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The loss of a loved one is an immense pain that everyone feels at some point in their lives. Hopefully, we experience this as an adult so we have the life experience, the positive memories and the social support network around us to help us deal with this loss. As well as hopefully as an adult, we would have the emotional awareness of how to deal with this loss. Yet a child doesn’t have a lot of these benefits that an adult has. If a child loses a parent or a loved one, then they can feel trapped, alone, isolated and they might not even understand what’s happening. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn how to support a child through loss and grief, how best to help them depending on their age and so many more valuable insights. I’ll reflect on the implications for aspiring and qualified educational and clinical psychologists too. If you enjoy learning about mental health, child psychotherapy and loss, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Working with Children and Young People: A Guide to Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy and Mental Health. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. How to Support a Child Through Loss and Grief? There is no right way for a child, or yourself to grieve. You’re allowed to feel angry, confused, sad, and you’re allowed to laugh about a shared memory, ask a lot of questions and grieve however you deem fit. There is no way for a child to grieve, and a child might have some ways of coping that seem odd to us, like asking a thousand questions, but if it helps them cope in an adaptive way then that is okay. If you’re a parent, a loved one or someone else who’s supporting the child to deal with their loss and grief then it’s important for you to understand what’s happening and how the child is feeling, and most importantly, how to support them as they come to terms with the loss. Whilst there are a lot of reasons about why I want to learn about supporting children through loss and grief, one of them is because as an aspiring clinical and educational psychologist, when I apply for mental health jobs in educational settings, I want to show that I understand how to support students. Therefore, this is why in this episode, I’ll focus on applying this to the real world so we can all not only understand and support children to deal with loss and grief, but we can also apply it to our own lives and talk about it in job interviews. Another reason why I want to learn about how to support a child through loss and grief is because of the negative mental health outcomes that this life event can cause children. For instance, a systematic review by Dantan et al. (2026) found that the short-term mental health outcomes for children after losing a parent can include depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. As well as the long-term impact can include the long-term maintenance of these conditions so they negatively impact a child for the long-term. As an aspiring clinical psychologist, this is heartbreaking because I want to know how I could better support a child client so they don’t have to suffer, be in psychological stress and develop maladaptive coping mechanisms for the long-term. Equally, if I’m supporting a parent who’s lost their spouse and they’re worried about their child, then this is something we will have to spend a little bit of time focusing on in therapy. Since I believe if a child is struggling with their mental health, then the adult parent will likely be spending their time, mental resources and emotional energy focusing on their child and their own grief instead of healing from whatever they originally came to therapy for. Therefore, if there’s anything I could do as a mental health practitioner to improve the home life of the client so they don’t have to worry about their child as much, then this might help the success of our original therapy. As well as it might strengthen the therapeutic alliance because the client might be thankful for my support for their child even though it wasn’t what they originally came in for. Just some thoughts. Then as an aspiring educational psychologist, I would have to be aware of how to best support a child with their loss and grief because I would like that child to thrive academically, be able to feel supported and a part of the whole-school community and I want them to be able to be successful at school. Instead of suffering in silence because of their loss and grief, and I’ve also found based on other experiences in my life, that there are times when children are more willing to talk to adults at school about their life and mental health compared to their own families. This is another reason why it’s important to create a safe, open environment where students feel able to have these healing and supportive conversations. A final reason why I wanted to learn about this topic is because the boys’ love anime “Tadaima, Okaeri” shows one impact very well. In the later episodes, the child of the main characters makes a friend in another child who only lost his mother the month before, and he wakes up after a nap, gets confused and he cries his eyes out because his Dad isn’t there. It turns out for the past month, the child has been so focused on supporting his dad with his grief, the child has been bottling up all his feelings about the death of his mother. He did it out of pure love for his dad but it made me question, what the healthier ways would have been to support this child after the death of his mother. That’s what we’re going to be focusing on now. How Do You Support Grieving Children? There are a lot of things that you can do to support a child after the loss of a parent or loved one, and in the rest of this episode, we’ll learn more about them and how to use age-appropriate language to support them and teach the child about death. Allow Space for the Child’s Feelings Firstly, allow the child to talk about their feelings and allow space for them. It’s really important when a child is processing their loss and grief that you don’t shut them down if they want to talk about the deceased person. Also, it’s a good idea for you to encourage them to share memories if they want to talk but don’t force it. Of course, this is likely to be painful for you and you might not be at a place where you can do the same, but like you, your child is trying to heal, find a way forward and just survive this difficult time. Therefore, even if you would rather your child didn’t talk about the deceased person, it’s important that you allow them space for their feelings. This will help your child, it might make them happy and it will help them to heal and find a way forward. If you’re tempted to shut down the conversation, then I would be curious as to why beyond the surface-level reasons. For example, your child might want to talk about a fun memory of the beach that you all went on last year, but you might want to shut down the conversation. It might just be because it’s painful, but there might be deeper reasons too. For instance, on that particular beach day, you told your loved one that you loved them, but you’re scared that they didn’t know that at the time they died for a given reason. This sense of curiosity, you can only bring when you’re in a good space and you’re ready to do it, but it can be helpful in working out what thoughts and feelings you need to work on so you can move on too. The most important thing is to simply allow your child to talk about the person and their feelings. Never ever shut them down. Whilst I’ve already implied the implications for aspiring and qualified clinical psychologists, because we can also provide that safe and open space for a child to talk about their memories and feelings without judgement and without shutting them down. When it comes to educational psychologists, I think it can be useful to encourage staff members to allow the student to talk about their parent or the deceased loved one. Of course, there is a balance to be struck because you don’t want the child telling everyone memories in the middle of a lesson, for example, when people are meant to be working. Yet I think there are compassionate ways how you can close down that conversation. Such as instead of just shutting it down, you can temporarily close it down and invite the child to tell the memory to the teacher or whoever the child wanted to talk to at breaktime or lunchtime. For me, it’s about providing a child with a safe space that meets their needs without disrupting the flow or needs of the education environment. Help Your Child Deal with Loss and Grief by Not Underestimating Them Secondly, it’s best if you don’t underestimate your child when they’re dealing with their loss and grief. You might think that they aren’t ready, they shouldn’t know something or you should just erase the lost person from the home environment, but that isn’t helpful. It will do more harm than good. Instead it’s best to have an age-appropriate conversation as well as be as honest as you can. You’ll learn more about this in a later section of the episode. For aspiring or qualified clinical psychologists, this might mean that we spend some of the session delivering some psychoeducation to the parent. We might explain developmental stages, how a child’s emotions and understanding of death changes over the years and we support parents so they have the confidence to have these age-appropriate conversations. On the flip side, when it comes to educational psychologists, my mind goes to providing psychoeducation or have a conversation with everyone else in the class and amongst staff. Since a lot of children in the class, especially the child’s friends, might be concerned, worried and anxious about how best to support their friend. You might not think that this is a “real” issue but this anxiety draws a child’s focus away from their education and learning and it might have other consequences. Therefore, if we take 10- or 15-minutes to just talk with the class or only the child’s friendship group, then we might be able to alleviate some of their stresses so they’re less anxious when their friend comes back with their loss and grief, so they can focus more on their education and they don’t always need to be stressed and anxious for their friend. The same goes for staff members. Some teachers and support staff might feel like they need to walk on eggshells around the child with their loss and grief. The child will likely pick up on that tension or sense of unease and it might make them feel worse. Therefore, just by educating teachers and staff to not underestimate the child, it can help teachers to increase their efficacy and feel more confident when interacting and supporting their student when they return with their loss and grief. How to Support our Child Through Loss and Grief by Allowing Questions? After a child has lost a friend, loved one or parent, there will be times when they ask a lot of questions, and it’s important that you allow them to ask questions. Of course, these questions might be uncomfortable or even a little distressing for you to hear, but it’s important for your child’s healing, processing and surviving that they ask these questions. As well as if you are uncomfortable with these questions then remember to practice self-care, talk to your own mental health professional if needed and don’t forget to lean on your social support network. It’s important that you also look after yourself so you can be there for your child, so you can effectively support them as they cope with their loss and grief. In addition, there might be times when your child starts asking questions at bad times. For example, they want to have a long conversation in the middle of a supermarket, at a friend’s birthday party or the very second you walk in from work. I understand that these times are not ideal and sometimes, it can be useful for you to delay (never shut down) these conversations until you’re in a better place. Especially, if you’ve had a very stressful day at work. As a result, it might be a good idea for you to tell the child that outright. Instead of shutting down the conversation and making the child feel small, invalidated and perhaps guilty for asking a question. You might say something like “I’m really sorry but can we talk about this later?” then you could look at the clock and give your child a time and phrase it in a way that they understand since not all children depending on their age can read a clock. So, by giving the child a fixed time to talk about these questions, it gives you time to centre and regulate yourself and whilst the child might be disappointed that you didn’t answer immediately, they won’t feel dismissed or invalidated. You might want to go one step further and physically write down the question in front of the child so they understand that you heard them, you’re paying attention and you will come back to it. You might even put the piece of paper or whatever you wrote it down on in a visual place so it’s there and the child knows you’ll come back to it at that set time. These are just some thoughts. Whilst the implications for aspiring and qualified clinical psychologists is pretty clear because we can focus on helping our client to self-soothe and self-regulate so they’re able to have these supportive and potentially healing conversations with their children, I firmly believe that for aspiring and qualified educational psychologists that we can do something similar. Since depending on the age of the child, and especially if the deceased parent, loved one or friend was very actively involved in their school life, the child might have questions about death, the deceased individual or something else related to the passing. The child might ask this question in the middle of a lesson, the urge to ask the question and get answers might impact their behaviour and so on. When this happens, I think it can be useful to educate teachers and support staff about how to handle these questions. Since it isn’t good that the child asks a question in the middle of a lesson, but it isn’t bad either. It is simply a normal part of loss and grief, and if the teacher is uncomfortable and if it is appropriate then it might be okay for the teacher to have a larger class-based discussion depending on the question. However, the teacher or support staff shouldn’t dismiss the child, doesn’t shut them down and they should create a safe and nurturing space for the child to show curiosity. How to Support a Child with Loss and Grief by Remembering Funerals and Memorial Services can be Important? When a child gets older, it can be important and helpful to allow them to make the decision about whether or not they want to attend the funeral or the memorial service for their deceased parent, loved one or family. This is because it’s about giving them autonomy over their grief, respecting boundaries and making the grieving process as easy as possible for the young person. If the funeral or memorial service would be a great way to celebrate their life and a chance to share memories and they want to come, that’s great. If it’s going to be a long, boring affair with lots of people who never knew the deceased person coming up to the young person and saying stupid things like “they’re in a better place,”, “it’s God’s Plan,” and the deceased person “was so lovely,”. Or my personal favourite “your grandma was a good Christian woman,” as if that makes up for the fact one of the nicest and loving people in my life was dead. Anyway, in those cases and the young person doesn’t want to go, then that’s okay and it’s important that you respect those wishes. Now, the reason why I mention older children in this section is because older children are more likely to be efficient, safe and secure if they’re left at home for a few hours. Also they’re likely to have the trusted social support network so they can just hang out with their friends for a few hours so they aren’t alone during the funeral or memorial service. Younger children, you are basically going to have to take to the funeral because no one has time for dealing with childminders, sorting it out and that just adds another stressor to an already stressful and emotional day. Whilst there isn’t many, or even any, implications for aspiring and qualified educational psychologists, when it comes to clinical psychologists, there are two main angles. Firstly, you might be supporting a child through their loss and grief (an educational psychologist might be doing this in a school as well) and they feel guilty or shame that they don’t want to go to the funeral and memorial service. It’s likely that we’ll have to explore family dynamics, stigma, societal pressure and expectations, and ultimately we’ll have to explore the child to figure out what do “they” need instead of what everyone wants of them. On the other hand, we might be supporting a parent or guardian and they’re either conflicted about asking their child to come to the funeral or memorial service when they don’t want to, or they don’t know how to handle this event. Since it is a major cultural event in the grief cycle and the processing of the death. In this situation, we probably are going to have to explore why the parent wants the child there, so this could be because they genuinely think it will be good for the child, or because they want the child to support them. If this is the case then we can explore that more, and we can also explore what internal resources the client could draw on so they can depend on themselves and not the child for support. How to Support a Child Through Loss and Grief By Checking In? Grief is a lifelong process so it’s important that you remember to check in on how your child’s feeling, and they might have follow-up questions about their loved one, or questions about the funeral. The circumstances of the death can affect the response and timescales of grieving. In addition, I would add that it’s a good idea to check in with your child surrounding major life events. For example, in the United States, I know they have High School graduations, so maybe check in with your child leading up to it because one parent or loved one will be missing so see how they’re feeling about that and is there anything that you could both do to help mitigate these feelings. The same goes for major life events like proms, going off to university, weddings, having a child and so on. As aspiring or qualified educational psychologists, it might be down to us to coordinate and listen to a child about an upcoming whole-school event. For example, sports day at a school with a major focus on child-parent events. We might have to talk to the child about how are they feeling, what changes to the day might help them feel better and what plans could the school put in place if it becomes too overwhelming for the child. For instance, it is never a good idea for the default to be exclusion, but if after seeing lots of happy, smiling and laughing families when they can no longer experience the same becomes too much for the child, where could they go to self-regulate and self-soothe for a little while before rejoining the sports day, if they wish. Those are some of the questions that a mental health practitioner or educational psychologist might want to reflect on at a school. On the other hand, if you’re an aspiring or qualified clinical psychologist, again I think there are two main angles we can address here. Firstly, you might be giving therapy to a grieving child and they talk about an upcoming life event that’s too much for them. Like, a birthday, a special family day or just something. Even the summer holidays might be difficult because the child will be at home, it’s a change in routine and the other parent or loved one won’t be there. When this happens, we might have to discuss with the child and explore these feelings before discussing ways to cope, self-soothe and other coping mechanisms. Secondly, when it comes to ending work in therapy, we have a duty to our clients to ensure that they’re as prepared as possible for the future and they hope how to cope with stressful life events, so in an ideal world, they don’t need therapy again. Therefore, it might be helpful to spend a few minutes just reflecting or discussing future life events with the client so they can remember this conversation in the future and how to manage their mental health. How to Support a Child Through Loss and Grief by Remembering Schools Can Help? If the child is at school then it can be a great idea to ask for what support is available and it can be useful for the child to talk to someone who is further removed from the loss than yourself. I know from my years in education that schools can have counsellors or other mental health professionals employed or they can make a referral to an external provider. A clinical psychologist might be involved in delivering this therapy or mental health support to children or an educational psychologist might be. Or an ed psych might be a useful resource in supporting a parent to explore all available options to support their child. How Do You Help a Child Remember Someone Who’s Died? One concern that a child might have as they cope with the loss and grief of losing a loved one is they might be scared of forgetting the loved one. This is why it’s important that as part of the healing and grieving process, we support children to remember someone who’s died, and there are two main ways how we can achieve this. The Role of Memory Boxes in Helping Children Cope with Loss and Grief A memory box can be a great idea to support a child experiencing loss and grief to remember a deceased person. This works by getting the child to decide what they want to put in the memory box. For instance, they might put photos or other items that the deceased person owned. It’s important to make sure that each item has a meaning or memory tied to it so that the child can look back and remember the person who’s died. I know for me, if my mum had died when I was young, there’s definitely a dress of hers that I would have saved. It’s this white dress with a few red roses on it, and to me, that was her. Off the top of my head, there are no specific memories of her wearing it but that was just her to me. If I saw that dress anywhere I would always think of my mum. Furthermore, whilst the majority of families buy a special memory box, any box with a lid can be used and the child can decorate it as they wish. As well as there are many ways to use a memory box, so you can share it with others or keep it as a personal, private item that the child can use when they want to think about the person. This is relevant to aspiring and qualified educational or clinical psychologists because if we’re