attention of boys and compete with each other. They begin saying it's easier to be friends with boys than with other girls. That's the mentality StronGirls is hoping to interrupt before it takes hold and impacts girls' ability to form meaningful (rather than mean) relationships with other girls.

The program, based in the Chicago area and described at a convention session, is a 10-week course integrated into seventh-grade girls' health class that teaches them about healthy and unhealthy friendships, listening techniques, how to deal with stressors and how stress can create conflict, and about how to be empathetic with themselves and others. The girls read, meet in small groups, and participate in a "Privilege Walk," where they line up and are asked questions such as, "If you ancestors were forced to come to this country against their wills, take one step backward" and "If your parents are professionals, like lawyers of doctors, take one step forward." By the end of the exercise, the girls see how privilege affects themselves and their peers.

The course concludes with the girls creating a skit based on their experiences with the program that showcases how their understanding has increased. They perform the skits for their mothers and for fifth-grade girls in the hope of passing on the knowledge to the emerging young women and incrementally building a better environment for girls.

Dog lovers hear how smart their dogs are at APA session

It was standing room only as dog expert Stanley Coren, PhD, described how intelligent dogs are in a wide-ranging talk that featured video clips of canines doing extraordinary things.

First domesticated 14,000 years ago and originating from wolves, jackals, coyotes and wild dogs, today's domesticated dogs are the best examples of behavior genetics. Certain breeds can learn many behaviors from each other and from people, Coren said at a presentation Saturday. They are smarter than cats but not as smart as dolphins -- or humans, although they are intelligent enough to deceive us to get what they want. For e.g., he showed a clip of a dog stealing a sandwich and soda off a table and framing the cat while the owner answered the door.

Border collies are the smartest breed, according to 208 dog obedience judges from North America, with poodles coming in second. "Poodles are retriever types and people shouldn't be fooled by the stupid hair cut," Coren said. Retriever types are in the top 20 percent. Afghans ranked the lowest - "the caboose of dogs," according to Coren - on trainability.

Using another clip, Coren demonstrated how dogs learn human language, referred to as "receptive language proficiency." One dog, a terrier, sounded like he was saying "ma-ma" after his owner said the word several times to him.

Another video about St. Bernards showed how they learn to rescue people in wintry conditions. Acting in packs of three, two dogs stay and keep the victim warm (stayers) while the third dog goes for help (goer). To train these dogs, inexperienced St. Bernards go out with experienced ones. The dogs themselves choose whether they want to be a "stayer" or a "goer."

Coren is of the view that dogs have conscience, citing the fact that they experience REM sleep and appear to dream.

What have you learned at Convention? (Part 2)

If ideas had mass and volume, I'd have to check an extra bag on my flight home to D.C. today. I've packed my brain to overflowing with ideas about topics as varied as dog intelligence, the neural underpinnings of learned helplessness and the use of fairy tales in therapy. Read on for a sampling of what your fellow conventioneers are taking home with them this year.

"I learned that The Counseling Psychologist is moving away from themes, and Nadya Fouad, the editor, is allowing more flexibility, so now there'll be more diversity in a journal issue. Historically, TCP has always been theme driven, so this is a significant change." 

--Dr. Claytie Davis III, of the University of California-Berkeley

 

"I've learned how psychologists can become economically and politically active. We are trained to help people as individuals, but we can think more globally and have a broader impact."

--William Alexander Hall, Philadelphia

"I went to a session on mentoring and learned how to better mentor and adapt mentoring styles for cultural and cross-generational situations. I also learned how technology plays an important part in all of this, since younger generations use technology more than my own."

--Dr. Monica Mitchell, of Cincinatti Children's Hospital

"To be a scientist practitioner, you need to pay attention to the research and realize that the therapeutic alliance is what's really important." 

--Dr. Robin Lett, of Ball State University

Family approach for serious mental illness

At the session "Roles, Opportunities, and Obstacles for Psychologists--Developing and Implementing Evidence-Based Practices for Serious Emotional Disturbance," Shirly Glynn, PhD discussed a family-centered approach to treating serious mental illnesses, including chronic depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. She mainly focused on people in community mental health and VA settings, but the approach could probably work in just about any setting.

Basically, Glynn argues, by involving the patient's family in the process, better outcomes are achieved. Family members are kept up to date and also take part in sessions. This approach works, she said, because it involves the "community" -- in this case, the family -- in the recovery process. They can then serve as a support group and aren't left on the sidelines waiting for a loved one to improve, but take part in the recovery process themselves. In fact, in many of these cases, relapses are reduced by as much as half.

The question then is why aren't we doing this for every case of serious mental illness? We're not, said Glynn, because family interventions take a lot of time. Programs often take nine months to two years and are very demanding for everyone involved. It can be hard to get that kind of commitment from people whose schedules are already full.

"It's like we've created a Hummer," Glynn said, "and most people just want a Saturn."

Estrogen affects the brain, not just reproduction

I'm fascinated by the many ways mind and body are linked. Here’s another case study:

The client was a 52-year-old woman with a history of alcoholism and depression. Once the client was off alcohol, psychologist Joan F.B. Read, PhD, noticed her depressive symptoms were running in about a six-week cycle—matching the client’s menstrual cycle. The drugs Paxil and Lamictal weren’t effective. The next step? Hormone replacement therapy. The depressive symptoms stabilized. And, as the client continued therapy for her other issues, she had a partial hysterectomy, enabling the OB/GYN to take the woman off progesterone. The client did even better.

