Given that mental health professionals lead lives outside the therapy room, they are not invulnerable to the impact of psychosocial life stressors. In addition, working with distressed patients is a complex and demanding task that requires the service provider’s devoted mental resources. Graduate student trainees in applied psychology programs are arguably prone to even greater […]
As of May 2018, approximately 50 million Americans are using online and mobile app dating services (hereafter referred to as “online dating”; Seetharaman & Wells, 2018). With one out of five relationships now starting online (Cacioppo et al., 2013; Hamilton, 2016), mental health professionals and graduate students are likely using these services. Indeed, a recent […]
As a newly minted post-doctoral fellow, I have repeatedly encouraged junior trainees to eat lunch, talk about their pets, get candy from my candy bowl, or offer to get them coffee if I am already headed out to get my own. At its core, I am trying to model and foster self-care amongst trainees in […]
Introduction Clinical supervision comes in many different shapes and sizes. However, clinical supervision remains, at its core, a professional relationship in which the supervisor provides instruction and guidance in order to further develop the supervisee’s knowledge, skills, and attitudes in clinical practice (Falender & Shafranske, 2004; Falender & Shafranske, 2014). Although the style of supervision […]
On March 16, 2019, the esteemed international magazine The Economist published an article titled “Talk is Cheap: What Disasters Reveal About Mental-Health Care.” The article extolled the virtues of using lightly trained “psychotherapists” to deal with emotional problems in countries that have a shortage of mental health professionals. After highlighting the role of stressors such […]
Introduction To be in supervision for beginner therapists is a nerve-racking experience, which has the capacity to change the life of the trainee. Hyde (2015) describes beginner therapists as intelligent, gifted, and successful individuals who in supervision face scrutiny, which threatens their self-esteem and stirs up anxieties and defenses. She says, “In supervision, we feel […]
I sat in an integrated primary care elective course during the third year of my doctoral program in counseling psychology, mesmerized by the opportunity of working in primary care as a behavioral health consultant. After my completing this primary care elective and conducting brief psychotherapy for five years, I was convinced I would be prepared […]
Supervision will be introduced to students in many graduate cohorts as an aspect of their training they will both enjoy and endure. Framing it this way inherently leads students to start to question what they want in a supervisor. Some will think of the worst and ponder what it would be like to have a […]
The breakneck speed of working on an inpatient behavioral medicine team of an urban tertiary hospital is quite often both exhilarating and exhausting for clinical psychology doctoral students. There is an idiosyncratic rhythm to the workload, as new consults roll in or patients the service follows are readmitted to the hospital. The expectation for trainees […]