talking to a child or adult about this difficulty, then this is a suggestion we can make. As well as if you have a more artistic therapeutic orientation then maybe make a memory box with the child in a session. How Do You Support a Child Experiencing Loss and Grief During Key Family Events? Secondly, we can support children during key family events, like Mother’s Day, Christmas, birthdays, Father’s Day amongst others. These events are likely to trigger feelings of anger, loss and maybe even jealousy towards other people who don’t have to experience grief during this traditionally happy time. This taps into not forgetting the person who’s died because this family event provides you with opportunities to celebrate, discuss or mark the deceased person’s life in another way. For example, you could have conversations on Mother’s or Father’s Day about the deceased loved one so you can remember previous occasions with them, share memories and celebrate the loved one even though they are no longer there. In addition, if the child is in school or nursery, then you can talk to the educational setting to make sure that they consider the events taking place. Not only can this help teachers and support staff to be mindful of the impact of the day on your child, but you might be able to suggest a different focus for the day like a trip. I know in some UK schools, they’re looser with the interpretation of “Father’s” Day for example to include the father-like figure in a child’s life. This might be a grandfather, a family friend or whoever the child sees as their father. As well as let’s say if the Year 7 students (that’s 6th grade to US listeners) will be making Mother’s Day cards and focusing on that family event all day on the same day that the Year 10 students (also known as 9th grade to US listeners) are going on a trip to the science museum. It might be a good idea for the surviving parent to talk to the educational setting and child about whether it’s best for the child to go on the school trip instead of staying with the peers and such on that particular day. Just a thought. As well as an educational psychologist can provide a psychological insight or perspective on this matter to the senior leadership team and other staff at the school. Building upon this, during family events, it is flat out critical that we don’t forget the person who died or ignore any feelings that the child has. Therefore, we should give the child the opportunity to talk about the person and their memories of them. As well as a parent should ask a child if there’s anything that they want to do to mark the family occasion to help remember their loved one. This might include visiting the grave, talking to a trusted adult, continuing a family tradition or creating new ones. Personally, whilst none of us were children when this happened, when my grandma died, there was a death and a birth of a Christmas tradition in our family. My Grandma’s tradition of “Christmas Tree presents” ended with her life, just think of these as cheap almost-gaff £10 Christmas presents. Yet a new tradition of my Great-Aunt and grandad coming to our house for Christmas started. Christmas is a time when all of us can talk about my grandma, share our memories and it doesn’t upset us because it’s a safe, welcoming space. Then as always and I’ll continue to repeat it throughout the episode, if you find key family events too overwhelming. That’s okay, it’s understandable and it’s normal. Please seek support from friends and family members to see if they can help. A clinical psychologist can be useful here too because if the child is the client then they can help the child explore their feelings towards key family events and how to make it not only manageable, but enjoyable too. How Do You Support Children of Different Ages with Death and Loss? I think this is one of the toughest sections to write in this podcast episode, because it makes me uncomfortable to imagine the pain, the difficulty and the hurt that a parent or loved one must experience when they have to talk about death and loss with a child. This will be deeply uncomfortable, but like with all things, it is important that we learn to overcome our discomfort. If we stay silent then this will harm the child, it won’t create the safe space that they desperately need and it will do a lot of damage to the child. Therefore, over the next few sections, you’re going to learn how to talk about death and loss with children across different ages. How to Talk to Babies and Young Children about Death and Loss You might be tempted to not talk about the death of a mother, father or loved one with a baby or young child because they’re simply too young, and you have no idea how to phrase it. In reality, babies are affected by bereavement because even babies and young children can appear distressed, pick up on the emotions of others and they can notice a change in the environment. Hence, even though they won’t understand what death and loss actually means or what happened, they will still be impacted. As a parent or loved one, it’s critical that you comfort them when they’re distressed. Personally, I link this to clinical psychology by thinking about attachment theory. One of the ways how you can increase the chance of your baby or child developing a secure attachment style and reaping all the benefits of that form of attachment, is to respond to their needs. Don’t let the baby or child simply “cry it out” or “get over it” on their own. Comfort them, support them and help them to create a safe space. This is something that the anime “Tadaima, Okaeri” does very well, because it clearly shows the distress of the two-year-old child who recently lost his mother. His father believed that he was okay because he wouldn’t understand, but as we see in the anime, the two-year-old child really did pick up on all of his father’s pain and hurt, he knew the profound impact of his mother no longer being around them and the child did appear distressed. In other words, never ever underestimate a baby’s or young child’s ability to feel pain and hurt after the death of a loved one. Always support them. How to Talk to Children about Death and Loss Building upon this, if a child has experienced a death and they’re coping with grief and loss then this can be a very confusing time for the child. Since there are times when children believe that they’re responsible for the death, so it’s important that the adults and close others let the child know that they aren’t to blame. In addition, younger children might struggle to cope with the strong emotions that grief invokes for an extended period of time, or the child might jump in and out of their grief. This means that they can feel overwhelmed and/ or struggle to regulate their emotions. To support children to cope with grief and loss, it’s important to let them know that it’s okay to have several different feelings that can change over time. As well as it’s important to maintain normal routines so the child has stability from trusted adults during the grief process. If we apply this knowledge for aspiring and qualified educational and clinical psychologists, then from the child’s perspective, we can support a child to self-regulate, process their conflicting and ever-changing emotions and we can help them to ask for help so they can ask adults to meet their emotional and physical needs. Whereas if we have an adult client, we can support them so they can be there for their child, we can provide some psychoeducation about what they and their child might be emotionally experiencing and we can be a safe space where the adult client can process their own grief, so they can be there at home and present for their child. How to Talk to Young People about Death and Loss As the child gets older and becomes a young person, they might feel isolated and/ or misunderstood as they process their grief so they might become withdrawn or angry. When this happens it’s important to make the young person feel supported to express their feelings, check in with them and give them space to remember the person that they’ve lost. What Helps Children When They’re Grieving? As we near the end of this podcast episode, I want to use this final section to highlight some of the things that are the most helpful when it comes to helping children process their grief and loss. Firstly, it’s important that the child and yourself, whether you’re a friend, a loved one or another close other, spend time together. This doesn’t always have to focus on grief, and it can just be a fun day out. This is important because it helps the child to not feel alone or abandoned in their grief. Secondly, talk openly about the death, grief and loss. You can encourage and talk to the child about expressing their feelings so the child knows that the deceased person hasn’t been forgotten. Yet as I mentioned earlier, the child shouldn’t be pressured to talk and these conversations should always be child-led, not adult-led. Thirdly, encourage the child to express themselves safely. You might encourage the child to journal, use art or use their hobbies to express their feelings, or encourage them to do some counselling. Encourage the child not to ignore the bad feelings or memories, so express them, process them and use them to heal in a healthy and safe way. Fourthly, maintain the child’s routines because by maintaining your routines, you’re giving the child a secure environment to regulate their emotions and behaviours. Penultimately, use support from the child’s school. It’s a good idea to talk to the school about available support groups, have regular meetings to talk about how the child is doing at school and if extra support is needed. The better the support network around your child, the better they should do in turn. Finally, be a safe space for your child. If you provide your child with a quiet, safe space for when they feel overwhelmed then your child will be more likely to open up to you. As well as you can arrange activities that help to build their resilience and self-esteem so they can reap additional mental health benefits. Lastly, it’s critical that you allow space for your child to express all their emotions. Including the anger, the despair and the happiness. Clinical Psychology Conclusion Whenever I do psychology podcast episodes like this one about a child suffering, it always makes me a little uncomfortable, because I want children to be happy, joyful and never have to experience any pain. Of course that is just pure fantasy, but it is a nice ideal at the very least. That’s another reason why I’m proud of these podcast episodes because I get to learn how to support children for my own future, my future clinical career and I get to help others. Therefore, as a recap, below are some ways how you can support a child through their loss and grief: · Don’t underestimate the child- have age-appropriate conversations and be as honest as you can with them. · Check in with the child · Ask the school for help · Remember key family events can be important so don’t avoid them · Children might have a lot of questions · Allow space for the child’s feelings · Create a memory box · Spend time together · Encourage the child to express their emotions · Talk openly and honestly with the child · Maintain the child’s routines · Be their safe space As devastating, heartbreaking and soul-destroying as loss and grief can be for a child, with enough love, support and professional counselling, a child can overcome this difficult time and learn to thrive. I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Working with Children and Young People: A Guide to Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy and Mental Health. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Alvis, L., Zhang, N., Sandler, I. N., & Kaplow, J. B. (2023). Developmental manifestations of grief in children and adolescents: Caregivers as key grief facilitators. Journal of child & adolescent trauma, 16(2), 447-457. Boelen, P. A., Lenferink, L. I., & Spuij, M. (2021). CBT for prolonged grief in children and adolescents: A randomized clinical trial. American Journal of Psychiatry, 178(4), 294-304. Chachar, A. S., Younus, S., & Ali, W. (2021). Developmental understanding of death and grief among children during COVID-19 pandemic: application of Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, 654584. Dantan, J., Kanagaratnam, L., Mourvillier, B., Rolland, A. C., & Eutrope, J. (2026). Psychological impact of parental loss in children: A systematic review. Neuropsychiatrie de l'Enfance et de l'Adolescence. Fitzgerald, D. A., Nunn, K., & Isaacs, D. (2021). What we have learnt about trauma, loss and grief for children in response to COVID-19. Paediatric Respiratory Reviews, 39, 16-21. Hanauer, C., Telaar, B., Rosner, R., & Doering, B. K. (2024). The efficacy of psychosocial interventions for grief symptoms in bereaved children and adolescents: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, 350, 164-173. https://www.nspcc.org.uk/advice-for-families/family-bereavement-how-to-support-children-through-grief-and-loss/ Nader, K. O. (2022). Childhood traumatic loss: The interaction of trauma and grief. In Death and trauma (pp. 17-41). Routledge. Revet, A., Bui, E., Benvegnu, G., Suc, A., Mesquida, L., & Raynaud, J. P. (2020). Bereavement and reactions of grief among children and adolescents: Present data and perspectives. L'encephale, 46(5), 356-363. Santos, S., Sá, T., Aguiar, I., Cardoso, I., Correia, Z., & Correia, T. (2021). Case report: Parental loss and childhood grief during COVID-19 pandemic. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, 626940. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

Traditionally, we tell aspiring psychologists that if they want to break into the extremely competitive field of clinical psychology, educational psychology or any form of applied psychology then they have to do volunteering. Typically, this involves the aspiring psychologist doing years of unpaid work experience or volunteering to even be able to break into the field and get an interview for a paid job. However, this is bad advice to some extent, because volunteering is all well and good, but not all volunteering is created equal. And some volunteering is actually useless in terms of getting a job. Therefore, in this careers in psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn how to make the most of volunteering experience, how to pick useful volunteering experiences that will help you on your psychology journey and more. If you want to learn more about getting a psychology job, how to stand out to psychology employers and advance your psychology journey, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Your Unshakable Self: A Guide to Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Social Psychology Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Why Do You Need to Make the Most of Volunteering Experience As A Psychologist? When I was a teenager, lots of people, including my school’s career advisor, my parents and a lot of other important people in my life, stressed to me the importance of doing volunteering. They argued that volunteering would look good on my resume, it would give me a lot of valuable skills and it would mean that I could easily get job interviews in the future. This is a lie. In reality, volunteering can be flat out critical but unless you’re wise and very aware of your volunteering experience then volunteering can be next to useless when it comes to getting a job. That’s why in later sections of this podcast episode, I’ll explain how to pick volunteering opportunities purposefully and carefully so they actually help you on your psychology journey. Personally, when I was a teenager, I used to be heavily involved in Scouts (just think Boys Scouts of America for international listeners, because Scouting originated in the United Kingdom), and everyone told me that Scouting would give me great experience of leadership, practical skills amongst other valuable skills that employers were looking for. At the time of writing, I am 25 years old, I have been searching for a job for close to a year and even when I had a job as a teaching assistant at a special educational needs school, scouting was useless. Scouting didn’t give me anything relevant, it didn’t help me land a job and this form of volunteering didn’t impact my employability at all. Therefore, the very idea that any form of volunteering will improve your employment prospects is a lie. Instead you have to be a lot more purposeful and we’ll talk about that later in the episode. This is important for aspiring psychologists to be aware of, because breaking into psychology is extremely difficult. It requires years upon years of unpaid work experience where you do the exact same job as a paid assistant psychologist on £30,000 a year and this is just the accepted route into psychology. Of course, there are profound issues with this requirement because there are so many amazing aspiring psychologists that would love to work in mental health but they cannot afford to do years of unpaid work experience. Myself included. This is one of the reasons why clinical psychology is a very white middle-class, female-dominated profession. Aspiring psychologists from other backgrounds and races just cannot afford to do years of unpaid work experience. Anyway, I have written about these issues extensively in other places, mainly my Clinical Psychology Reflections books. As a result, even if you are or are not fortunate enough to be able to do the required years upon years of unpaid work experience to break into psychology, volunteering can be useful if you’re wise and purposeful with it. How To Make the Most of Volunteering Experience for Psychologists? By Being Purposeful Firstly, if you want to make the most of your volunteering experience and ensure that it actually helps your psychology journey, you need to be very purposeful with your volunteering activities. For the rest of this section, I’ll explain what this means using the examples of a clinical, educational and business psychologist before giving a personal example. If you’re an aspiring clinical psychologist then you’re going to want to do volunteering in the National Health Service, and the traditional advice says that is great. I remember once listening to my Head of School during my final year and he explained to a young poor woman that her experience of an NHS cleaner was still fairly golden. Looking back on all my assistant psychologist job applications and interviews, that’s a lie. Being a cleaner is useless in terms of becoming an assistant psychologist, so it isn’t true that any NHS experience is good. And yes, I understand that working as a cleaner or anything in the NHS would give you a working knowledge of how the NHS works but in terms of all the other clinical skills that assistant psychologist roles just expect you to have, being a cleaner won’t help you. As a result, you need to be more purposeful. You need to reflect on what skills does an assistant psychologist need to have? Well, they need to have research and auditing skills, they need to have experience working with people with mental health difficulties and it’s best if you support a range of mental health conditions. That opens a lot more doors for you and you can be purposeful in your search for volunteering opportunities. You can focus on finding some volunteering that gets you to interact and support a wide range of mental health conditions in a healthcare setting and you can shadow the “qualified” or “paid” workers as they do more specialist stuff. More on that particular tip in the next section. On the other hand, if you’re an aspiring educational psychologist, then you might think that working with children or just doing anything in a school would be great volunteering experience. Maybe. Probably not. It depends. That’s my answer. Again, you need to look at what an educational psychologist actually does. Here’s a reminder of what an educational psychologist actually is. “Educational psychologists are professionals who specialise in applying psychological theories, research and principles to the field of education. They study human behaviour and mental processes related to learning and human development. Also, educational psychologists research the social, physical, psychological, emotional and wellbeing factors that aim to explain the individual differences in academic performance, student motivation and learning styles. In addition, educational psychologists focus on designing and developing informative instructions for a wide range of learners, and they apply their knowledge of human development and learning to create academic programmes, assessments and interventions. As well as educational psychologists evaluate existing academic programmes and recommend improvements based on their research. Finally, educational psychologists conduct research to deepen and advance our understanding of learning and education. For example, they might research the effectiveness of revision strategies, how the teacher-parent relationship is modulated by organisational factors or the relationship between student motivation and trauma.” As you can see, there are a lot of elements to actually being an educational psychologist so you need to be purposeful with your volunteering so you can start to develop some of these skills. For example, you definitely need to get volunteering experience working with children in an educational setting. That is a must. Yet educational psychologists are also researchers, so explore whether you can do research in an educational setting. As well as the definition above doesn’t show it but educational psychologists do a lot of work with people with learning disabilities and children with mental health difficulties. See if there are any volunteering opportunities in special educational needs schools. A final example is if you’re an aspiring business psychologist, then instead of thinking any volunteering experience in a business is good, narrow it down. We know that business psychologists typically work in human resources and recruitment departments. Therefore, you could explore and try to find a volunteering opportunity specifically in those departments so you can understand how these departments work, how you can apply psychological theories and research and more. On the whole, at the end of this section, it is all about reflecting on what skills and experiences you actually need from your volunteering opportunities to get ahead in your psychology journey, and then finding volunteering that will allow you to develop these skills. On a personal note, recently I’ve been reflecting on this because I’m learning so many non-psychology skills because of some intense volunteering that I’m doing at the moment. for example, skills in volunteer coordination, campaigning, social media content creation and so many more. As well as I’m applying for jobs that I never would have been able to apply for before, and that’s only because I’ve been able to think purposefully and shape the volunteering to what I need. Let’s explore that point in the next section. Get The Most Out of Volunteering Experience By Tailoring It To Your Needs A second major tip to help aspiring psychologists to get the most out of their volunteering experience is to ensure that you tailor it to your needs. This is critical for aspiring psychologists because if you actually look at what helps you on your clinical psychology, educational psychology and other forms of applied psychology journey, you’ll notice that it’s all about the skills and experiences that you develop during your volunteering that matter. Not so much the volunteering itself. For example, you can volunteer in a hospital ward that provides mental health support to older adults, and that is good in itself. Yet unless you develop other skills like communication skills, interpersonal relationship skills, psychological assessments and so on, then this form of volunteering will only have so much use to you. For example, if we cast our minds back to the definition of what an educational psychologist is, it’s all about applying psychological theories and research to educational settings. As well as it’s vital that you understand how different levels of interpersonal relationships, social and cognitive factors and more can impact a child’s educational journey. These are the skills that will actually help you to move forward in your psychology journey. As I explain in these two paragraphs below that I typically include in a cover letter for job applications: “I have an ability to link and apply psychological theories, principles, understanding and knowledge to applied practice. For instance, in classrooms I apply Self-determination Theory to increase student motivation and teach them they are in control of their actions and learning. I increase student autonomy by encouraging student-led inquiry, I increase competence by praising students and I increase relatedness by listening to students and showing genuine interest in their ideas. This led to a happier classroom where students felt intellectually safe to ask questions, they became more motivated and more engaged in learning. This will help me as an Assistant Psychologist because it demonstrates I will always approach my work from a compassionate and holistic psychological perspective. Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory is central to my way of working. I consistently apply the theory to the educational and mental health settings I work in. For example, as a teaching assistant responsible for the diabetic treatment of a SEN child, the theory helped me understand the importance of developing a good relationship between myself and the parents, senior management and the other support staff. Our relationships indirectly impact the child's educational outcomes. The way how I applied the theory and strengthened my working relationships with those who directly and indirectly impact the SEN child led to successful diabetic treatment, increased attainment and increased wellbeing for the diabetic child.” These two paragraphs clearly show recruitment people the skills that I developed during this time. Granted, this was for a paid job but hopefully you can see the importance of learning particular skills in volunteering. Some other examples of specific skills are included below: “In my role as a Teaching Assistant at a SEN school, I have experience of reading and implementing care plans for children with special educational needs. For instance, I read a child’s care plan, I learnt he typically asked new adults to do things he could do for himself, like cutting food, and I was able to support the child in becoming more confident in developing his fine motor skills. This led to the child becoming more confident in his own abilities and I was able to see the growth and development over the period of time I worked with him. As a teaching assistant, I have good written and verbal communication skills including an ability to work and effectively communicate complex information. Once, I worked with a student with autism, ADHD amongst other conditions and he was being very disruptive, shouting and screaming. He was making other students anxious and scared. Other staff members had tried talking to them but they could not get him to calm down. I went over to him and we had a calming, validating and nonjudgemental conversation about what had caused his behaviour, how it was impacting others and how we could come to a solution. He wanted to go outside but it was raining heavily so he could not. I offered to take him for a supervised walk around the corridors, the teacher gave us permission and we did the walk. The student self-regulated and he was calmer. This allowed him to renter the classroom, continue with his work and the other students benefited too. In addition, I am aware of the importance of accurate record keeping and proper documentation within mental health care, because it improves communication within a multidisciplinary team, improves client outcomes and increases accountability. As evidenced by the daily healthcare records I filled in as part of my medical duties of a Type 1 Diabetic child. Also, proper documentation prevents delays in client treatment and allows others to quickly understand client medical history, therapeutic relationship dynamics and previous clinical work completed with the client. Therefore, if successful in the post, I will ensure all my work is documented and records are kept to a high standard.” I typically include those three paragraphs in cover letters because it’s important to highlight the communication skills, my experience with healthcare plans and more on job applications as these are some of the key criteria that employers look for when looking for assistant psychologists. On the whole, when it comes to getting ahead on your psychology journey, once you’ve purposefully found a volunteering opportunity, don’t be afraid to jobcraft or use the volunteering to fulfil specific criteria that you need to become an assistant psychologist. For example, if you need experience in working with children with socioemotional difficulties, reading and implementing healthcare plans or observing an assessment, talk to people at the organisation and see if they can help you. Remember To Use the STAR Method in Cover Letters, Job Interviews and Job Applications Whilst I do not pretend to be a master of this topic, it is all well and good you having all this volunteering experience, but unless you can effectively communicate it on your cover letter, your job application and in your job interviews then it is meaningless. This is why to make the most of your volunteering experience as an aspiring psychologist, it is best to use the STAR method. The STAR method is a structured approach that helps you to answer interview questions (and write good job applications) by describing the Situation, the Task, Action and the Result. The STAR method is effective because it helps you to provide a clear, concise as well as compelling answer and it’s encouraged that you use this format because past behaviour is considered the best predictor of future job performance. Therefore, you use the STAR method by briefly describing the background or context of the situation and you include enough detail for the interviewer to understand the circumstances, but you need to keep it concise. Next, you explain your specific responsibilities or the challenges that you faced in the situation, and you need to clarify what was at stake and the goal that you were trying to achieve. Thirdly, you focus on the steps that you took to address the situation, so you highlight your decisions, your thought processes and the skills that you applied to the situation. Also, it’s best if you use “I” statements instead of “we” statements to emphasise your personal contributions. Finally, you talk about the outcome of your actions, and this includes measurable achievements or qualitative impacts. Also, you can discuss what you learnt and how the experience made you a stronger professional. Ultimately, this is important for aspiring psychologists because you need to be able to talk and write about your volunteering experiences so that the employers understand that whilst you might not have been an assistant psychologist before in a paid capacity, you still have all the skills needed, and that you’re ready for this opportunity. Below are some recent examples of my non-psychology volunteering experience that I’ve written into paragraphs using the STAR method. These might not be perfect but hopefully they give you a sense of how to do it. “As Campaign Coordinator for the Cuxton, Halling and Riverside By-Election between June and July 2026, I have policy experience because I wrote and communicated policies for the by-election campaign, and created social media content. I was Social Media Lead for the campaign so I created 36 YouTube shorts-style videos, 36 social media graphics and wrote engaging copy for each post. My posts focused on policy, our candidate and how our candidate could deliver change for residents. This led to a regular stream of social media content that was repeatedly praised, shared and highlighted in local media. Local Authority Online reported my content as relentlessly earnest and prolific. My content helped residents in the ward to clearly understand what we stood for and how we would deliver for them. I have experience meeting tight deadlines and handling logistics. During the five-week by-election campaign, I led on creating, coordinating and delivering over 500 personal letters to postal voters, delivering 6,400 leaflets, canvassing over 1,000 houses amongst others across a large geographical area. Myself and my campaign team often worked full-time hours in this volunteering role to ensure everything was completed on time. The result of my coordination and logistical efforts meant we successfully delivered all campaign materials on time despite being understaffed and under-resourced. I have experience in written and oral communication with different audiences. As Press Lead for the by-election campaign, I was responsible for writing the press release that went out to my media contacts. Also, I wrote the policy content for the leaflets for local residents, emails for volunteers and party members and I confidently and effectively communicated our policy stances to volunteers and residents when canvassing. The results of my effective communication where our volunteers were confident in expressing our policies and stances so they could effectively communicate and flip voters on the doorstep, our volunteers were excited to help out and the press release was published by three media outlets within the first 24-hours. I have experience in volunteer coordination because during the by-election campaign, I had to coordinate 50 leafleting and 50 canvassing volunteers. This meant I had to communicate with them through email, WhatsApp and ensure my communication was clear. This helped volunteers to understand they were valued, they would be supported and they understood what was needed of them. I responded to their enquiries with kindness, compassion and validation so they would continue to engage with the campaign despite some interpersonal difficulties that erupted within the volunteer team. My actions resulted in a good, sustainable turn out of volunteers that helped the campaign to achieve its goals.” Finally, the reason why I’ve included this section and my examples of non-psychology volunteering is because, as I discuss in my book Beyond the Lecture Volume 7, it’s always a good idea to have a plan B for your psychology journey. This is one of the reasons why I’m developing my campaign, my comms, my policy and a whole bunch of other skills so I can branch out and get a job. Since psychology jobs are like gold dust. Careers In Psychology Conclusion I’m really happy that I got to do this podcast episode because whilst I am still passionate and working towards getting a psychology job, I still see a lot of people, and partly this includes myself, going down the wrong volunteering routes because they think that any volunteering experience is better than nothing. That might be true to some extent but in a job market like psychology that is extremely tough to get into, not all volunteering experience is created equal. And I would rather you wonderful listeners don’t spend years doing volunteering that won’t pay off. The three tips that we’ve learnt in this episode are: · Be purposeful with your volunteering- focus on roles that will actually give you the skills you need to advance your psychology journey · Jobcraft and tailor your volunteering role to give you the experience and skills you need · Use the STAR method on job applications, cover letters and in job interviews to effectively communicate your volunteering experience I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Your Unshakable Self: A Guide to Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Social Psychology Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

Whenever you lose a loved one, a child or a friend to suicide loss, it can be one of the hardest things that you ever experience. It can destroy your mental health, make you question everything and you can feel as if you’re losing everything. Your life feels like it’s crumbling around you. As an individual who tried to die by suicide three times in 2024 after the trauma of my rape, I understand this topic from the other side, but I want to understand the impact that it has on the individuals left behind after a successful suicide attempt. And most importantly, as an aspiring educational or clinical psychologist, I want to understand how to better support people coping with suicide loss. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn how to cope with suicide loss, how to navigate post-suicide grief and more. I’ll also discuss implications for aspiring and qualified clinical and educational psychologists too. If you enjoy learning about mental health, suicide and more, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Suicide Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Introduction to Coping After Suicide Loss As I’ve spoken about in previous suicide-focused podcast episodes, every single year without fail, hundreds of thousands of people die by suicide all over the world. This is heartbreaking because each of those “numbers” represents a person who will never hug their parents, friends or children ever again, no one will hear them laugh and no one will get to know how much of a brilliant person they are. As well as research shows that for each suicide, they leave behind an average of 6 to 10 “survivors”. These survivors can be parents, children, partners, loved ones and close friends who are all devastated and heartbroken by the death, and each person might not know how to navigate or cope with the grief. What makes suicide loss even more heartbreaking for the individual survivors is that compared to non-suicide loss, experiencing a loss to suicide can be extremely isolating. Not only because of the stigma, the shame and the confusion that accompany this form but not other forms of loss, but also because we don’t know how to talk about suicide. Therefore, whilst there is help available to people experiencing suicide loss, typically in the form of friends, family members, therapists, your own community and support groups, it can feel impossible or difficult to reach out to this support. What’s important to note is that after someone has experienced suicide loss, they will be experiencing a lot of pain, and this pain will seem unbearable, like it will never end and it will consume their life. Yet over time, as the person starts to process it, heal and feel hopeful again, it is possible to learn how to honour their loved one’s memory and overcome the pain and potential trauma of the suicide loss. Then over time, what the suicide survivor can do is share their story, their experience and their journey with other people, so everyone can learn from their loss and use its lessons to protect the mental health of others. This can also be very healing to the survivor themselves. Personally, there are two main reasons why I want to look at this topic. Firstly, as a suicide survivor myself, I tried to end my own life in 2024, three different times with three different methods. I just wanted the pain to stop, my trauma to stop impacting me and I didn’t see another way out. Thankfully, all my suicide attempts failed because I love my life now. I was able to heal from my trauma, I am thriving and I have had so many amazing relationships and done so many fun things that I never ever would have been able to do if I had been successful. As a result, I’m interested in learning about suicide loss, because I want to develop a deeper understanding of what might have been. What might have my friends, family members and loved ones experienced if I had killed myself? As well as with me being an aspiring educational or clinical psychologist, it is very likely that I will meet someone clinically who has experienced suicide loss and to be able to support them, I will need to have a basic understanding at the very least of what they’ve experienced and what I can do to support them. But also, what not to do. The final reason why I wanted to look at this topic is because of the boys’ love anime Given. The series follows the story of Mafuyu Sato after he lost the love of his life and his boyfriend Yuki to suicide six months before the start of the anime. You can see the sheer trauma and the impact that the suicide has had on him and whilst I had very mixed feelings towards Given in the beginning because of my own complex relationship with suicide, I have learnt to really enjoy the anime. Therefore, seeing Mafuyu struggle with the suicide of his boyfriend, and everyone else who knew Yuki, it made me want to explore this topic in more depth. Especially as suicide is common in the LGBT+ community. How Do You Navigate Post-Suicide Grief? As I mentioned earlier, if you lose a person to suicide then this will trigger a very painful form of grief that is very different to the grief triggered by other forms of loss. The reason why suicide grief is painfully unique is because if you experience the death of a loved one to, let’s say, old age, then you might feel alone, abandoned and you’re unable to imagine life without your loved one. Yet when it comes to suicide loss, then this grief becomes more complex because you need to navigate the anger, shame, stigma and in some cases, serious trauma that isn’t present in other forms of loss. Building upon this, suicide loss can be traumatic for the survivors and the people left behind because you might be the one to discover your loved one. This is traumatic enough but the method of suicide might have been violent and you might have to talk to the police afterwards. We know from forensic psychology research that interactions with the criminal justice system can be retraumatising, so this isn’t always helpful. For example, the anime Given does this very well, but we learn that Mafuyu was the person who found his boyfriend dead hanging from the ceiling of his bedroom, and it was Mafuyu who had to get him down from the ceiling. We can only imagine how traumatic, awful and sickening that was for him. In addition, I want to mention the anger for a moment in two different ways. When it comes to suicide loss, it is very possible, normal and understandable to flat out love the person who died by suicide but also be extremely angry at them for taking their own life. For instance, a while ago, I was listening to an episode of “Psychology, Actually” or back then, it was known as The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast and the episode’s guest was the author of Daddy Blackbird. It’s a book about suicide loss after her husband and the father of her children died by suicide one morning. In this episode, she described how her family associated the blackbird in the garden with their dad and the wife described on the episode how some mornings, she just wanted to shout, scream and hit that blackbird because she was so angry with her husband for leaving her and her children. I understand this, in a way at the very least. When you love someone, you want to treasure them and you want to spend the rest of your life with them, and then you can’t. It’s normal, it’s okay and it’s understandable for you to be angry. And as much as you understand intellectually that they feel like they didn’t have a choice, your loved one was in so much pain and they believed that they were a burden on you, you are still allowed to be angry because you are human. As long as you keep moving forward, you try to heal and cope with the suicide loss, then a little bit of anger is good from time to time. Another example is from Given again because when Mafuyu finally sings his song that makes everyone cry and it lands him his crush, he says some words that I find fascinating “I will never forgive you or myself,”. And as I write this episode, I realise that Given is actually a great example of how suicide loss impacts a person and I know the reason why I felt so uncomfortable watching it at first was because I felt guilty that I almost did the same to so many amazing people in my life. Anyway, the song shows that as much as Mafuyu flat out loves Yuki and he will always hold onto him, he will always be angry that Yuki took his own life because Yuki took himself away from Mafuyu, their love and everything that they wanted to build together. Moreover, survivors might convince themselves that there was something that they could have done to prevent the death, or they might feel like a monster or a terrible person for being unaware that their loved one was in so much pain. A quote that applies to this situation and I originally learnt it after I was raped, but it is still true. There is nothing you could have done because you couldn’t have prevented it. These emotions are even more challenging to navigate when we consider that in a lot of cultures or religions, suicide is condemned or it is considered taboo. This in itself is outrageous and it only harms individuals with suicidal ideation and it prevents them from speaking out and getting the mental health support that they desperately need. As a result, when it comes to applying this information to aspiring and qualified educational and clinical psychologists, it is