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section 1
Main Entry (Parts 1 – 3)
Part 1: It seemed helpful to get a jump start on our Unit 7 assignment in last unit’s discussion. Let’s keep rolling by doing something similar here in Unit 6. Let’s continue our legwork, this time using the therapies we learned about in Unit 6 – cognitive and behavioral therapies, acceptance-based treatments, and mindfulness-based therapies. Do the following:
- Choose one of the therapies we learned about in Unit 6 that you think you might be exploring in your Unit 7 assignment. Discuss why you are drawn to it for the client in your story and what exactly it might help them with.
- Do some digging on Google.com/Scholar or the UMGC Library database and find one peer-reviewed, published treatment study that supports the use of this approach for the client’s particular presenting problem. Summarize the methods and the results of this study for us and evaluate whether this would be a good choice from an empirical-support standpoint.
- Brainstorm a journal entry you might use for this client (see the Unit 7 assignment instructions for clarity on what this means) and solicit feedback from your instructor and peers, so that you can feel more confident including it in your Unit 7 piece.
Part 2: In this unit you read about how culturally competent CBT therapists facilitate treatment in culturally sensitive and aware ways. After reading Graham et al. (2013) article or surmising its take-home messages, describe what you think would “go wrong” in a CBT session if a therapist did not adhere to this guidance. You can ground this discussion in a specific example, if you’d like (i.e., a therapist working in a particular cultural context). Use quotes and references from the article to justify your prediction.
Part 3: Identify one at least one mic drop moment* from Segal’s TED talk on mindfulness and depression and explore them from your unique point of view, observations, or lived experience.
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section 2
Main Entry (Parts 1 & 2)
Part 1: As part of their training, child and adolescent psychologists hone very specific skills that allow them to connect with the inner worlds of the young people they work with – young people who may not yet have the words to truly express what they are feeling and thinking, or what they need or really want. In order to do that, they must also develop a baseline understanding of the unique and fundamental needs of all children. And what the struggling adult really needed during their younger phase of development that could have made life easier for them later.
Because they know that not all children who need help end up in a psychologist’s office, child and adolescent clinicians have hit the pavement, so to speak, educating anyone who plays a role in the development of a child (parents, teachers, other family members, researchers, other psychologists, policy makers, politicians, students of psychology, the list goes on) on what children really do need in order to blossom into a physically and psychologically healthy adulthood.
One of the ways they communicate this to the masses is through TED Talks – and there are quite a few of them on the topic of children and adolescents. Let’s do this:
- Do a search on TED.com or YouTube for a relevant talk and listen to it/watch it – anything that offers insight into the unique needs, challenges, and perspective/worldview of a child or adolescent. Offer a link to the talk and reference the speaker and title of it so that we can go watch if we’d like as well.
- Discern the speaker’s home message and summarize it for us. Pull out one or two mic drop* quotes from it to represent your legwork in executing this part of the exercise.
- Then, connect this take home message with something specific you learned in your learning resources this week. Synthesize these two pieces of information into one central point, born of your own integration of these two concepts.
- Draw your own conclusions about how psychologists (or anyone in a position to help a child) can take your “combined” insight and use it in their work.
Part 2: To this point you have learned a lot about the practice of psychotherapy. The same theoretical underpinnings, methods, common factors, and techniques clinicians use in the younger – middle aged adult population apply in geropsychology. However, given the unique needs of the aging population, traditional assessment and therapy accommodations should be considered.
Given what you have learned about the neuropsychological and mental health needs of seniors, what might some of these accommodations be? Prior to consulting a source, write down some ideas you have based on your personal experience of older adults. What would those people (the ones you know) need if they were to enter a psychological assessment or psychotherapy environment? Then, do some research and see if you can find any other professional sources that have identified and offer solutions for that same issue.
