Clinical Psychology

10 Key excerpts on "Clinical Psychology"

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  Introduction to Clinical Psychology

  • John Hunsley, Catherine M. Lee(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  27 CHAPTER 2 Introduction Clinical Psychology is a fascinating profession. Few university gradu- ate programs prepare students for such varied and challenging careers. Depending on personal preferences and job requirements, a clinical psychologist may devote professional time to (a) providing psycho- logical services, (b) conducting research and providing clinical training, (c) consulting with other professionals and agencies, or (d) all of the above. Moreover, it is common for the relative balance of activities to shift over the span of a career, so that a clinical psychologist may have periods when she or he devotes most time to research and in other periods devotes most time to administration or teaching. In this way, the psy- chologist has a multitude of different interests within a single career in psychology. Clinical psychologists work with individuals (at any stage in life), couples, families, groups, and organizations. Many clinical psycholo- gists work in the domain of mental health (e.g., treating anxiety disor- ders, disruptive behaviour disorders, mood disorders, schizophrenia, or substance abuse disorders). A large number of clinical psychologists con- duct research and provide health services outside the traditional practice domain (e.g., dealing with stress, coping with pain, or promoting adher- ence to medical treatment regimens) and/or provide services related to relationship functioning (e.g., couples therapy, parent education and sup- port, or family therapy). In 2011, the Canadian Psychological Association commissioned Ekos Research to conduct a survey of attitudes toward psychologists and accessing psychological services. Participants in the survey (N = 2,832) were asked to identify the mental health professionals best able to help them with various mental health problems.

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  Introduction to Clinical Psychology

  Bridging Science and Practice

  • Douglas A. Bernstein, Bethany A. Teachman, Bunmi O. Olatunji, Scott O. Lilienfeld(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Nevertheless, it is wise to remember the principle of caveat emptor (“buyer beware”) in relation to such interventions. Some of them, such as homeopathy, are highly questionable because well-controlled scientific experiments have consist- ently found their effects to be no better than a “sugar pill” placebo (Ernst, 2010). 10 | What Is Clinical Psychology? Clinical Psychologists at Work Section Preview In this section, we consider in more detail the activities that clinical psychologists pursue, how much time they tend to spend in those activities, the variety of places where they are employed, the array of clients and problems on which they focus their attention, and the financial rewards of their jobs. What Do Clinical Psychologists Do? Clinical psychologists engage in many different, interesting, and challenging activities. Not all clinicians are equally involved with all of them, but the fact that there is such a wide range of options open to those who enter the field helps to In Review | An Overview of Clinical Psychology Definition The field of psychology that involves research, teaching, and services relevant to the application of principles, methods, and procedures for understanding, predicting, and alleviating cognitive, emotional, biological, psychological, social and behavioral maladjustment, impairment, distress, and discomfort, applied to a wide range of client populations. Status The largest single subfield in psychology. Clinical psychologists are designated as health service providers. Its doctoral training programs are the most popular and competitive of any psychological subfield. Typical requirements for full licensure or certification as a clinical psychologist A doctoral degree in psychology, a period of supervised clinical experience, and successful completion of one or more examinations, and a record of ethical, competent practice.

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  Understand Applied Psychology: Teach Yourself

  • Nicky Hayes(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Teach Yourself

    (Publisher)

  6

  Clinical Psychology

  In this chapter you will learn:

  • the types of problem usually addressed by clinical psychologists
  • the major methods in Clinical Psychology
  • five different approaches to psychological therapy.

  Clinical Psychology is one of the oldest and most highly developed areas of applied psychology. It is the one that people most often think of when they think of the work that psychologists do – they think of counselling, therapy, helping people to recover from traumas or disasters, and so on. All of which are good reflections of the type of work that clinical psychologists are able to do.