difficult but there are clear ways. For example, it’s important that as an aspiring or qualified psychologist that you understand the truth about suicide, because over our lifetime, we are knowingly or unintentionally learnt and internalised the myths and misconceptions about suicide. In turn, these myths and misconceptions will negatively impact our clinical and educational work, so it’s important that we unlearn these myths and learn the truth about suicide, so we can do better in the future. Listening or reading this podcast episode is a great first step. Regardless of the type of psychologist you are, as soon as a client reveals that they have attempted or they are seriously considering suicide, then please understand the correct way to respond. Based on my personal experience, there is nothing worse than having a mental health professional react badly, negatively and invalidating towards you. It doesn’t help the therapeutic relationship and I talk about this in a lot more detail in my book, Healing As A Survivor. Anyway, returning to the topic of the podcast episode, when it comes to supporting an individual after suicide loss, it’s important that we help them to understand the truth about suicide. We need the client to understand that they couldn’t have prevented it, it wasn’t their fault and so on. As well as if you’re an educational psychologist, then you might have to support teachers, support staff and senior management after the suicide loss of a child. This is going to be an immensely stressful time for everyone because everyone will want answers from the school. This might compound feelings of anger, stress, confusion and guilt. This is why educational psychologists can be useful in providing mental health support to the students and staff, help everyone to understand that this wasn’t their fault and focus on whatever else needs to be done in light of a suicide loss at school. Is It Okay to Feel Relief After Suicide Loss? When I read this next fact about suicide, I was confused, a little shocked and a little uncomfortable but it’s interesting to think about. Therefore, individuals who die by suicide typically spent months, if not years, struggling with serious mental health difficulties, substance abuse or other challenges before they die. Navigating these challenges also puts their family under considerable stress and family members and loved ones are constantly worried about them and have sleepless nights. Family members are worried that their child or loved one might be using drugs again, they might not be safe or they might never see them again. It’s a constant cycle of worry. This all takes a major mental health and physical health toll on the support network. As a result, some survivors report feeling a slight slice of relief after a suicide loss alongside immense pain, suffering and confusion because the anxiety and uncertainty is finally over. Nonetheless, this minor feeling of relief can invoke major feelings of guilt and shame in survivors, but this relief is understandable and it’s a common component of people’s suicide grief. Therefore, it’s okay that you’re experiencing feelings of relief and it’s even more okay to share these feelings with trusted others. And this is the major implication for aspiring and qualified psychologists, because there will be times when a client says something that shocks us, surprises us or makes us feel very uncomfortable. Yet it’s important that we allow ourselves to process these feelings at a later date, because we cannot afford to invalidate, dismiss or belittle the client. They’ve had the courage to tell us what they’re experiencing and feeling and we have to respect them. If we don’t then it risks the therapeutic alliance and all the great work that we’ve done in therapy can be undone. Why Didn’t I Know How Much My Loved One Was Suffering? After a loved one has died by suicide, survivors typically find themselves overwhelmed with guilt and they constantly question themselves. For instance, “why didn’t I know they were in so much pain?”, “why didn’t I check in with them more?” and “could I have stopped them?”. Over time, these questions become haunting as well as repetitive. Nonetheless, the truth is, us individuals who die or want to die by suicide, we hide our suicidal intentions and we hide the depths of our despair. We already think that we’re a burden and the world is better off without us, so we don’t want to further burden people by revealing our suicidal intention. As well as sometimes we do show external signs of suicidal ideation but laypeople don’t recognise these signs or they don’t take them seriously. Also, some individuals who go on to die by suicide outright reject offers of help or the seem to make progress before sinking back into despair. Personally, I like to think that I would never forget a particular episode of The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast (now rebranded as Psychology, Actually) and in the episode, a father was telling the story of how his son who died by suicide seemed extremely happy in the weeks before he died. The family now knows that he was extremely happy because he had accepted that he was going to end his own life and he finally wouldn’t be in pain anymore. Therefore, whilst this is a much larger topic that I’ve already reflected on in other places, it’s important to acknowledge that progress after suicidal ideation can be hiding something deeper, so this is good for aspiring and qualified psychologists to be aware of. Furthermore, self-blame is a very common response to a loved one’s suicide but it’s important to remember that emotions aren’t facts. In many ways, suicide is very unpredictable and someone’s decision to take their own life is entirely their own. This is why seeking mental health support can help someone to make sense of these pervasive feelings of guilt as well as recognise that they aren’t to blame for their loved one’s death. Is It Normal to Have Suicidal Thoughts After a Loved One Dies by Suicide? Unfortunately, there is research that suggests that suicide survivors are at an increased risk of taking their own lives, because immense grief can trigger the feelings of despair as well as hopelessness that suicidal thoughts thrive in. Also, because suicide survivors tend to suffer in silence, they might be less likely to share their suicidal ideation with others and seek professional help. However, it’s important to remember that there’s no shame in feeling suicidal, even more so after the death of a loved one, so it’s important that you reach out for mental health support. Personally, I first came across this finding shortly after my suicide attempts, because my “friend” (who I would later find out was an emotional abuser) tried to convince me that I was being selfish by trying to die by suicide because of suicide clusters. They tried to explain how if I died by suicide then I was putting others at risk and I might push other people over the edge towards their own suicides. Whilst the wording was completely wrong by this so-called friend, it’s important that, if you are feeling suicidal after the death of a loved one, that you recognise these feelings, you don’t suffer in silence and you get the support you need. You’re important, you’re loved and your loved one wouldn’t want you to die. Can Someone Develop PTSD From a Loved One’s Suicide? It turns out that research shows that suicide survivors are at an increased risk of developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after a loved one’s suicide. Especially, if the method was violent, if there was a history of suicide attempts that increased the survivor’s anxiety as well as if the survivor was the person who found the body. When this happens and if a survivor is experiencing any symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, it’s important that they get support from a mental health practitioner. How Do You Get Support After Suicide Loss? As I’ve mentioned repeatedly so far in this psychology podcast episode, anyone who has lost someone to suicide can benefit from mental health and social support in whatever form is best for them. For most people, a therapist is the best option because they are trained mental health professionals. Yet other people prefer getting support from their community or a support group, and whilst I will always push people towards mental health professionals, you need to do what’s best for you at the end of the day. In addition, there might be times when seeking professional mental health support is unbearable or too much, so people might be able to cope with the support of friends, loved ones, partners and other important close others. Equally, you can get a close other to sit with you whilst you fill in the referral forms and so on. The most important thing when it comes to getting support and coping with suicide loss is that you have a safe space where you can process your painful emotions, express any conflicted feelings and come to terms with your loved one’s passing. Again, I want to use a fictionalised example from Given because it takes some of the emotion out of this information whilst giving us a great example at the same time. For example, as much as I love Mafuyu, you can see how badly he coped with his boyfriend’s suicide because he cut off everyone, he didn’t talk to anyone like his friends and you can see the difference in him compared to his friends 6-months later. Of course, everyone has a different reaction to suicide and Mafuyu and his friends had different relationships with Yuki, but Mafuyu’s friends had each other, music and ways to express themselves after Yuki’s suicide. Mafuyu did not and you can see the negative mental health impacts that had on him in the early part of the anime. This is why it’s important that you seek out mental health support, so you can heal, you can process your feelings and you can find ways to come to terms with your loved one’s passing. Since something else that Given shows us is that the longer you leave your processing and healing, the harder it is to express your conflicted feelings and the harder it is to recover. For instance, Mafuyu tried to express himself so many times but he didn’t know how to because he’d isolated himself and he gets better at it as he reconnects with his friends. Yet it takes so much extra effort for him to express himself than it might have if he had spoken to a mental health professional sooner after Yuki’s death. Finally for this section, you can also get mental health support after suicide loss from suicide hotlines, grief support groups amongst others. Should I Visit a Support Group After Suicide Loss? Speaking of suicide loss support groups, visiting these support groups can be effective for combating the profound sense of isolation that suicide survivors typically experience. Since these groups allow you to hear other people’s stories and there can be a great comfort in knowing that there are others going through the same as you within the safe space structure of the group. As well as going to a support group can help you to feel comfortable talking about more confusing emotions, like the relief or anger, that you might not want to share with others. Additionally, the routine of these regular sessions can be very useful to you because it can help survivors escape the seemingly endless despair and loneliness that can follow a suicide loss. I firmly believe this is even more important if the suicide loss involved a loved one that was a major part of your daily life. For example, if your child died by suicide then you no longer have the daily structure of getting them to school, the school rush, hearing about their day and so on. The extra structure of the support groups can help. A final benefit is that these support groups can help you to forge bonds with others and get a glimpse into their own recovery process so you can learn about effective coping skills. Then you can start to understand how your own grief can become more manageable over time. If you want to learn more about the benefits of support groups, please check out my podcast episode, What are The Types of Group Therapy? For aspiring and qualified clinical psychologists, the main implication for this section is about the importance of adding structure and routine back into the client’s life and breaking the cycle of despair and inaction. I recommend you check out my podcast episode, What is Behavioural Activation for more information. How Do You Let Friends and Family Know You Need Their Support After Suicide Loss? After experiencing suicide loss, it’s normal for other people to want to avoid, dance around or simply pretend that the suicide never happened. Whilst this might make the non-survivors feel better because of their own discomfort towards suicide, this isn’t what the survivor needs. Especially, as the love and support of a close other or loved one can be very powerful and sometimes healing to the survivor. Therefore, to help let your friends and family members know that you need their support after experiencing suicide loss, you can share resources on how they can best be there for you during this difficult time, you can ask for help more directly and you can stress to them that they don’t need to say the perfect thing. As long as they try their best, as long as they love and support you and as long as they try to look up how to be supportive after suicide loss, then that’s okay. Most importantly, your friends and family members need to know that you aren’t looking for them to fix what happened. Sometimes all you need is for the family member or friend to simply sit with you and you can talk or not talk. On the whole, even your best friend or the most empathetic person in your social network might fail to realise just how badly their silence is hurting you. This is why it’s important to let them know that just being present and understanding are critical factors in a survivor’s recovery. Personally, I understand this section from the perspective of a rape survivor because once I revealed the fact that I was raped, much like how survivors will have to reveal that they’ve lost someone to suicide, people didn’t know how to react. They didn’t want to say the wrong thing, they avoided me and they didn’t realise what I needed. Mainly, I argue that they couldn’t be asked to look up how to support a rape survivor. This applies to survivors of suicide loss too because you will have to tell people point-blank about your needs, your desires and what is best for you in a particular moment. Other people won’t do it for you. This links into the implications for aspiring and qualified clinical psychologists. One thing that we can do for survivors is to help them work on their self-advocacy, their conflict management skills and we can help the survivor feel confident asking for what they need. They might be too scared or too much of a people-pleaser to want to ask for support and we can help them overcome that so they can recover, heal and thrive. In terms of educational psychology, if we’re supporting a child survivor of suicide loss then we can do something similar. We can support the child to ask for support at school and in the home too. As well as explore any difficulties or barriers to asking for help that the child experiences. How Can I Help Someone Else Cope with Suicide Loss? The very fact that you’re reading or listening to this podcast episode when you haven’t personally experienced suicide loss makes you amazing in my opinion. Since it is a very small minority of people who go out of their way to research how to support their friend, their child or their family member. As a survivor of sexual trauma, thank you for doing this. As a result, when someone has lost a close other to suicide then it’s very likely that they’re going to be in desperate need of support from the people around them. Sometimes they might ask for the support and other times they won’t for various reasons. This is why it’s important to reach out to the other person regularly, invite them out for a walk or just sit in silence together so they know that they aren’t alone, and if they want to listen about the suicide and what happened, then listen. Always listen with empathy, compassion and without judgement. In addition, if you find that the survivor keeps focusing on a specific detail then that’s okay, normal and understandable. This is them trying to process it. As well as don’t be afraid to say their loved one’s name or ask them point-blank about how they’re coping with the death, because if you dance around the topic then this will only increase the feelings of grief and isolation in the survivor. Furthermore, hopefully you’ve never lost someone to suicide and if this is the case, then you need to remember that it is emotionally devastating in ways that will probably be overwhelming for you. The emotions, like the grief, the anger and the confusion, will be intense, your friend or loved one might start lashing out, crying or just seem to shut down at times. This is normal, okay and understandable given what’s happened to them. When this happens, it’s important for you to recognise that you need to prepare yourself mentally for the strength of their emotions and accept that their grief will come in waves. This should help you to be as supportive as possible, and reading books, listening to podcast episodes and watching videos on suicide loss can be very helpful. Finally, for some survivors of suicide loss, even more so in the immediate aftermath of the grief and suicide loss, they might struggle with so-called simple day-to-day tasks, as well as they might be too overwhelmed to make the funeral arrangements. When this happens, it can be very kind and compassionate for you to offer practical support like dropping off meals, taking on childcare, help to plan the funeral or find your close other a support group in the local area. These actions might seem tiny but you’ll be helping the survivor more than you could ever know. If we link this to educational and clinical psychology, then where my mind goes is if we’re supporting a client in therapy and then they have a friend or family member who goes through suicide loss. After we ensure that the client is okay in themselves and they’ve processed their feelings about the suicide, then it might be an idea to spend some time in a session to help the client deal with their close other’s experience of suicide loss. Since if they’re worried or anxious about their close other then I do not believe that they will have the emotional and mental energy to focus on themselves and their own recovery. Or at least, not as much as usual, so by discussing how to support a friend or close other after a suicide loss, we can help to support the client so we can return our attention back to therapy. Another added benefit of the client supporting their friend or family member after suicide loss is that it gives them purpose, they should hopefully be thanked so they might feel good about themselves and most importantly, their actions will be maintaining their friendships. All important factors in maintaining their mental health for the long term. Clinical Psychology Conclusion This psychology podcast episode might have been inspired by Mafuyu from Given and maybe a little desire to simply reach out to people like that fictional character, hug them and let them know that everything will be okay in the end. As well as, as a suicide survivor myself who is thrilled and really happy to still be alive, I’m glad that I’ve learnt not only the emotional devastation that my successful suicide would have caused my close friends and family members, but most importantly how to support others in the future as a friend, as an aspiring educational or clinical psychologist and as a family member too. From learning about how suicide grief is so uniquely painful to why survivors didn’t pick up on their loved one’s pain and despair, how to receive professional support and so much more. We learnt a lot about suicide loss in this episode. Therefore, my parting comment will be, as much as I love Mafuyu’s character, please do not end up like him. Please do not isolate yourself, dear listener, please do not avoid your friends, your family members and your social support network, reach out to them. Get professional support and learn to heal, recover and thrive. It might take months, years or longer, but it will be okay in the end. Extended Note Dear listener, I have a final parting message for you if you've experienced suicide loss. Even though I admit that I'm still on the emotional high of watching "Given: To The Sea", I want to say a final thing. You aren't alone, dear listener, and your loved one or friend are not gone forever. They might no longer physically be with you. You might never hear them laugh, say your name or walk next to you again. Yet it doesn't mean you'll forget them. Your loved one or friend will always be remembered and live inside you. They will always be in your heart, and that isn't a bad thing. They will always be in your memories, and that isn't a bad thing. They will always be with you, and that's something to celebrate. Sometimes you might feel that by ending their life, your loved one or friend abandoned or left you and they left never to return. But you will find them again. You are not lost, and they are not lost after suicide. Whether it is through music like Mafuyu where he finds his boyfriend Yuki again, or in your photos, your art or your shared memories together, you will find your loved one or friend again. And together, with them in your heart, you can move forward and live, thrive and love again. I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Suicide Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Brown, H. L., Selbe, S. M., Flesaker, M., Rosellini, A. J., Maple, M., Gradus, J. L., & Cerel, J. (2024). The impact of relationship type and closeness on mental health following suicide loss. Suicide and Life‐threatening Behavior, 54(3), 479-488. Delgado, H., Goergen, J., Tyler, J., & Windham, H. (2025). A loss by suicide: The relationship between meaning-making, post-traumatic growth, and complicated grief. OMEGA-Journal of death and dying, 92(2), 955-972. Goulah-Pabst, D. M. (2023). Suicide loss survivors: Navigating social stigma and threats to social bonds. OMEGA-Journal of death and dying, 87(3), 769-792. Hofmann, L., & Wagner, B. (2025). Understanding the complexity of suicide loss: PTSD, complex PTSD and prolonged grief disorder following suicide bereavement. Death Studies, 49(7), 897-906. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/suicide/coping-after-suicide-loss Jordan, J. R. (2020). Lessons learned: Forty years of clinical work with suicide loss survivors. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 766. Levi-Belz, Y., & Ben-Yaish, T. (2022). Prolonged grief symptoms among suicide-loss survivors: The contribution of intrapersonal and interpersonal characteristics. International journal of environmental research and public health, 19(17), 10545. Mary McDaniel, B., Daly, P., Pacheco, C. L., & Crist, J. D. (2022). Experiences with suicide loss: A qualitative study. Clinical nursing research, 31(8), 1491-1499. Mayer, L., Puschner, N., Votruba, N., Rüsch, N., & Oexle, N. (2023). Social reactions after disclosing suicide loss among women: A qualitative study. Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention, 44(6), 451. Oexle, N., & Sheehan, L. (2020). Perceived social support and mental health after suicide loss. Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention, 41(1), 65. Oexle, N., Feigelman, W., & Sheehan, L. (2020). Perceived suicide stigma, secrecy about suicide loss and mental health outcomes. Death Studies, 44(4), 248-255. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

