Tag Archives: Psychology

Tips for Gaining Competency in Suicide Prevention as a Graduate Student

Kristen H. Erps and Stephanie Miodus

Graduates from health service psychology programs are expected to gain competency in many different areas before becoming independent practitioners. Despite developing key clinical skills throughout graduate training, one area that is often under-emphasized is recognizing and responding to clients at risk for suicide. In fact, studies have shown that many psychology graduates lack training in suicide prevention and intervention procedures and leave training feeling ill-prepared to work with individuals who are experiencing suicidality (Allen et al., 2002; Erps et al., 2020). 

The American Psychological Association of Graduate Students’ Advocacy Coordinating Team (APAGS-ACT) advocates for graduate students across all psychology training programs. As noted above, explicit education in suicide prevention, suicide risk assessment, and working with individuals who are at risk for suicide is not always a component of graduate training. For graduate students who hope to gain more competency in this area, APAGS-ACT has created a resource list that provides various avenues to independently gain education and exposure to suicide prevention. 

The resources in this list are not meant to be exhaustive; they instead provide a starting point for students who seek to increase their knowledge in this area. This list includes websites, organizations with which to get involved, volunteer and work opportunities, and trainings that are offered online. It also includes a competency assessment that can be used on an individual level or integrated into a graduate training program. 

The opportunities described in the resource list span conferences, community programs, certifications, and strategies for supporting those at risk for suicide, as well as other tools focused on suicide assessment and prevention. Graduate students in psychology programs are encouraged to explore these resources in order to supplement gaps they identify in their clinical training. Graduate programs can also use this resource list to support students in building their skills in suicide prevention, assessment, and treatment. 

References 

Allen, M., Jerome, A., White, A., Marston, S., Lamb, S., Pope, D., & Rawlins, C. (2002). The preparation of school psychologists for crisis intervention. Psychology in the Schools, 39(4), 427-439. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.10044

Erps, K. H., Ochs, S., & Myers, C. L. (2020). School psychologists and suicide risk assessment: Role perception and competency. Psychology in the Schools, 57(6), 884-900. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22367

International Students in Psychology: An Overlooked Group?

The number of international students enrolled in U.S. universities declined since the 2016/2017 academic year (Institute of International Education; IIE, 2019). While data for the years 2019/2020 are yet to be released, there is no doubt that trend will continue to decline given the abrasive conditions that foreign students continue to experience in the U.S. With the addition of a pandemic, systemic racism and police brutality, and specific policies differentially targeting immigrants and immigration, international students’ concerns are currently exacerbated by substantial threats to the continuation of their academic journeys and ambitions.

International students in psychology have been uniquely impacted by the institutional changes in response to the syndemic. Some of the direct effects to this population span across the areas of their immigration status, academic responsibilities, career opportunities, financial stability, safety, and mental health and wellbeing. Often these concerns are overlooked or not prioritized.

International Status: The stringent immigration and visa regulations applicable to international students in psychology have compelled them to limit their experiences and access to opportunities. The current syndemic in the U.S. only exacerbates this system. Students are unable to renew their existing visas and/or obtain authorizations for further training, disrupting the sensitive timelines for foreign students and professionals to commence and/or complete training; it also interferes with their ability to remain within status thereby creating extreme worry about lawful presence and work in the U.S.

Academic Responsibilities: Given the unsettling current presentation of COVID- 19 in the U.S., home governments have requested that certain populations return home. While programs have offered online instruction to these students, the significant time differences between the U.S. and students’ home countries have made learning an arduous task and minimally satisfying. Additionally, the inability to be physically present interferes with international students accruing practicum hours to secure externships and internships. As such, international students may be severely hindered in their practical experiences and hour accumulation, ultimately being disfavored when applying for internships and externships.

Career Opportunities: Students in various stages of their program encounter unique situations posed by the syndemic. Those nearing the conclusion of their program (often in the phase of dissertation and/or internship completion) are having to make critical yet unfavorable choices about the future of their career. After having invested 5-6 years of their life in the U.S., often away from family and friends, these students are absolutely hopeless about securing further training positions in the U.S. The current hiring freeze has resulted in international students in psychology returning to their home countries in seek of job opportunities. Further, given the status of psychology in their countries and the students’ subspeciality, these positions may or may not be related to their educational background.

Financial Stability: The budgetary cuts to university grants resulting from the syndemic have directly impacted international students. As a population who by default experiences an array of severe restrictions to the type of work, hours of work, and types of funding they can receive before the syndemic, the budget cuts have threated their financial stability the most. Students are having to rely on family and personal funding to fuel the continuation of their graduate education and livelihoods. These personal funds have to amount to tens and thousands of dollars to meet the unjust semester course requirement and outrageous out-of-state tuition expenses.

Mental health and wellbeing: There is, by default, a natural burden to the one’s mental health and wellbeing that comes with being a foreign student. Having to leave family and friends and start an educational journey while also attempting to maintain academic tasks, obtain financial stability, adjust to the cultural differences, navigate the international paperwork and immigration updates, and find social support are just a few. Unfortunately, the syndemic only worsened the circumstances for this population, where students are unable to travel to visit their families or fear the return to the U.S. upon leaving. Additional stressors are related to the lack of support and direction international students are receiving from their programs, departments, and international offices on campus, often leaving students to advocate for themselves. Furthermore, the same time zone and physical presence restrictions that impact practicum work restrict the ability of international students to access campus resources, even when they are available. These times can be truly isolating.