  The scope of Clinical Psychology

  Clinical psychologists, as their name suggests, are trained to work with clinical problems: that is, psychological problems which have become so acute that they interfere with people conducting their day-to-day lives. Some clinical psychologists work in psychiatric hospitals, working closely with psychiatrists to help people who are suffering from a ‘mental illness’, or some other kind of severe problem in living. Some clinical psychologists work with other medical practitioners. It is becoming increasingly common, for example, for a clinical psychologist to work in a general medical practice, dealing with the type of problems which people bring to their doctor, but which are psychological in origin and better dealt with by a specialist in psychological matters.

  Insight

  People often do distinguish between psychologists and psychiatrists, but really they are quite different. A psychologist specializes in understanding the human mind, in both normal and abnormal conditions. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor who specializes in illnesses and disorders.

  Others work with specialist treatment units of one kind or another. Paediatric clinics, for example, have clinical psychologists among the team members, who are able to provide psychological evaluations, guidance for parents, and therapy for children who need it. Some clinical psychologists work in community contexts, contributing their skills to teams which deal with a wide range of issues such as the problems of homelessness and street drinkers, or the challenges created by lack of institutional care for severe schizophrenics.

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  Introduction to Clinical Psychology

  • Geoffrey P. Kramer, Douglas A. Bernstein, Vicky Phares(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 1 • What Is Clinical Psychology? 9 in psychological research projects, to establish pretreatment baseline levels of behavior against which to measure posttreatment improvement, and for literally hundreds of other purposes. Most clinical assessment instruments fall into one of three categories: tests, interviews, and observations. We cover each of these in detail in the chapters devoted to assessment. Clinicians today have an array of assessment options not formerly available to them. For instance, computers can administer assessment items, analyze results, and generate entire written reports. Another frontier of psychological assessment is developing from research on a variety of biological factors associated with human functioning. During the last two decades, research focusing on genetic, neurochemical, hormonal, and neurological factors in the brain has led to the development of new neurobiological assessments. These changes, too, have the potential to greatly enhance the assessment efforts of clinicians, but as with computer-based assessment, they raise a number of procedural, practical, and ethical questions (Gazzaniga, 2011; Popma & Raine, 2006). TREATMENT Clinical psychologists offer treatments designed to help people better understand and solve distressing psychological problems. These interventions are known as psychotherapy, behavior modification, psychological counseling, or other terms, depending on the theoretical orientation of the clinician. Treatment sessions may include client or therapist monologues, pains- taking construction of new behavioral skills, episodes of intense emotional drama, or many other activities that range from the highly structured to the utterly spontaneous. Individual psychotherapy has long been the single most frequent activity of clinicians (Kazdin, 2011), but psychologists may also treat two or more clients together in couple, family, or group therapy.

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  Surviving Clinical Psychology

  Navigating Personal, Professional and Political Selves on the Journey to Qualification

  • James Randall(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  They use evidence-based theory and research to support people (and those in their system) to notice and use their strengths to better understand and/or overcome periods of difficulty (while keeping a critical eye on what constitutes scientific evidence). Ultimately Clinical Psychology is about being with people, using skills to try to listen to them and their experiences (while being mindful that we will never really know what it is like for them) and working collaboratively with them to make changes in their lives. Importantly, this work is done not just at the level of individual client work – what makes clinical psychologists relatively unique is our ability to work at wider levels, including with families, staff teams, across multiple agencies, and at the level of policy. Clinical psychologists work with a wide range of people – including children, families, working-age adults, older adults, people with learning disabilities, people who have been in contact with the criminal justice system in forensic settings, people whose physical health impacts on their psychological wellbeing, and people for whom traditional services structures are inaccessible (e.g., people who are homeless or refugees). Some within the profession use the term ‘scientist-practitioner’, which is used to explain how we are uniquely placed to develop research, use evidence and combine this with clinical knowledge to strive for the best services possible for those we work with. The term ‘reflective-practitioner’ is also used to illustrate how we value thinking on our work, and use it reflexively to influence our future practice

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  The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies

  • Daniel Thomas Cook, Daniel Thomas Cook, Author(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  shell shock (or posttraumatic stress disorder) became pressing, Clinical Psychology experienced rapid growth and development. In this context, clinical psychology began to fully integrate the need to engage in treatment interventions as well as in scientific investigation and assessment.