Tourette’s Syndrome is one of those conditions that has gained increased attention over the past few years. Thanks to the great work of campaigners and individuals wanting to raise awareness and ensure that people understand what the condition actually is, compared to the myths and misconceptions. I’ve been meaning to develop my own understanding of the condition for a few years, but I hadn’t got round to it like a lot of people. Yet when John Davidson, the Tourette’s campaigner said something awful because of his Tourette’s at the 2026 Oscars, this cemented my determination to learn about Tourette’s. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what is Tourette’s Syndrome, what are the symptoms, how it’s treated and more. If you enjoy learning about mental health conditions, neurological differences and psychological treatments, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by CBT For Anxiety: A Clinical Psychology Introduction to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Anxiety. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What is Tourette’s Syndrome? Tourette’s Syndrome is a neurological disorder that’s characterised by uncontrollable as well as involuntary tics. These tics are rapid, sudden, recurrent and non-rhythmic vocalisations or motor movements. For example, head jerking, eye blinking, shoulder shrugging or nose twitching. Those are examples of some simple motor tics. Whereas you can have more complex motor tics that involve coordinated movements of multiple muscle groups and sometimes these can appear purposeful, but because they’re tics, they aren’t. For instance, bobbing the head whilst the person jerks their arm or facial grimacing combined with shoulder shrugging or twisting the torso. Some examples of vocal tics can include throat clearing, sniffing, humming, barking or grunting. Or some more complex vocal tics can include repeating the words of other people, also known as echolalia, or saying socially inappropriate words (coprolalia). In addition, the symptoms of Tourette’s Syndrome typically manifest between the ages of 4 and 6 years old and they reach their peak at 10 and 12 years old. As well as some with Tourette’s Syndrome can have comorbidities of Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), where you have difficulty concentrating and staying on task, learning disabilities, obsessive-compulsive disorder amongst other conditions. These can include substance abuse, depression, anxiety, autism and childhood conduct disorder. Furthermore, when it comes to getting a diagnosis of Tourette’s Syndrome, this is typically done by getting a description of the client’s tics and evaluating a family history. As well as certain blood tests and neuroimaging studies, like a computerised tomography (CT scan), electroencephalogram (EEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans can be used to rule out other conditions that might be confused with Tourette’s Syndrome. Moreover, to help set the scene for the importance of learning about this condition. According to the United States’ Centres for Disease Control, studies estimate that 1 out of every 162 children (0.6%) have Tourette’s Syndrome. Also 1.4 million people in the United States might have Tourette’s and about 1 in 50 children aged between 5-14 might have the condition because the CDC suggest that half of children with Tourette’s Syndrome might not be diagnosed. Building upon this, a lot of famous people have Tourette’s Syndrome. For example, musician Billie Eilish has Tourette’s and she describes her tics as physically demanding but that they don’t limit her career. Athlete Jeremy Stenberg is nicknamed “Twitch” because of his Tourette’s and musician Jamie Grace Harper has Tourette’s, ADHD, anxiety and OCD. Of course, I do want to note that, whilst there are media and online personalities, athletes, actors and comedians and musicians with Tourette’s Syndrome, it doesn’t mean that life with the condition is easy. There will be lots of people who are limited and in psychological distress because of their condition, as well as I am sure that these celebrities had to overcome a lot of personal challenges as part of their condition to get to the level of success where they are today. What are the Symptoms of Tourette’s Syndrome? For someone to have Tourette’s Syndrome, they need to have the following symptoms, they need to have multiple motor as well as one or more vocal tics, the tics need to have emerged before the age of 18, the tics cannot be attributable to any other condition, and they need to have persisted for at least one year. As I mentioned earlier, there are two categories of tics, simple and complex. Simple tics are brief, sudden movements that involve a limited number of muscle groups and whilst they might be repetitive, they typically happen in a single or isolated fashion. Whereas complex tics involve a distinct, coordinated pattern of successive movements and they involve several muscle groups. And here’s what’s really interesting, only 10% to 15% of cases of Tourette’s Syndrome actually involve saying or shouting inappropriate words or phrases. Personally, I think this is fascinating because this finding highlights the importance of learning about the truth behind mental health conditions. Since whenever we think about Tourette’s, we always think it is people shouting out inappropriate words or phrases, when in reality that is very rare. As a result, whilst this is a more information-focused podcast episode, I suppose that the first lesson for us, aspiring educational and clinical psychologists, is to always remind ourselves to be mindful of myths and misconceptions when it comes to our clinical work. When you encounter a mental health condition for the first time in the real world, it’s important to take a breath, remember that we might have fallen victim to believing myths and misconceptions about the condition and we need to approach our client with an open mind. Some research suggests that coprolalia might be caused by damage to the amygdala, the part of the brain that processes anger as well as fear. I would also add that it’s immensely useful when interacting with a client with a “new-to-you” mental health condition that the client will always be the best teacher for you. They live with the condition every single day, they experience the highs, the lows and how it impacts their daily life. Allow them to teach you, because I always say, you might be the expert in psychological theory and research, but the client will always be the expert in themselves and their life. Due to my own personal distress about the topic of suicide and self-harm, all I will say is some complex tics can lead to self-injurious behaviours and I will not be given examples I’m afraid to protect myself and my own comfort. In addition, a person with Tourette’s can sometimes suppress their tics for a short time, but this isn’t recommended. Due to the effort required to do this suppression, like akin to holding back a sneeze, and the tension within the person mounts and mounts and mounts until the tic escapes. This is important to note because tics can increase in stressful situations and typically improve when the person is relaxed, as well as tics significantly decrease during sleep. Therefore, if a person with Tourette’s suppresses their tics at school or work then it can be a healthy idea for them to go to a secluded spot afterwards and release the tics. Personally, when I was researching and writing the above paragraph, my mind went towards masking behaviour in autism. This is when an autistic person masks or hides their autistic behavioural traits and symptoms so they can fit in and hide their autism from others. This can be immensely stressful, it can be draining and it isn’t good for the autistic person’s long-term mental health. I imagine it is similar for a person with Tourette’s with their tics. It can be helpful in the long run to create a safe, compassionate and non-judgemental environment where a person with Tourette’s can release their tics. What Causes Tourette’s Syndrome? Whilst the cause of Tourette’s Syndrome isn’t known, research does highlight a few potential causes. For example, research into the genetics of people with Tourette’s highlights that if people possess certain alleles and rare genetic variants then they are more likely to develop Tourette’s than other people. However, it’s important to note that just because a person has a genetic predisposition to a condition, it doesn’t mean that they will develop the condition. Instead the tics might manifest as a milder tic disorder or OCD instead of Tourette’s, or they might not develop any symptoms at all. Another potential cause might be abnormalities in the brain according to some research. Since people with Tourette’s have differences in the frontal lobes, cortex, basal ganglia and the neural circuitry that connects these regions compared to people without the condition. As well as differences amongst the neurotransmitters, like serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine, that are critical for communication among these nerve cells. Finally, the biological sex of an individual can play an important role in the gene expression of Tourette’s. Since at-risk males are more likely to have tics whereas at-risk females are more likely to have OCD symptoms. As well as people with Tourette’s might have genetic risks for other neurobehavioural disorders, like substance abuse or depression. Personally, I have to admit that for some reason, I don’t like the term “at-risk” when it comes to mental health conditions. Partly because it’s probably very medical terminology and I think it’s very negative. For example, I feel like you’re essentially saying “you’re at-risk of developing Tourette’s. I’m so sorry to give you this news,”. Or I just don’t think there’s a positive way to talk about a condition when you say someone is “at-risk”. And this is important because Tourette’s Syndrome isn’t curable, and I don’t think it needs to be. Instead Tourette’s is a condition that we need to support someone with so they can live a full, productive and happy life whatever that means to them. A large part of enabling someone to live a happy life is not making them feel bad about their condition and decreasing the stigma so they can live authentically and without shame. Just some thoughts. Some other additional factors associated with the development of tics can include maternal smoking during pregnancy, older paternal age, lower birth weight and obstetrical complications. How is Tourette’s Syndrome Treated? As I mentioned a moment ago, there is no cure for Tourette’s and normally the condition can improve as the individual gets older, but Tourette’s is a lifelong and chronic condition. However, as a result of the negative impact the symptoms of Tourette’s can have on a person, treatment options are available in the form of therapy, medication and education. How is Therapy Used to Treat Tourette’s Syndrome? When it comes to psychological therapy, this can be helpful in the treatment of Tourette’s syndrome because whilst psychological difficulties don’t cause the condition, it can help a person to better cope with the condition and deal with the secondary emotional as well as social problems that happen. Therapy for Tourette’s involves not suppressing the client’s tics. Instead it focuses on specific behavioural treatments that include competing response training, like voluntary moving in response to a premonitory urge, and awareness training. These forms of therapy have been shown to be effective in small controlled trials. As well as relaxation techniques and biofeedback can be useful in alleviating the stress that can cause an increase in tic symptoms. Personally, I would note that I have a minor issue with “small controlled trials” because of the experience I had researching, writing and understanding the field of the Gamification of Autism. Therefore, whilst it is great that we have some positive research findings that can help improve the lives of people with Tourette’s, it is critical that we ramp up these research studies to include more participants, conduct studies with greater statistical power and we ensure that these studies are as bulletproof as possible so we can definitively know how useful these techniques are. Of course, this won’t be easy because I know that relaxation and biofeedback techniques are not as manualised, as let’s say cognitive behavioural therapy, so creating research studies and getting consistent and reliable results can be difficult. Yet psychology is a science and psychologists are researcher-practitioners so it’s important that we have reliable and good research to base our interventions on. How Is Medication Used to Treat Tourette’s? The majority of people with Tourette’s Syndrome don’t need medication because their tics don’t impact their daily functioning, but when tics do impair daily functioning then medication can be an option for people with Tourette’s. Even though, there is no one medication that is helpful to everyone with the condition as well as medication doesn’t completely eliminate their symptoms. Instead the medication that you’re given depends on the symptom that needs to be reduced. For example, if a client with Tourette’s needs to reduce the intensity and frequency of their tic symptoms then they might be given a neuroleptic drug. These drugs are typically given in small doses that are increased slowly until the best possible balance between the decrease in symptoms and side effects are found. These side effects can include tremors, parkinsonian-like symptoms and these drugs lead to a decrease in involuntary movements. Although, if a client wants to discontinue their neuroleptics then this is done slowly to avoid rebound increases in tics and withdrawal dyskinesias. Yet the side effects can include depression, anxiety, difficulties in thinking clearly, fatigue and weight gain. Interestingly, there are some reports that medications that are given for other mental health conditions, like dextroamphetamine and methylphenidate which are normally given to people with ADHD, have been found to be effective without causing tics to become more severe. To me, this highlights the important of working in a multi-disciplinary team because thankfully in the United Kingdom, psychologists do not have prescribing rights and I will always fight about that for reasons that I’ve discussed on an earlier podcast episode. Since psychologists will never be experts on medication for mental health conditions, and that isn’t a bad thing. This is why it’s important for medical staff and mental health practitioners to coordinate and effectively communicate so we can understand what is best for a client and if medication or therapy is even needed in the first place. And I would say that my opinion on medication for mental health conditions has changed over the years and I have become slightly more lenient in some aspects, but I am still very much against the medicalisation of mental health and using drugs to treat mental health conditions over psychological therapy. Yet for neurological disorders, like Tourette’s, I accept the argument for medication if therapy will not be useful to the client. Finally for this medication section, antihypertensive drugs can be used to treat tics as well, and some common side effects for clonidine include dry mouth, headaches, fatigue, insomnia and irritability. How Can Education Treat Tourette’s? As an aspiring educational psychologist, I always enjoy learning about how educational settings can be used productively and therapeutically to better support children with mental health conditions. Therefore, when it comes to students with Tourette’s, they typically function very well in classroom environments, even though some people with Tourette’s do have learning disabilities. Nonetheless, when a person has Tourette’s and ADHD, OCD or when frequent tics greatly interfere with their social adjustment or academic performance, then students need to be placed in an educational setting that meets their individual needs. This can mean that these students need smaller or special educational needs classes, SEN schools or tutoring. Ultimately, the most important thing when it comes to education and students with Tourette’s is that the student needs to be in a compassionate and understanding educational setting. In other words, the educational environment must understand that tics are not caused by bad behaviour, the student isn’t doing them on purpose and the student isn’t trying to be “naughty”. As well as the educational environment needs to encourage the student with Tourette’s to work to their full potential, and the setting needs to be flexible enough to accommodate their special educational needs. For example, they might need exams outside the regular classroom, a private study area, untimed testing or even oral exams when the child’s symptoms interfere with their own ability to write. Personally, the exam accommodations are very interesting because I had never thought about it like that. Since there are a lot of exam rules that you would have to adapt for a student with Tourette’s. You couldn’t have them doing tics, especially vocal tics in an exam, because from an exam invigilator's perspective, you have to maintain the integrity of the exam and you have to note down everything that happens. For starters, you would have to write down every single tic that student has, the integrity of the exam might be harmed if the student’s tic leads to them shouting out an answer or some subject-specific knowledge, or disturbing other candidates. You would have to have them alone in a room in a one-to-one situation. For that to happen, you need to fill out the paperwork and get permission from the exam boards and so on. From an educational psychology viewpoint, and this taps into clinical psychology too because clinical psychologists could also coordinate and deliver the Continued Professional Development training to staff about how best to support a student with Tourette’s. An aspiring and qualified educational psychologist might be involved in reviewing school policy, procedures and ensuring that that legislation is met to ensure the student with Tourette’s has the support that they need at school. Clinical Psychology Conclusion Whilst I always knew this podcast episode was going to be a lot of fun, really interesting and I was going to learn content that I never knew before, at the beginning, I wasn’t sure this was going to be one of my favourites. Since my favourite episodes are the episodes where I can reflect a lot, write about my personal experiences and I can walk away from an episode thinking that I’ve really grown as an aspiring psychologist. I’ve enjoyed this podcast a lot more than I thought I would because it was great to see how aspiring and qualified psychologists can adapt their clinical and educational work to support people with Tourette’s. As a result, as a little recap, Tourette’s Syndrome is a neurological disorder that’s characterised by uncontrollable as well as involuntary tics. These tics are rapid, sudden, recurrent and non-rhythmic vocalisations or motor movements. For example, head jerking, eye blinking, shoulder shrugging or nose twitching. Those are examples of some simple motor tics. Whereas you can have more complex motor tics that involve coordinated movements of multiple muscle groups and sometimes these can appear purposeful, but because they’re tics, they aren’t. For instance, bobbing the head whilst the person jerks their arm or facial grimacing combined with shoulder shrugging or twisting the torso. I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET CBT For Anxiety: A Clinical Psychology Introduction to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Anxiety. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Besag, F. M., Vasey, M. J., Lao, K. S., Chowdhury, U., & Stern, J. S. (2021). Pharmacological treatment for Tourette syndrome in children and adults: What is the quality of the evidence? A systematic review. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 35(9), 1037-1061. Billnitzer, A., & Jankovic, J. (2020). Current management of tics and Tourette syndrome: behavioral, pharmacologic, and surgical treatments. Neurotherapeutics, 17(4), 1681-1693. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/tourettes-disorder Jafari, F., Abbasi, P., Rahmati, M., Hodhodi, T., & Kazeminia, M. (2022). Systematic review and meta-analysis of Tourette syndrome prevalence; 1986 to 2022. Pediatric neurology, 137, 6-16. Johnson, K. A., Worbe, Y., Foote, K. D., Butson, C. R., Gunduz, A., & Okun, M. S. (2023). Tourette syndrome: clinical features, pathophysiology, and treatment. The Lancet Neurology, 22(2), 147-158. Lund, J., Borch-Johnsen, L., Groth, C., Skov, L., & Debes, N. M. (2023). Impact of Tourette syndrome on education. Neuropediatrics, 54(02), 107-112. Müller‐Vahl, K. R., Pisarenko, A., Fremer, C., Haas, M., Jakubovski, E., & Szejko, N. (2024). Functional tic‐like behaviors: a common comorbidity in patients with Tourette syndrome. Movement disorders clinical practice, 11(3), 227-237. Seideman, M. F., & Seideman, T. A. (2020). A review of the current treatment of Tourette syndrome. The Journal of Pediatric Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 25(5), 401-412. Set, K. K., & Warner, J. N. (2021). Tourette syndrome in children: An update. Current problems in pediatric and adolescent health care, 51(7), 101032. Woods, D. W., & Scahill, L. D. (2025). Managing Tourette syndrome: A behavioral intervention for children and adults therapist guide. Oxford University Press. Yang, Z., Wu, H., Lee, P. H., Tsetsos, F., Davis, L. K., Yu, D., ... & Paschou, P. (2021). Investigating shared genetic basis across tourette syndrome and comorbid neurodevelopmental disorders along the impulsivity-compulsivity spectrum. Biological psychiatry, 90(5), 317-327. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