Read outlined years of psychological researching showing how the three kinds of estrogen affect a lot more than reproductive systems. Indeed, the prospective Women’s Health Initiative study that ran from 1995 until it was halted in 2002, found that hormone replacement therapy increased the risks of some cancers and had some negative effects on cognitive function, although there were benefits, too.

In retrospect, said Read, the Women's Health Initiative had a flaw: The vast majority of women in the trial were 65 or older at its start, and most hadn’t had HRT before. There was about a 15-year gap between menopause and starting HRT for these women. Read suggested that HRT was started too late to have desired health effects. Introducing HRT at perimenopause—and using a different "cocktail"—may have produced a different result.

In particular, she said, researchers are looking at selective estrogen receptor modulators that would affect certain estrogen receptors without affecting others, such as ones that serve as a growth medium for cancer.

Involving more ethnic minority students in grad-level psychology

There are plenty of ethnic minority students who want to pursue doctorates in psychology and become practitioners and academics, but some might feel that's there's not enough information accessible for them on how to get there -- whether it's learning about financial resources available to students or finding out how the people who came before them achieved so much.

That was some of the feedback from students at a town hall-style meeting held at the convention on Saturday. The meeting had two main goals -- collecting perspectives on the pressing tasks involved in promoting the recruitment, retention and training of ethnic minority students in psychology, and brainstorming some solutions.

The town hall was co-sponsored by the Commission on Ethnic Minority Recruitment, Retention and Training (CEMRRAT2 Task Force) and featured psychologists who've been active throughout their careers as trailblazers in making psychology more diverse as a profession -- Dick Suinn, William Parham, Fred Leong and Jessica Henderson Daniel.

It's a tough time for CEMRRAT-- APA's budget constraints brought a $100,000 funding cut in grants this year. Overall, significant progress has been made in improving diversity in the leadership positions of APA's divisions, boards and committees, and APA's membership itself is more diverse.

And while there are more minority students in the educational pipeline, that supply drops off at the doctoral level, and the faculty of academic departments of psychology need to become more diverse. One common theme that kept popping up was the need for mentoring.

Some of the ideas included: Putting mentoring initiatives in place for first-year college students, particularly African-American males, to reduce isolation; and including formal training in how to get involved in boards and committees of professional organizations.

Movies can model goodness

How to model good behavior for clients? This question has stumped psychologists for years. But Dr. Danny Wedding thinks he has the answer: Watch movies. During Wedding's convention presentation,  Films and the Good Life: Using Movies as Exemplars for Virtuous Behavior, he argued that the best way to teach people how to live morally upright lives is to sign them up for Netflix. 

Watching films that model positive traits, he says, will help clients become the person they wish to become. Want to develop a better perspective on life?  Watch "My Life as a House." Do you surround yourself with too many fellow Obama fans? Watch "Rashomon" and learn to open your mind to the Rush Limbaugh crowd. An admitted cinephile who says he spent most of his college career learning only about depression, Wedding has spent his recent years concentrating on positive psychology.  Inspired by his love of stories (in addition to his PhD, he has a master’s degree in English) and the field of bibliotherapy, Wedding has published books encouraging people to emulate the characters Atticus Finch, T.E. Lawrence and Forrest Gump. In a world where movies rule the popular imagination, Wedding’s work will help people see that, indeed, "Life is Beautiful."         

How can psychologists help prevent teacher violence?

While it's the most tragic national examples like Virginia Tech and Columbine that typically make headlines, approximately 7 percent of U.S. teachers are victims of violence in schools every year. The costs associated with these incidents are hefty. In fact, some experts estimate they reach more than $2 billion a year through lost wages, increased workers' compensation due to psychological distress and injury, lost productivity, early exiting of the profession and negative student behavioral and academic outcomes.

So it's with good reason that a panel of presenters came together Saturday at APA's Annual Convention to discuss why students lash out against and what psychologists can do to help prevent it.

"In the end, everyone suffers from teacher victimization," said Rutgers University school psychologist Linda A. Reddy, PhD.

Reddy and all of the session's presenters are members of APA's Task Force on Violence Directed at Teachers. Later this month, the group plans to release a white paper and Web-based brochure on understanding and preventing teacher victimization. Check out the Center for Psychology in Schools Web site soon for more information.

How psychology can help the homeless

On any given night in the United States, about 670,000 people are homeless. Psychologists can help, says APA President James Bray, who organized a presidential task force dedicated to finding out how psychologists' contributions can help end homelessness. The trick is figuring out what they can do, and how to get homeless people to seek their help.

Seymour Gross, a clinical psychologist in Minneapolis, said that psychologists need to have something of value to give homeless people. One thing they can provide, in coordination with funding agencies, is housing, said Joe Schumacher, a psychologist at the University of Birmingham.

Schumacher advocates an approach known as "contingency management" housing, where homeless people are given apartments in exchange for staying off drugs. That's opposed to another approach known as "housing first," where homeless people are housed and then offered treatment for any mental health or substance abuse problems. Schumacher's research in his population suggests that contingency management housing programs are more successful at helping people achieve sobriety and long-term stable housing, but more work needs to be done to determine which approach works best in different circumstances.