  Clinical Psychology is now a long-established and regulated mental health profession. Although its history and current leadership has been primarily the province of men, alongside other caring professions, Clinical Psychology has an increasingly feminized workforce. It has been argued that the feminization of Clinical Psychology may have instigated a reduction in status and salary. Nevertheless, clinical psychologists are highly trained professionals, who exert considerable power within the territory of mental health. Yet they do not consistently reflect the diversity of the population they work with, training being rooted in academic systems that reflect societal inequalities.

  Most training courses are at postgraduate doctoral, sometimes master’s, level and equip practitioners to understand and work with children and adults experiencing mental distress and learning difficulties. The length of training is comparable to psychiatry, which also aims to provide treatments for mental distress. However, because psychiatrists are also medics, they are largely informed by the medical model, which uses diagnosis to organize treatment regimens that rely on the use of psychotropic medication rather than the use of talking therapies to alleviate mental distress. Although some clinical psychologists (e.g., in North America) are licensed to prescribe, the focus in Clinical Psychology remains on psychological, rather than pharmacological, methods for alleviating mental distress.

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  A Short Introduction to Clinical Psychology

  • Katherine Cheshire, David Pilgrim(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  We now turn to the relevance or ‘fit’ of different sociological approaches to the professions when mental health work is studied. We will focus on Clinical Psychology but allude at times to other professions. To focus on Clinical Psychology alone might mislead the reader by giving the impression that only this profession needs to be analysed critically; and the activity of clinical psychologists, like that of other professionals, occurs in an inter-professional context, especially in health care bureaucracies. Clinical Psychology cannot be understood in isolation.

  We mentioned that the trait and function approach has fallen from favour within sociology. This approach, elaborated by Parsons, embraced the preferred accounts offered by professionals (especially professional leaders) and contemporary examples can be found in standard introductory texts about Clinical Psychology. One such ‘public relations’ view is provided in a recent account of the profession by two of its senior members:

   

  In summary, clinical psychologists are psychologist-practitioners applying scientific knowledge and principles in a professional role to the alleviation of human suffering and the improvement of the quality of life.

  (Marzillier and Hall, 1999: 9; italics in the original)

  This view is the bread and butter of professional leaders’ negotiations with employers and politicians. For example, when the Division of Clinical Psychology or the Professional Affairs Board of the BPS is asked to the negotiating table with civil servants, or its written comments on legislative or organisational change in the NHS are requested, it will take the opportunity to promote the interests of psychologists by stressing their special skills.

  This activity is predicted most emphatically by the neo-Weberian approach to the professions, which suggests that they are perennially in the business of boundary maintenance, the making of new bids for legitimacy and the exploitation of opportunities for social advancement. Shaw was probably wrong to suggest that this happens conspiratorially between

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  Professional Issues in Clinical Psychology

  Developing a Professional Identity through Training and Beyond

  • Will Curvis(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Clinical neuropsychology is the application of a scientific understanding to the relationship between the brain and a person’s cognitive, emotional and behavioural functioning within an applied clinical context (British Psychological Society [BPS], 2012b). The use of specific standardised tests within neuropsychological assessment can provide a measurement of various cognitive functions, including attention, memory, language, visual and executive skills. Clinical psychologists utilise neuropsychological assessment across a wide range of services, most commonly in acute hospital settings, brain injury services, dementia/memory assessment services, educational settings and learning disability services (BPS, 2012b). Neuropsychological assessments might be used in these contexts to understand the impact of an acquired brain injury (e.g., stroke, traumatic brain injury), assess changes in cognitive functioning over time to monitor progressing dementia, explore the cognitive strengths and difficulties of a child struggling at school or establish an individual’s overall intellectual ability and needs.

  Within healthcare services, clinical psychologists are often regarded as experts in hypothesis-driven neuropsychological and cognitive assessment, and professional guidance states that in-depth neuropsychological assessment should involve a qualified clinical psychologist (BPS, 2012b). Clinical psychologists are trained to have a baseline level of expertise in neuropsychological assessment and formulation, fulfilling core competencies as part of doctorate training. Following this, some clinical psychologists also go on to complete additional qualification (composed of theoretical and clinical work) to join a specialist register of clinical neuropsychologists (Collerton & Domone, 2014).