Over the past few years, I’ve thankfully noticed that there’s more of a conversation within clinical psychology about postpartum mental health struggles, and this is a good thing. Since it helps us, aspiring and qualified psychologists, to understand how childbirth or adoption can be immensely stressful and harmful to a parent’s mental health. Yet this is more challenging than other mental health difficulties because people who give birth are often silenced by society, stigma and prejudice as I’ve discussed in another podcast episode called “How Does Birth Trauma Burden Mothers?”. In this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn about postpartum anxiety, what it is, how it’s treated and how we can best support new parents whilst they’re experiencing postpartum anxiety. Also, like always, I’ll explain the implications for educational and clinical psychologists too. If you enjoy learning about mental health, clinical psychology and more, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by CBT For Anxiety: A Clinical Psychology Introduction to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Anxiety. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What is Postpartum Anxiety? Postpartum anxiety is when a person has severe anxiety after becoming a parent or having a baby. This anxiety is characterised by having overwhelming thoughts that are difficult to manage as well as these thoughts feel uncontrollable to the individual. Also, a parent might feel a constant sense of danger but they won’t be able to calm their thoughts or put their finger on the cause of the sense of danger. Personally, there are two reasons why I was inspired to do this podcast episode. Firstly, I once had a conversation with someone at work who used to be a prison officer and they mentioned how they first got into mental health courses by learning about postpartum psychosis. This led to a larger conversation about how common postpartum mental health difficulties are, and I really do enjoy the topic. Since postpartum mental health is so important, it is unfortunately not spoken about and a lot of women and parents would benefit from a bit more support. As well as I know from Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory and attachment theory, the importance of the parent-child relationship, and I can see and sort of forecast how a parent with negative mental health might have a negative impact on a child’s education, attainment and motivation in an educational setting. Therefore, something that I want to continue to do on The Psychology World Podcast is talk about postpartum mental health. I want to help give a voice to this critical mental health topic that’s impacting a lot of parents and women, but so few people are actively talking about it. Another reason why I was inspired to do this podcast episode was because at the moment, I’m watching the boys’ love/ slice of life anime “Tadaima, Okaeri”. It translates into “I’m Home, Welcome Back” and it’s this lovely romance anime with a fantasy twist because the gay married couple is an alpha and an omega. This means that the omega can get pregnant, and their baby son is just an amazing character. Anyway, this links to postpartum anxiety because there’s this one scene when the Omega is pregnant with their second child and he becomes overwhelmed with anxiety and anxious thoughts about his past. He becomes terrified that the baby will be born an omega, the child will be abused like he was and the Omega briefly considers whether the child should even be born because it might be an omega. Then this also links to the real-world conversation I had and I’ve listened to podcast episodes over the years, and it isn’t uncommon for women to have anxious thoughts or “bad” thoughts during pregnancy. Yet because society is so judgemental and we’ve forced the idea that pregnancy and childbirth are always amazing, positive and lovely experiences that cannot be bad in the slightest. We’ve created a culture of silence for women and parents so they’re too scared of voicing any concerns in case they get portrayed or judged as monsters. Anyway, I was inspired by the scene in “Tadaima, Okaeri” because this scene is relatable for a lot of parents during pregnancy. Some parents will be scared of passing on their chronic illness, their mental health condition or some other so-called bad trait of theirs or that runs in the family. Or they’ll be anxious about whether they can be a good parent, whether they can provide for their child or if they’re capable of loving them. This might even lead to questions of whether the child should be born in the first place, and these thoughts themselves can be immensely distressing. That’s why supporting postpartum mental health is so, so important. As a result, if I jump off my soapbox for a moment, then having a new baby through childbirth or adoption is going to bring a lot of worry into a parent’s life. That’s just normal. Yet if a parent has postpartum anxiety then this worry can be nonstop and all-consuming. Typically, this involves the parent having excessive concerns or irrational fears about events that aren’t likely to happen and whilst these concerns can be vague and generalised, sometimes these concerns are tied to a specific incident from their past. For example, if a parent had a lot of bullying as a child because they stuttered severely, then they might be anxious about their own child being endlessly bullied in case the baby has a stutter too. Equally, to use the fictional example from Tadaima, Okaeri, the Omega’s worry was tied back to his own bullying and abuse as a child because of the type he was born. These are two examples how the worry in postpartum anxiety can be tied to a specific event from the parent’s past. This can lead to parents with postpartum anxiety to stay up all night because they’re afraid that their baby will stop breathing in their sleep, they might be terrified of leaving their baby with a trusted adult even if it’s only for a few minutes, and the parent might avoid public places because they’re frightened of someone or something hurting them or their baby. As well as the new parent might experience scary and unwanted thoughts of their child being harmed or them harming their own child. After that paragraph I just want to take a breather, because I don’t know about you but that was hard for me to read and write about. I’ve had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression and anxiety before because of sexual trauma, so I can understand how terrifying this is, but to actually have unwanted and terrifying thoughts about harming your own child. That is really tough and that’s why this is important to learn about. If you understand postpartum anxiety and the awful experiences that new parents can go through, then this can help you relate with clients better, and listen and act with kindness, empathy and compassion when parents need it most. In addition, when it comes to the prevalence rates of postpartum anxiety about 1 in 5 women have the condition, but it’s hard to know the exact number because many women don’t talk about their symptoms. As well as postpartum anxiety typically happens alongside postpartum depression. The prevalence rate is another fact that surprised me, because I used to assume that because no one spoke about postpartum mental health struggles that it wasn’t too common. Yet around 20% of new mothers experience postpartum anxiety. That’s moderately high and makes it a common mental health condition. Yet another reason why it’s so important to talk about it, and learning about postpartum anxiety also helps us to become better friends, peers and family members too. Lastly for this section, postpartum anxiety can start as early as during pregnancy, but it typically starts right after birth but it can begin as late as when the baby is several months old. What are the Causes and Risk Factors of Postpartum Anxiety? Whilst there is no single cause of postpartum anxiety, researchers and professionals strongly believe it is caused by several factors. For example, a lack of sleep because caring for a newborn becomes a 24-hour job and can cause sleep deprivation, changes in hormones because the sharp decrease in hormones after the delivery of a baby can cause changes in mood or make it more difficult to manage stress, and stressful events. Since certain events about the baby’s life can trigger anxiety. For instance, a stressful or traumatic delivery or issues with breastfeeding. A final factor that might contribute to postpartum anxiety is feelings of responsibility because new parents might be overwhelmed with feelings of needing to protect and care for their baby. This might trigger anxiety. Furthermore, when it comes to the risk factors, having a previous miscarriage of loss of a child, having a baby with health conditions, caring for multiple children or having a personal or family history of anxiety or depression can all increase the risk of postpartum anxiety. Another set of risk factors includes not having a supportive partner or support network, being a naturally inclined worrier or having a history of eating disorders. I’ll talk more about this later in the episode, but I want to stress here that none of these risk factors or causes are reasons not to have children. A parent can still be a great one and still be kind, loving and supportive to their child despite their challenges, because a parent can get mental health and physical health support, they can thrive and there are support groups available. Raising a child is never ever going to be easy, even despite what animes and media like “Tadaima, Okaeri” like to have us believe, and it’s equally okay if you don’t want children, but it can be fun, rewarding and a lovely experience. In terms of applying this knowledge to clinical psychology, and even educational psychology, it’s important that we support our clients to realise that sometimes there isn’t anything they could have done to reduce or prevent the development of their postpartum anxiety. Therefore, it’s important that as aspiring or qualified psychologists, that we help our clients understand that their postpartum anxiety isn’t their fault because it wasn’t caused by anything that they did or didn’t do. Another implication for clinical psychology is that it might be useful to work with a client to talk through their specific triggers from their past or their history of depression or anxiety. This might help the client to develop coping strategies to deal with the overwhelm and changes that a newborn baby would bring. Finally for this section, this information is useful to educational psychologists too because if you’re working in a school and a teacher or member of the Senior Leadership Team has come back from maternity or paternity leave and they’re experiencing postpartum anxiety, then this will have a negative impact on the school social system. It might negatively impact the interpersonal relationships within the senior leadership team, then this has an impact on the teacher-SLT relationship and then this negative relationship can filter down and impact the teaching so it has an indirect impact on the children to grossly oversimplify what happens. Therefore, if you, as an aspiring or qualified educational psychologist, understand postpartum anxiety then you can teach the other staff members about the condition and what the person is experiencing and how best to support them. As well as depending on how your service works, you might be able to refer them to get some specific postpartum mental health support. What are the Symptoms of Postpartum Anxiety? The symptoms of postpartum anxiety all come back to the primary function of anxiety in the body. The body uses anxiety to respond to perceived or real threats or dangers, so the symptoms that a person experiences are the body’s reactions to this constant sense of fear or worry, and this isn’t only physical. The symptoms of postpartum anxiety can be physical but they can also be behavioural and emotional and these symptoms interfere with a person’s ability to function. Personally, my favourite caveat in the DSM-5 (the statistical manual that the USA and UK use to diagnose mental health conditions) is that the symptoms must be causing clinically significant levels of distress and impaired functioning across a range of domains of life. For example, school, work, relationships amongst others. As a result, some emotional symptoms of postpartum anxiety can include feeling on edge, irritability, tearfulness, an inability to relax or calm down, obsessing over irrational fears, panic attacks, generalised anxiety and thinking about worst-case scenarios. For example, a new parent might be terrified that something will happen to their baby if they go to work and leave them with a childminder. Or they might be concerned that if they leave their baby for even a second then the baby will be hurt, as well as if they don’t watch the baby sleep overnight then the baby might stop breathing and they couldn’t react fast enough. Equally, if we apply this to the fictional context of “Tadaima, Okaeri” then the omega Makasi was unable to relax, he was tearful and he was thinking about the worst-case scenario of what if his baby girl was born an omega like he was. He was tearful over her future and concerned about things that hadn’t happened yet. Furthermore, when it comes to the behavioural symptoms of postpartum anxiety, a parent might avoid certain activities, places or people, they might check things repeatedly, like how long ago their baby ate or that objects that could hurt the baby are put away, as well as being overly cautious about situations that aren’t dangerous. It’s important to note when talking about mental health conditions that on their own none of these symptoms mean that someone has a mental health condition. Since there are times when all parents are overly cautious, they check things repeatedly or they want to avoid certain places because of “what if”. Yet it becomes a mental health condition and a cause for concern when it’s impairing someone’s functioning, it’s creating a lot of distress for them and it’s harming their life. This is why Makasi in “Tadaima, Okaeri” doesn’t have postpartum anxiety because his fears and anxiety don’t impede his ability to be a great parent (or ma-chan) and he can function fine despite his anxiety. Finally, postpartum anxiety can cause a new parent to have disrupted sleep, feel tense, be unable to breathe or have shortness of breath, increased heart rate or heart palpitations, have a stomach ache, be restless or loss of appetite. All these symptoms can be difficult and distressing to manage, especially if you’re supporting and dealing with a newborn baby, family, relationships and other matters. This is why seeking mental health support and reducing the shame and stigma associated with postpartum conditions is so important. If we apply this knowledge to aspiring and qualified clinical psychologists, then I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel in the slightest. Yes, the anxious symptoms will be related to the newborn baby and the changes that becoming a parent has caused them, but cognitive interventions, behavioural experiments and psychoeducation can still be very useful. As well as the client is likely to have extra motivation to change and engage in the therapeutic process because they have a newborn baby to look after, love and protect, and I would always be interested in what early life experience influenced the parent to have severe anxiety about the safety of their newborn. Yet that isn’t anything new. On the other hand, what I think is interesting to think about when it comes to the symptoms is how we could make our workplaces more friendly to new parents returning from maternity and paternity leave. Since we might be able to do some preventative work for parents to reduce their anxiety about returning to work after being off for so long looking after their newborn. They’re already likely to be anxious about forgetting what to do, learning new systems (because organisations love to implement new policies that the new parent is likely to have missed) and they have to deal with anxieties about leaving their newborn baby for the first time. Of course, the majority of parents will be happy and okay just returning to work, hit the ground running and that’s completely okay. Yet there will be other parents who want to ease back into work and I think we should create options for them in our mental health services and educational settings. Whether this includes half-days, only doing a few days a week then going back into full-time employment. I think it can be important to help new parents to ease back into work, climatise themselves to being away from their newborn and then over time they can see that nothing bad’s happened even though they weren’t with their child constantly so this can make a return to full-time employment kinder, easier and more compassionate. Just some thoughts. How Is Postpartum Anxiety Diagnosed? Whilst there isn’t a clear diagnostic tool available for postpartum anxiety, there are questions designed to understand your postpartum anxiety. Then a medical doctor or a professional will use your responses to gauge whether you need any additional support to manage your mental health. Furthermore, when you go for a postpartum appointment, you are likely to be scared, nervous or embarrassed to share your symptoms, and this is why I think it’s critical that we do talk more openly about postpartum mental health. Since so many new parents suffer in silence because they’re too scared, they’re nervous and they’re concerned about if social services will be called on them if they open up about their mental health. The vast, vast majority of parents love their baby and children so much that they would rather die than see their child get ripped away from them. Therefore, if any aspiring or qualified psychologists are involved in postpartum appointments, it might be useful to explain to new parents how that side of the process works and what the conditions are for them to call social services. This might initially sound scary but at the end of the conversation, it might enlighten and ease a parent’s concerns so they feel more able to share their true thoughts, feelings and emotions. This is important because so many parents do experience intense anxiety that doesn’t go away, so it’s critical that professionals and parents have honest, open and collaborative conversations so the client receives the best possible support moving forward. How is Postpartum Anxiety Treated? The exact treatment that a healthcare provider would recommend for postpartum anxiety depends on health history, symptoms, whether the client is breastfeeding or not and other factors. If a client has a mild case of postpartum anxiety then the treatment will typically involve speaking to a counsellor and changes to daily activities to improve their mental health. Whereas if the symptoms are more severe then medication can be an option. Another reason why treatment is important for postpartum anxiety is because a lot of clients tend to wonder how long it's going to last. Whilst postpartum anxiety doesn't last forever, it never goes away on its own. This is why getting treatment from a healthcare professional is important and it's the best way to recover from the condition. How Can Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Treat Postpartum Anxiety? I talk about this more in my book, CBT For Anxiety, but cognitive behavioural therapy is an effective psychological treatment for anxiety. It involves working with a psychologist to help a client identify emotions as well as change maladaptive thinking patterns. CBT helps a client to unlearn negative behaviours and thoughts so they can become more adaptive and healthier. Therefore, CBT can be useful in postpartum anxiety treatment because it helps a client to change their anxious thoughts and behaviours about their parenting and newborn baby to become healthier. How Is Postpartum Anxiety Treated Through Lifestyle Changes? As I mentioned a moment ago, postpartum anxiety can be treated through suggested lifestyle changes, so the client doesn’t need to use medication and they can still change their life for the better and their mental health will improve. Therefore, these lifestyle changes can include finding a support group for new parents and these groups can be local or online. These support groups can be immensely useful for people with postpartum anxiety because it allows them to share their thoughts, feelings and experiences with other people in a similar situation to them. You can find out the other benefits of group therapy in my podcast episode, What are the Types of Group Therapy? Another useful lifestyle change can include asking for help from friends and family members. I talk more about the benefits of this change in a later section of this episode. As well as new parents with postpartum anxiety can try to take a walk, be active and get exercise every day. This can improve mental health because it gets the body to release hormones and neurotransmitters that make us feel good. Also, I understand that parents with anxiety might be panicking that if they go outside then them or their newborn might get hurt or something might go wrong. Yet you can do something akin to graded exposure, like you could do a walk around the block until you’re used to that and then you can increase the exercise over time, or you can do your exercise in the comfort of your own home. The final lifestyle change that can be useful is the importance of new parents taking care of themselves by eating healthy meals and sleeping as much as you can. Some other podcast episodes you might find useful as I explore these topics in more depth include What is Behavioural Activation and How Does a Consistent Sleep Schedule Improve Mental Health? A Quick Note on Postpartum Anxiety and Medication Whilst medication is another treatment option for postpartum anxiety, I'm not really going to talk about it too much in this episode. Since whilst it can work for people, the science behind SSRIs and other anti-anxiety and anti-depression medication is loose at times as supported by the brilliant work of Reed and Moncrief (2022). As well as the serotonin hypothesis has been debunked time and time again over the years, so I don't want to promote an area of treatment that isn't as good as everyone claims. When Should Someone See a Healthcare