495/4
Section 1
Main Entry: Answer Parts 1 (a-c) & 2
- Consider this scenario:You are a psychologist working in a brain injury rehabilitation clinic. All your patients are recovering from a stroke, traumatic brain injury, or neurosurgery. This is an outpatient clinic – meaning your clientele are those who have recovered to the extent that they can leave the hospital, return home, and start navigating life with their “new normal” – typically with the assistance of family and your outpatient therapy team.You are working with one patient – a middle aged male who survived a left hemisphere stroke – who is really struggling with depressed mood. He is a well-loved, tenured college professor at local state university, and his specific functional impairments render him unable to return to work; he has expressive aphasia, meaning he has a very difficult time formulating full sentences either verbally or in writing. He tries – but it takes him several minutes to express one thought. And many of his statements are consistently inaccurate (i.e., when he means “no” he will say “yes.” When he says “my wife” he really means “my daughter”). His reading ability is somewhat compromised as well (he can do it with simple phrases, but it takes him a long time). He also struggles with his short-term memory. His insight is there (he can think in words but cannot express them) and he is fully present and oriented to time, place, and person.His beliefs about himself, and his sense of self-worth now that he cannot do the work he loved, are driving his depression. This, in turn, is affecting his outlook on the future and, notably, diminishing his motivation for speech therapy—the very intervention that holds the potential to aid in the recovery of his verbal abilities. In some ways, he’s an ideal candidate for cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). However, the protocol you have been trained to use requires things like: Keeping a daily, written “thought log” journal; sharing with you what some of his cognitive distortions are and talking through their accuracy/inaccuracy in session, etc.You scratch your head. How can you employ the best treatment for depression (CBT) – which is very writing-heavy, requires remembering to do something every day, and relies on in-therapy conversation – with someone who has a very hard time reading and writing, struggles to remember new information, and cannot reliably express themselves verbally?
Before reading the Gallagher et al. (2019) article (located in this unit’s Learning Resources), what would be your approach with this patient? How would you leverage your own creativity to help him and accommodate his needs while still offering him empirically supported treatment (the kind proven to help with his specific mental health condition…and the kind that insurance will reimburse for!). Share some of your own ideas for modifying traditional CBT to help him. If you’ve already read the Gallagher et al. article, it’s okay. Reflect and think of what you might have done before you learned what clinicians are already doing.
Now, read the Gallagher et al. (2019) article. What would you add to your above plan now that you’ve learned more about what clinicians have discovered about modifying CBT for brain injury? Further, what insights did you glean from Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED talk that might help you here?
One of the themes of your reading (as noted in Gallagher et al. [2019] and Verduin et al. [2008] articles) is that scientifically supported therapy approaches, of the kind that are studied in research laboratories, do not always translate well to the “real world.” Psychotherapy researchers prescribe protocols produced by standardized research designs, and not the muddy situations on-the-ground clinicians often find themselves in. The case of our stroke survivor above is a good example. “Peter’s” story in the Verduin et al. (2008), article illustrates this, too. Today’s clinicians walk the line between fidelity to protocols we know to work and the specific needs, abilities, goals, and sociocultural situations of our clients. Consider a case in your life (keep this anonymous/use pseudonyms); anyone you know who has a problem that they could seek psychotherapy for. Given what you have learned (not just in this course, but throughout your undergraduate journey), what “real world” obstacles would stand in conflict with the execution of “traditional” psychotherapy?
- Choose:
Choose something you found interesting, important, or surprising from the other Learning Resources offered in Unit 4 (von Rotz et al., Anderson et al., and Lord) and discuss why it stood out to you. Apply that point to something you know to be true in the world around you.
495/5
section 2
Main Entry (Parts 1, 2, and 3)
Part 1: You were offered several learning resources that demonstrated the influence of psychology on other disciplines; namely, public health, consumer behavior, environmental science, law, and criminal justice. Choose TWO (2) of those resources and identify the key psychological concept at play in each. Given what you have learned about those concepts during your tenure as a psychology major, what do you have to offer or add to these discussions? Support your commentary with some evidence.
Part 2: Thinking of psychology as a hub science can broaden the career outlook for graduating students of psychology. Discuss how thinking of your degree in this way diversifies your options and extends the definition of what a psychology degree is and what you, specifically, can do with it. Branch out beyond general descriptions and apply this new perspective to your specific life and career trajectory.
Part 3: If someone were to say to you “Psychology isn’t a real science, not in the same way biology and chemistry are” how would you respond? Pull quotes and evidence from your readings and videos to support your argument.