International students are truly resilient, persistent, and fearless individuals (Lee, 2013) and under the toughest circumstances, they are also helpful to one another. However, this population is needing and deserving of more systemic and institutional regard to navigate these new regulations, now more than ever. By providing limited to no support or advocacy, governing bodies, programs, departments, and intuitions are neglecting and overlooking a population that significantly contributes to a portion of the cultural and ethnic diversity in the field of psychology.

References:
Institute of International Education. (2019). Open Doors 2019 infographics. Retrieved from http://opendoorsiie.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Open-Doors-Graphics-2019.pdf

Lee, K. C. (2013) Training and educating international students on professional psychology: What graduate programs should know. Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 7(1), 61-69. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031186

APA’s Third Pandemic Care Package for Students

Is Zoom Fatigue a thing? Are we in a “new normal” yet? That may depend on when, how, and to whom you ask the question.  Wherever this message may find you, the staff in APA’s Early Career & Graduate Student Affairs hope that you are safe and that all of your loved ones are well. This is our third pandemic “care package.” We’ve hand-picked a few of the top resources provided by APA and related organizations to assist you during this time. Please feel free to share this with your networks and reach out if you have any questions or specific concerns we can field.  

New resources:

Continuing resources: 

What else would you like to see?  Send us an email – your concerns are our priority.

APA’s Pandemic Care Package for Students

We, the staff in APA’s Early Career & Graduate Student Affairs, continue to offer our best wishes for your safety and well-being. This is our second “pandemic care package” and we’ve hand-picked a few of the top resources provided by APA and related organizations to assist you during this time. Please feel free to share this with your networks.

New resources:

Continuing resources: 

What else would you like to see?  Send us an email – your concerns are our priority.

Who Has Authority to Write About an Ailing Body? Learning from Narrative Therapy and Medical Memoirs

In this post, I look at both narrative therapy and medical memoirs as forms of centering the patient’s experience of their own health. 

“Narrative therapy seeks to be a respectful, non-blaming approach to counselling and community work, which centres people as the experts in their own lives” reads the introduction to narrative therapy on the Dulwich Centre homepage, a great pitstop for anyone engaging in this style of treatment. 

Narrative therapy works on the basis of seeing people as distinct from their ‘problems’ or the issues that they bring to a psychologist or other psychotherapist. It works on the premise that people have identities that are multi-faceted, and the ailment that they face is only a part of who they are. Further, this school of thought favors the idea that “curious listening” to clients can give therapists a chance to facilitate healing through rich descriptions based on their clients’ stories. A rich description here can be understood as knowledge of the ailment as experienced by the patient with their own history of existence (and stories have a lot to contribute to a person’s existence). This emphasis on the patient’s agency to tell their story is common in narrative therapy and medical memoirs. 

A conventional definition of psychotherapy is a practice that helps someone “overcome their mental disorders and also aims for the betterment of the person”  (See Psychological Science). The definition is inverted when we understand psychotherapy to be more than merely solution-driven, as in narrative therapy. Here, the path of healing is travelled by both parties.  The facilitation of healing ceases from falling squarely on the therapist. 

We can now turn to medical memoirs for similar lessons. A first glance at this subgenre of life writings, gives one the impression that they are primarily physician narratives that speak of their experiences of an illness, or their patients’ experiences with illnesses. This, however, has been recently challenged.  Works like Amala Poli’s Writing the Self in Illness looks at the need for scholars and readers to look at memoirs with an experiential and caregiving lens. The writings go beyond a subservient purpose of offering physicians a stronger sense of the personhood/body in the state of illness. 

Poli writes: “The medical memoir is a counter narrative to medical discourses that takes the form of self-representation by foregrounding the experiential. The particular account of illness that the medical memoir articulates is indeed a way of reclaiming both the body and the self’s narrative of illness, but also one of expanding the understanding of health and illness in a language and form different from the one used in conventional medical discourse” (pg.  8). 

Poli’s ‘conventional’ here refers to the outlook that an ailing body or mind is the arena of the professionals. However, when the matter is of representation, the following question arises: Who has the authority to write about an ailing body? The current shifts in the field of medical humanities are expanding and rewriting the narrative to include the validity of memoirs by non-medical professionals and caregivers. The importance of self-tellings is marked by this shift in the meeting place of literature and medicine. 

The limited understanding of medical memoirs and use of narrative therapy restrict us from the plethora of knowledge that patient-narratives are bringing to the fore. By centering the experiential in our patients’ stories, medical memoirs and narrative therapy are both redefining how healthcare exists in and is perceived by the world. They offer the potential to highlight the patient at the center of interpersonal relationships, being in a relationship with their own ailing or aching body and mind. The centering of human stories leads to rich descriptions, collaborative healing, and a celebration of human agency. 

Dennis Wesley is an independent researcher and budding blogger. His interests include STEM and Humanities education, especially interdisciplinary practices and methods. He is equally passionate about the Sciences and the Arts, and mainly aims to present the pros of rigorous interdisciplinary training and processes. You can read more of his writing here.