  Neuropsychological assessment is a broad and complex area. Experiencing ethical and professional dilemmas when providing neuropsychological assessment in practice has helped to shape our professional identities within the context of Clinical Psychology. We will reflect on some of these experiences over the chapter.

  Inter-disciplinary working

  Increasingly, clinical psychologists are employed to work within multidisciplinary teams (MDTs), working collaboratively with other professional disciplines such as psychiatry, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and nursing. While MDT working is considered an advancement in providing integrated patient care, establishing a unique professional identity can be difficult, particularly within medical environments.

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  Life as a clinical psychologist

  What is it really like?

  • Paul Jenkins(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Critical Publishing

    (Publisher)

  The study illustrates many of the pressures in modern healthcare and how this might sit (sometimes uneasily) alongside the philosophy of Clinical Psychology. Source: Court et al ( 2017 ) 70 70 RESEARCH IN Clinical Psychology much research as neither applicable nor relevant to everyday practice. At the same time, researchers (ie, those who work predominantly in academic settings, and often not directly with patients) claim that many studies conducted in ‘routine’ clinical settings are not of sufficient methodological quality, and can therefore contribute only a small amount (if at all) to the advancement of knowledge. Parts of this argument may seem fussy or of minor significance, but these issues often strike at the heart of what it is to practise as a clinical psychologist. For example, if you consider evidence-based treatments as a sine qua non of clinical work, you may have particular ideas about how treatment manuals should be used in your practice. By con-trast, if you see these manuals as overly prescriptive and having been developed from populations that do not resemble the people whom you see every day, your attitude may be one that favours a more intuitive approach. I have faced this tension when providing and receiving supervision (how closely does one stick to a manual when providing psy-chological therapy?), introducing new treatments to a service, working with patients who do not ‘fit’ the model, and innumerable other scenarios. One pre-eminent scholar in this field succinctly summarised the status quo: that some areas of clinical practice display ‘ an indifference to scientific research… [and] others an outright antipathy ’ (Lilienfeld, 2010 , p 283). Aside from confusion regarding one’s own professional identity, this conflict can have more practical implications.

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  Clinical Psychology in Practice

  • Helen Beinart, Paul Kennedy, Susan Llewelyn, Helen Beinart, Paul Kennedy, Susan Llewelyn, Susan Llewelyn, Helen Beinart, Paul Kennedy(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  These aspects of Clinical Psychology practice are steadily gaining prominence, as clinical psychologists both choose, and are encour-aged, to provide psychological resources within health and social care by working indi-rectly or in multidisciplinary teams, or as leaders. As argued elsewhere in this book, Clinical Psychology is still a small profession, so it risks lacking the political, numerical or cultural power to make a fundamental difference to health and social care for the vast majority of users of services, simply by implementing routine one-to-one clinical practice, no matter how high its quality. In the UK for instance, the NHS workforce is around 1.3 million, of whom only around 6000 are qualified clinical psychologists, meaning that the chances of any one patient ever meeting a clinical psychologist are very small indeed. So, to ensure that psychological perspectives inform health care more widely, psychologists need to work differently, and this chapter suggests some ways in which this may be achieved. First, leadership will be discussed, and then the particular role of psychologists in teams will be considered, concluding with a brief overview of consultancy approaches. Leadership What is leadership? The term ‘leadership’ rapidly conjures up images of political figures such as Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela or Ghandi, and quite reasonably most clinical psychologists do not consider that they could possibly emulate such figures, even if they wanted to do so. It is important, therefore, to see that leadership in health and social care contexts is something rather different, and that although leaders are people who are influential and often respected, they are not necessarily orators, demagogues or powerful public Leadership, Teamwork and Consultancy in Clinical Psychology 351 speakers who can persuade people into or out of challenging situations or beliefs.

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