Professional About Postpartum Anxiety? You should always seek out and talk to a healthcare professional if you have symptoms of postpartum anxiety. For example, if you're overwhelmed with day-to-day life, if you're feeling worried all day, every day and if you aren't bonding with your baby. As well as if your anxious thoughts are becoming more severe, and if you have any signs of postpartum depression, like feeling sad most of the time or you're losing interest in things you used to enjoy. These are all symptoms that mean it can be a good idea to speak to a healthcare professional. Lastly for this section, if you need any immediate help or you're experiencing thoughts of harming yourself or your baby then please contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by texting or calling 988 if you're in the United States and other countries have similar helplines. There is a list of support helplines available at connorwhiteley.net. Can Postpartum Anxiety Return? One of the reasons why I don't like medical terminology for mental health conditions, and even more so for the idea of "curing" a condition is that a mental health condition is always a part of you. It might not impact your life, you might be able to manage it fine and you might not even notice it in future, but it's still there. I prefer that way to think about mental health because if you've recovered from postpartum anxiety, then it can still return. Anxiety can happen at any time of your life and regardless of the age of your child, even if it's after their first birthday. If this happens then it won't be called postpartum anxiety, but the worries and anxiety about your child can still affect you. This is why it's important to remember that if you're struggling with anxiety, then always seek out professional support. Regardless of the age of your child. A final note for this section, I would add for aspiring and qualified psychologists is that having knowledge about postpartum anxiety will always be useful if your clients almost never have newborn babies. The principles, worries and anxious thoughts reflected in postpartum anxiety can impact clients regardless of their age. So understanding this form of anxiety is always useful. How Do You Support a Friend with Postpartum Anxiety? Social networks are flat out critical when it comes to mental health, and especially after giving birth. In fact, having supportive friends around a new parent can be a protective factor against the development of postpartum anxiety in the first place. Yet if your friend or loved one has the condition then the best thing you can do for them is to be there for them and listen. Be a supportive listener, because by allowing them to talk about their thoughts, feelings and emotions, then you're helping them to feel understood, validated and listened to. Whilst it's important that they still seek out professional support, just listening to them can be very helpful. In addition, if your friend or loved one is feeling overwhelmed then it can be really nice to offer to do other errands for them or help with household chores. Like doing the cleaning, the laundry or cook them dinner. These ideas might seem simple and easy, but they can make a world of difference to a new parent. Furthermore, coming at this point from a clinical psychology perspective, aspiring or qualified psychologists might want to explore with a client with postpartum anxiety if they're struggling to ask for help. Since in reality, as individuals, we need to find a balance. If you're too independent then that isn't good or healthy. If you're too dependent on others then that isn't healthy either. We need to learn how to stand on our own two feet and when to recognise that we need help. Therefore, if a client with postpartum anxiety is struggling but they're hesitant to ask for help. Why? It could be because they don't have a support network around them or a supportive partner, but equally they might have a lot of friends, but because of early life experiences or events in their own upbringing, the client refuses to ask for help even if they're suffering because of it. Something to possibly explore in therapy for sure. Clinical Psychology Conclusion This psychology podcast episode has been a lot of fun to research, write about and reflect on. I know that in recent months I’ve been inspired by a lot of boys’ love anime for various psychology topics, like “Tadaima, Okaeri”, but in reality, these animes are just reminding me of topics that I’ve always been interested in. I just needed a little encouragement to look into these fascinating topics a little more, because postpartum anxiety, psychosis, depression and so many more do impact a lot of people. New parents need mental health support but because no one is really talking about it, no one is focusing on it. I hope in some small way podcast episodes like this can help change that. Therefore, as a little reminder, Postpartum anxiety is when a person has severe anxiety after becoming a parent or having a baby. This anxiety is characterised by having overwhelming thoughts that are difficult to manage as well as these thoughts feel uncontrollable to the individual. Also, a parent might feel a constant sense of danger but they won’t be able to calm their thoughts or put their finger on the cause of the sense of danger. However, as scary, terrifying and anxiety-inducing as these symptoms are, it’s important to know that you’re never alone, help is available and life does get better. I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET CBT For Anxiety: A Clinical Psychology Introduction to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Anxiety. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Ali E. Women’s experiences with postpartum anxiety disorders: a narrative literature review (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5983016/). Int J Womens Health. 2018 May 29;10:237-249. Accessed 8/25/2025. Feldman, N., Hibara, A., Ye, J., Macaranas, A., Larkin, P., Hendrix, E., ... & Liu, C. H. (2025). Postpartum anxiety: a state-of-the-art review. The Lancet Psychiatry. Field T. Postnatal anxiety prevalence, predictors and effects on development: A narrative review (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29544195/). Infant Behav Dev. 2018 May;51:24-32. Accessed 8/25/2025. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22693-postpartum-anxiety#additional-common-questions Jordan V, Minikel M. Postpartum anxiety: More common than you think (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31039214/). J Fam Pract. 2019 Apr;68(3):165;168;170;174. Accessed 8/25/2025. Mental Health America. Postpartum Anxiety (https://mhanational.org/resources/postpartum-anxiety/). Accessed 8/25/2025. Modak, A., Ronghe, V., Gomase, K. P., Mahakalkar, M. G., Taksande, V., & Dukare, K. P. (2023). A comprehensive review of motherhood and mental health: Postpartum mood disorders in focus. Cureus, 15(9). Nakić Radoš S, Tadinac M, Herman R. Anxiety During Pregnancy and Postpartum: Course, Predictors and Comorbidity with Postpartum Depression (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6400346/). Acta Clin Croat. 2018 Mar;57(1):39-51. Accessed 8/25/2025. Shang, J., Dolikun, N., Tao, X., Zhang, P., Woodward, M., Hackett, M. L., & Henry, A. (2022). The effectiveness of postpartum interventions aimed at improving women’s mental health after medical complications of pregnancy: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 22(1), 809. The MGH Center for Women’s Mental Health. Is It Postpartum Depression or Postpartum Anxiety? What’s The Difference? (https://womensmentalhealth.org/posts/is-it-postpartum-depression-or-postpartum-anxiety-whats-the-difference/) Accessed 8/25/2025. White, L. K., Kornfield, S. L., Himes, M. M., Forkpa, M., Waller, R., Njoroge, W. F., ... & Gur, R. E. (2023). The impact of postpartum social support on postpartum mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic: LK White et al. Archives of women's mental health, 26(4), 531-541. Wisner KL, Murphy C, Thomas MM. Prioritizing Maternal Mental Health in Addressing Morbidity and Mortality (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38381408/). JAMA Psychiatry. 2024;81(5):521-526. Accessed 8/25/2025. Worrall, S., Silverio, S. A., & Fallon, V. M. (2023). The relationship between prematurity and maternal mental health during the first postpartum year. Journal of Neonatal Nursing, 29(3), 511-518. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

As someone with a background in both trauma and special educational needs, selective mutism is nothing new. A fair number of children with special educational needs and trauma backgrounds can develop selective mutism so they become so anxious that they cannot speak. Sometimes their selective mutism is restricted to one particular setting, like a school or in front of a particular person, but it can be generalised too. Also, when I was struggling with the worst effects of my post-traumatic stress disorder after my rape in 2024, there were two occasions when I became so overwhelmed and anxious that I was mute for a few hours. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what is selective mutism, what causes it and how is selective mutism treated. Also, I’ll discuss the practical implications for aspiring and qualified clinical and educational psychologists too. If you enjoy learning about child mental health, psychotherapy and educational psychology, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by CBT For Anxiety: A Clinical Psychology Introduction to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Anxiety. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What is Selective Mutism? Selective mutism is a rare childhood anxiety disorder that causes a child to become unable to speak in certain situations and/ or to certain people when they’re exposed to a particular trigger. Also, selective mutism is not a form of shyness even though a person with the condition can appear very shy, and it’s flat out wrong to assume that selective mutism is a choice. It is not. The child just cannot speak. For me, the two times that I was rendered mute was really annoying, because I was struggling with my mental health and then because I was so overwhelmed and anxious, I just couldn’t speak. It’s really annoying as an adult, and I imagine it’s similar for children, because you really want to speak but you physically can’t. This means that you need to text, write down what you want to say and it’s just so annoying. Equally, drawing on my past experience as a special educational needs teaching assistant, there were students who couldn’t speak at school, but they could speak perfectly fine at home. The professionals at the school believed this was because the school environment was so anxiety-inducing for the child that it triggered their selective mutism, and their selective mutism extended to anyone connected with the school environment. I mention the above point because I supported another child who’s selective mutism was limited to only the physical place of the school. Since if the child went outside with teachers, other students or other individuals connected to the school, then they could talk fine to members of the public. Yet as soon as the child returned to a physical educational setting, their selective mutism would be triggered. A final note from my experience is that selective mutism can develop over time for children, because when I spoke to other staff members about children with selective mutism, they all remembered when the children had been able to speak at school. Yet over time as the children found school more overwhelming, they developed selective mutism. Moreover, selective mutism typically has an onset between 3 and 6 years old and most children who develop selective mutism will also go on to develop social phobia or social anxiety disorder. As well as children with the condition might appear cautious and timid in new situations, and they might experience separation anxiety when they’re away from a caregiver. Additionally, selective mutism is important for clinical psychologists to be aware of for two main reasons. Firstly, you might be working in a child and adolescent mental health service and a child with selective mutism comes into your therapy room. If this happens, then it’s important that you understand the symptoms, causes and treatment options so you can best support the client. And I would also add that typically when we think about selective mutism, we get it mixed up with mutism in general. This means that we can forget that just because a child can talk to us fine in a therapy session, their selective mutism gets triggered in other settings. This is why it’s important to bear in mind the truth about selective mutism and become more aware of the condition. On the other hand, selective mutism is important for educational psychologists to become aware of because a lot of their work is done in schools and other educational settings. Especially when it comes to students with special educational needs. As a result, if you go into a SEN school and support a student with selective mutism then you need to understand the condition, explore the treatment options that you and the school can provide the student with and most importantly, you’ll likely have to provide some kind of Continued Professional Development to the SEN staff so they understand what the child is experiencing. Since unfortunately, some staff members might believe that the student is just choosing not to speak, they’re attention-seeking or another myth. It’s the job of an educational psychologist to counteract this false belief. Also, an aspiring or qualified educational psychologist might go into a school for one reason, observe a class or overhear a conversation and end up learning or suspecting another child has selective mutism. You’re only going to be able to do this and fill in the needed documentation and make the referrals, if you have a deeper understanding of the condition. That’s why this podcast episode will be useful to educational and clinical psychologists. What Causes Selective Mutism? Children with selective mutism typically have anxiety disorders in their family history and the neurological basis for the condition is believed to be a sequence of events in the amygdala. This area of the brain is in charge of receiving danger signals from the child’s environment. Therefore, the anxiety that a situation causes a child is perceived to be dangerous so this causes a communication shutdown, and selective mutism often co-exists with other conditions like autism, developmental delays, sensory processing difficulties and obsessive-compulsive disorder. In addition, children with selective mutism, especially teenagers, can develop mood disorders, like depression and agoraphobia, so a person has a fear of leaving home. I’ll skip the practical implications for educational and clinical psychologists in this section because there’s a lot more content in the next section. What are the Symptoms of Selective Mutism? In terms of symptoms of selective mutism, children with the condition can show stiffness, awkward body language and a lack of facial expressions. Also, children who are comfortable in a situation might still be mute but they will have more relaxed physical characteristics, and as I mentioned earlier, a child with selective mutism might be able to speak in some situations or with some people but not others. For instance, it can be normal for children with the condition to be able to speak perfectly fine at school, with loved ones or with close friends, but not at school or in other social settings where there is a pressure to communicate with others. Also, some children with the condition can use nonverbal communication, like moving their hands or nodding their head, whilst other children can appear frozen. Some other signs of selective mutism can include a child appearing insecure, clingy, embarrassed, rude, stiff or they avoid eye-contact. In terms of relationships with close others, the child might be aggressive or angry, and in preparation for school or attending another event where there is the expectation of speaking, the child might experience headaches, stomach aches, diarrhoea or feel nauseous. Finally, for a child to be diagnosed with selective mutism, they need to have been mute for at least a month and this doesn’t include the child’s first month of school. Something I want to add here is that if you work with children with selective mutism then you can hear from parents about how disruptive, aggressive and loud they are when they get home, and I’ll connect this to another point in a moment. This could be because all day the child has been silent, unable to communicate and there probably has been a growing pressure inside them so when they get home and they feel safe enough to communicate then they might “explode” in a way and want to get everything out of themselves that they’ve been suppressing all day. This is another useful reminder about the importance of treatment and supporting children with selective mutism, because whilst it is great that they feel safe enough and their anxiety decreases once they’re home. It probably would be overwhelming, and maybe even a little distressing for their parents and siblings, to see their child being loud, aggressive and angry because they’ve been building up all their frustration all day at not being able to communicate. Therefore, this is another argument for the importance of professionals in educational settings, because by supporting students to lessen their anxiety in the school, it can have larger benefits for the family social system in addition to the school system. A final point I want to make at the end of this section is a reminder about how individual symptoms do not mean that a child has selective mutism. For example, if a child avoids eye contact, they remain expressionless and socially awkward. For me, those symptoms suggest autism and this is further confused because children can be mute because of autism, not because of selective mutism. This is why it’s important for clinical and educational psychologists to have a deeper understanding of selective mutism so they can further inform their assessments and ensure that the child can get the right support. How Is Selective Mutism Treated? If a child is diagnosed with selective mutism then it’s best for the child to receive behavioural or family therapy as soon as possible because the condition is unlikely to go away on its own. When I was a SEN teaching assistant, I occasionally worked with 15- and 16-year-old students with selective mutism and they had had the condition for 10 years. As well as treatment for selective mutism generally involves helping the child to develop skills to better manage their anxiety and “unlearn” their dependence on their mute behaviour as a coping mechanism. Another treatment option can include anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medication too, but long-time listeners of The Psychology World Podcast are probably well aware of my feelings on medication as supported by Read and Moncrief (2022). Furthermore, it’s important for children to receive treatment for their selective mutism because if they don’t, then there’s a very real risk that their selective mutism will follow them into adulthood. This means that their work, their school life, their relationships and other domains of functioning are likely to be impaired, and this harms other developmental milestones too. Nonetheless, I will caveat here and say that there is a problem with special educational need schools in the UK, and probably elsewhere. There is a lack of funding for professionals within SEN schools and because of this lack of funding, senior management doesn’t seem as interested in hiring professionals. A lot of SEN schools prefer to simply hire unqualified teaching assistants who cannot support students instead of professionals, because they’re cheaper and teaching assistants are disposable in my experience. This annoys me because there are a lot of brilliant children who need specialist support but because there’s a shortage of professionals, like educational psychologists, and there isn’t the money or drive from senior management to hire them, there are so many children just falling through the cracks. One senior manager once told me that their school will never be a mental health and special educational needs school. Something that continues to annoy me to this day because you cannot separate the two, as selective mutism clearly shows. Selective mutism can happen in children with special educational needs because of negative mental health caused by anxiety. If you do not treat the anxiety then you cannot support the child with special educational needs to the best of your abilities. Anyway, this argument is part of a larger debate that goes beyond the scope of this podcast episode, but this is why educational and clinical psychologists are so important. As well as in an ideal world, every single school would have an educational psychologist on-site. In terms of what schools and educational psychologists can do to support children with selective mutism, they can support a child by not pressuring them to speak because this can increase their anxiety and stress levels. Schools can allow time for speech therapy and counselling so the child can get the support that they need, and they can allow for smaller class sizes, because these tend to be less anxiety-inducing and overwhelming for children with selective mutism. In addition, schools can allow the child with the condition to sit near the teacher or a friend because this can help reduce their anxiety and concerns, also schools can allow hand gestures as well as nonverbal communication, and teachers need to be aware of bullying. In my experience, some of the things that I’ve done in the past to support children with selective mutism is sit them away from the louder members of the class that were causing them anxiety, so they could relax a little. And it’s also useful to remember the student's likes and dislikes so when you interact with them, you’re not adding to their anxiety. For example, with one particular student I used to support, they didn’t like anyone sitting next to them or near them so when I was supporting them with their work, I always remembered to sit on the other side of the table and even then, I wasn’t right up close to the table, I allowed there to be some space between me and the student. This helped the student to relax and I didn’t end up adding to their anxiety. As a result, if you’re a teaching assistant or aspiring educational psychologist working in education, then if you have a child with selective mutism in your class then it can be useful for you to consider how your own actions and those of other students and your peers can influence the anxiety of that particular student. Not only might this allow you to benefit the student with selective mutism, but you’ll be developing your reflective skills too. A skill set that is flat out critical if you want to become a qualified educational psychologist in the future. Finally, a side note on class sizes. When I was working in special educational needs, class sizes are naturally smaller with only about 15 students per class, so this can be helpful and less overwhelming. Yet depending on the other needs of the student, class size isn’t as important because again, I’ve worked with other students with special educational needs who can thrive in a class of around 30 students and conversations with other professionals informed me that the root cause of this student’s anxiety wasn’t the classroom size or other students. It was the school environment itself. Therefore, this is a useful reminder that we can know the general facts and ways to support a student with a particular condition, like selective mutism, but our work must always be individualised and it’s important to get to know a student or client. This allows us to get to know their unique triggers, fears, anxieties and hopes for the future. As much as our workload might make us want to generalise in our clinical work, it’s important that we always put the client first and foremost, like the vast majority of professionals do. Clinical Psychology Conclusion This was another episode that was a lot of fun for me to research, write about and reflect on, because I’ve had two periods of selective mutism in my life. It is so frustrating, annoying and looking back they were funny in a sad kind of way. And a minor side note, people with selective mutism who speak more than one language can actually still speak the other language at times in an environment where they’re typically a selective mute. For example, if a child can speak English and French, if they’re selectively mute at school, then they might still be able to communicate in French but not English. I mentioned this because when I had my selective mute experiences, I could still talk in French but not English. Anyway, after working in SEN education and learning more about my own trauma, it was a lot of fun to investigate selective mutism more and consider how aspiring and qualified clinical and educational psychologists can support individuals with the condition. As a brief reminder, selective mutism is a rare childhood anxiety disorder that causes a child to become unable to speak in certain situations and/ or to certain people when they’re exposed to a particular trigger. Also, selective mutism is not a form of shyness even though a person with the condition can appear very shy, and it’s flat out wrong to assume that selective mutism is a choice. It is not. The child just cannot speak. Nonetheless, as we’ve seen in today’s episode, with the right support and treatment, a child can overcome their selective mutism to develop more adaptive coping mechanisms, reduce their anxiety and most importantly, thrive. I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET CBT For Anxiety: A Clinical Psychology Introduction to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Anxiety. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Driessen, J., Blom, J. D., Muris, P., Blashfield, R. K., & Molendijk, M. L. (2020). Anxiety in children with selective mutism: a meta-analysis. Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 51(2), 330-341. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/selective-mutism Iimura, D., Tsujita, N., Aoki, M., & Hagihara, H. (2025). Meta-analysis of behavioral treatments for selective mutism: findings from selective mutism questionnaire (SMQ) and school speech questionnaire (SSQ). Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 19(1), 40. Koskela, M., Ståhlberg, T., Yunus, W. M. A. W. M., & Sourander, A. (2023). Long-term outcomes of selective mutism: a systematic literature review. BMC psychiatry, 23(1), 779. Muris, P., & Ollendick, T. H. (2021). Current challenges in the diagnosis and management of selective mutism in children. Psychology research and behavior management, 159-167. Poole, K. L., Cunningham, C. E., McHolm, A. E., & Schmidt, L. A. (2021). Distinguishing selective mutism and social anxiety in children: a multi-method study. European child & adolescent psychiatry, 30(7), 1059-1069. Steains, S. Y., Malouff, J. M., & Schutte, N. S. (2021). Efficacy of psychological interventions for selective mutism in children: A meta‐analysis of randomized controlled trials. Child: care, health and development, 47(6), 771-781. White, J., & Bond, C. (2022). The role that schools hold in supporting young people with selective mutism: a systematic literature review. Journal of research in special educational needs, 22(3), 232-242. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

In a previous podcast episode, What is the Menopause for Psychologists, we learnt about the menopause, how it impacts people and how educational and clinical psychologists can use this knowledge to improve lives. In this clinical psychology podcast episode, I want to go one step further and really drill down into how the menopause can impact a person’s mental health. By the end of this psychology podcast episode, you’ll understand how the menopause harms mental health, what is brain fog and other signs of the menopause and we’ll touch on how to support someone going through the menopause. If you enjoy learning about mental health across the lifespan, biological psychology and applied psychology, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Biological Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What is the Menopause? To ensure that we’re all on the same page, I want to remind us what the menopause is before we explore how this natural biological process can impact people’s mental health. As a result, the menopause is the time when periods stop and people can no longer naturally get pregnant, and this leads to a wide range of positive and negative impacts on our mind and body. Also, it’s important to talk about the menopause because whilst there are some symptoms that are very well-known, like a hot flush, there are other symptoms that aren’t as well-known. In addition, menopause can impact a person for years before their periods fully end. As well as some people might not notice the effects of the menopause whereas other people can find them really difficult to handle and this can lead to negative mental health outcomes. This is why it’s important to be aware of the menopause, know the symptoms and understand that experiencing the menopause will get better over time with the right support as well as treatment. Furthermore, in terms of who experiences the menopause, it commonly impacts females in their 40s and 50s. As well as it is possible to have early onset menopause, which is when your periods stop before the age of 45, or late onset menopause. This is when your periods stop after the age of 55. On a final introductory note, I want to mention that the reason why I’m trying to be gender-inclusive when it comes to the menopause is because trans and non-binary people can also go through the menopause depending on their age, the biological sex they were assigned at birth, any hormone treatments that they’ve taken in the past or currently taking as well as if they’ve had any gender-affirming surgeries or treatments. This is important to note because experiencing the menopause can be even more distressing for transgender and non-binary people because it might increase feelings of gender dysphoria and the associated negative mental health impacts. As well as treatment and support for the menopause when you’re transgender can be even more difficult because the services might not meet your needs or they aren’t inclusive. What are the Physical Effects of Menopause? Briefly before we explore menopause and mental health for the rest of the episode, I want to take a moment to introduce the physical effects of menopause. These effects can be different for everyone but they can include night sweats, hot flushes, changes to their periods, dry skin or eyes, increased sensitivity to stimuli, vaginal dryness, pain, discomfort and itching. This dryness can be made worse with sex. Furthermore, the physical effects of menopause can include joint pain, feeling more clumsy than usual, feeling dizzy and vertigo, headaches, hearing buzzing or ringing in the ears, numbness or tingling in feet, arms, hands or legs, hair loss or hair growth and changes in body shape. These physical symptoms can impact a person’s mental health so it’s important that we acknowledge the impact of physical health on our mental health. For instance, a person might be stressed or tired from coping with the physical discomfort and pain of menopause. Equally, a person might feel self-conscious or like they need to avoid certain situations or places because they don’t want others to see the physical symptoms of menopause. How does the Menopause Impact Mental Health? It should go without saying but everyone’s experience of mental health during menopause will be individualised and differ in terms of symptoms and severity. This is useful to point out because someone might be struggling with minor brain fog during the menopause but if they’re able to function across a range of domains of life, like work, relationships and their home life, then they might not need to see a mental health professional. Yet if someone is struggling with their mental health and it’s negatively impacting their life so they can’t function, then it might be a very good idea to seek out professional support. As a result, in the rest of this episode, we’ll learn about symptoms like low mood, anxiety, anger, brain fog amongst other symptoms of mental health difficulties during the menopause. Then we’ll investigate how the menopause can impact existing mental health conditions and more. How Can Menopause Impact Self-Critical Thoughts? The menopause can have a massive impact on a person’s self-esteem for a range of reasons. For example, they’re experiencing all these changes, their quality of life is decreasing because of hot flushes and all the other physical and mental health symptoms and their connection to their womanhood is changing. For some people, the ability to have a period is very important to their identity as a woman, so the inability to have a period and being infertile can be very distressing. As a result of this large impact on self-esteem, people going through the menopause might experience thoughts like they’re less confident and capable than they used to be, they can’t trust themselves or their own judgement, and they don’t have any value or they’re worthless anymore. Another set of negative thoughts about themselves can include that the menopause makes them less attractive, relevant or important than they used to be. A person might be self-conscious about the effects that the menopause is having on their personality, mind and body. As well as they might feel like they’re lonely, isolated or no one cares about them. A final set of negative thoughts include grief over your old self, feeling like the best parts of your life are over, as well as feeling anxious or sad that they’re getting old. If you’re going through the menopause, these feelings can be overwhelming and hard to cope with, so it’s important that mental health support is provided to help people deal with these self-critical thoughts. Since over time and with the right support, these feelings can be reduced or gotten rid of entirely. On the whole, the menopause can harm mental health because it can lead to people feeling bad about themselves. They might believe that they cannot trust their own judgement, they’re less confident or capable than before and they’re grieving for their old self amongst other negative thoughts. If you apply this to clinical psychology, then I want to mention here that at first, especially if you’re a male clinical psychologist, you might believe that you need to rework your entire way of working just because the root of the client’s mental health difficulties is the menopause, but I don’t believe that’s entirely true. Of course, you will need to individualise your psychological treatment to the client’s needs like always. Yet even though the client is going through the menopause, you still need to help the client grow a more resilient and stable sense of self and help them come to terms with their new reality, similar to how you would with any other client going through a major life event. And having knowledge about the menopause, what it is, how it works and how it impacts mental health can be a great way to support a client and have some understanding of what they’re going through. How Does Menopause Impact Feelings of Numbness or Emptiness? Another way how menopause impacts a person is by making them feel like they’re losing themselves, or a person undergoing menopause doesn’t feel things or emotions as strongly as they used to. This means that a person might not enjoy things that they used to, they might believe that their mind or personality is broken or lost, or they’re emotionless or indifferent about things they used to care about. Equally, the person undergoing to the menopause might be dissatisfied with their life without knowing why, they might believe everything is pointless and they might be unable to socialise or enjoy seeing other people. A final set is people might not have the same sexual interest or desire as they did before the menopause and they might feel like they don’t have the same levels of affection, empathy and warmth for others as before the menopause, even for the people they love. This is important for us to focus on for a moment from an identity perspective, because your identity was centred around being active and always doing a lot of things. Then during the menopause, you find that you don’t enjoy activities or doing things as much as you used to, this is likely to be very jerking and it will harm your mental health. You would have lost a massive part of who you are and this might make you feel very numb and empty as a person, and this is only because you’re going through the menopause. As a person, this will likely be distressing because you might panic about if you’ll ever enjoy those activities again, if you’ll ever be able to be busy again and enjoy it, and most importantly, you’ll likely panic about who you are if you aren’t busy and doing activities. This is why some identity work might be useful from a psychological perspective. However, if we explicitly apply this for aspiring and qualified clinical psychologists, then using our toolkit of psychological techniques, like behavioural activation, we need to give clients hope for a better future and we need to guide them towards getting back into the activities they love. Or we need to help give them the tools to find new passions, new interests and create a new identity for themselves so they can fill the gaps that were lost during the menopause. How Does Menopause Impact Anger? One cultural narrative that I always dislike aimed at women is the idea of women being horrible, angry people during periods and that their biology makes them foul to be around. That isn’t true and it is a harmful narrative to push about women. Anyway, a third way how menopause can impact people is that people undergoing menopause might be more frustrated, irritable and angry compared to usual, or that things that didn’t used to bother them, now do. As well as their anger might be difficult to control or predict, they might feel scared or guilty or confused about feeling angry. Even more so if this is out of character for the person. This is even more likely to happen if their experience of the menopause isn’t being listened to or taken seriously. Something that is unfortunately, and rather disgustingly, all too common. Nonetheless, it’s important to realise that anger is a normal and healthy response that can actually help us in certain situations. Therefore, whilst anger can be difficult to cope with, it’s important that aspiring and qualified psychologists work with clients to understand the root of their anger, understand that it’s a healthy and normal reaction to express and how they can deal with their anger in a more adaptive way if needed. This would benefit clients because it would reduce their guilt and self-critical thoughts about their actions that would harm their mental health. What is Brain Fog During Menopause? Brain fog is a very common symptom of menopause because it can negatively impact a person’s thought processes, memory as well as concentration. This means that a person with brain fog might lose things more often, forget what you’re talking about in the middle of saying it, being easily distracted or forget things like numbers, appointments or names. In addition, someone with brain fog might not be able to think as clearly or quickly as before, they might struggle to find the right words or explain themselves and they might go to places or rooms and then forget why they went there in the first place. As well as they might struggle with motivation or switching between tasks. Now this is important to bear in mind because generally speaking, the menopause starts between the ages of 45 and 55. This is still within a person’s working life. Therefore, it doesn’t really matter what sort of job you do, whether you’re an office worker, a teacher, a psychologist or personal assistant. You still need to be able to concentrate, remember information and explain yourself clearly and professionally. Brain fog can rob you of these abilities and for me, that is terrifying. As a result, it’s little wonder that brain fog can be very difficult to cope with because a lot of people feel angry and frustrated about not being able to think how they used to. As well as people might be worried that they have a neurological condition or dementia so this can make people feel even worse about themselves, and it can make them anxious or self-conscious around others at work. If we apply this knowledge to educational and clinical psychology, then brain fog is important to know about because within the mental health and educational services we work in, we might have a peer going through the menopause. This means they might experience brain fog, they might forget things, make mistakes and their work performance might decrease. Understandably whilst this might "harm" the service because it means productivity might decrease, clients and cases might be delayed and other issues might arise. We shouldn't be angry at the woman because this isn't her fault. Instead, we need to bring some of the compassion, empathy and non-judgemental attitude from the therapy room into our working environment. We need to be kind to the person experiencing brain fog, we need to support them and we need to challenge people who are being unfair. Of course, these errors are likely to be frustrating because it creates more work for everyone else. Yet the menopause doesn't last forever, but if you shout, berate or belittle the person with brain fog, then the harm that you do to your working relationship can last forever. And I know from personal experience, and if we draw on Ecological Systems theory, if there's a disruption or degrading of relationships between peers, then this can create a ripple effect that negatively impacts other areas and people. For example, if there's a breakdown in the relationship between senior management and teachers or a psychologist because they're experiencing the menopause and brain fog, with senior management failing to understand how it impacts a person. Then the working environment is likely to be more stressful for the teacher or psychologist, so they might have to put more effort into covering themselves and preventing themselves from getting into trouble with senior management. Instead of them focusing as much on their students or their clients, and their therapeutic work or teaching quality might suffer as a result. This is why it's important to be understanding, supportive and compassionate to peers going through menopause and experiencing really awful symptoms like brain fog. How Does Menopause Impact Sleep? As I spoke about in a previous podcast episode “How Does a Consistent Sleep Schedule Improve Mental Health?”, sleep is a very important factor in maintaining our mental health. If your sleep gets disturbed or if you experience too much sleep deprivation then this can negatively impact your mental health and make symptoms even worse. Therefore, sleep problems are very common during menopause and people might find that they struggle to get to sleep or that they wake up a lot. This can happen because of night sweats as well as hot flushes, or the anxiety and low mood associated with menopause can also disrupt sleep. As a result, it’s important that you try to develop a consistent sleep problem, you learn about good sleep hygiene and if the reason for sleep problems is related to anxiety or panic, then it can be useful to talk to a mental health professional. Since after these anxious symptoms are dealt with, a person’s sleep quality should improve. Personally, if we apply this knowledge to clinical psychology, then I like to compare a consistent sleep schedule as a type of mental health first aid. Since during the worst of my Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and my anorexia, my inability to sleep and my weird sleep schedule really did harm my mental health. It was only when I forced myself into a more consistent sleep schedule that I was able to improve my sleep, my mental health and it decreased the worst of my symptoms. Therefore, for aspiring and qualified clinical psychologists, it can be really important to address sleep early on in therapy, because if a client is coming to therapy dysregulated, tired and unable to focus then they aren’t going to be in the right headspace to engage with therapy as much as if they were fully rested and were sleeping well. Of course, some of their sleeping difficulties will be tied to their mental health, but sometimes it might not be. For example, in menopause, the sleep problems tend to be down to the physical symptoms and they can make mental health symptoms worse. It stands to reason that if you target the sleep problems then you might be able to prevent the mental health symptoms from getting worse. Just some thoughts. How Does Menopause Impact Anxious Feelings? Another common feeling during the menopause is anxiety, and this can make people worry a lot about themselves, others and the world or their future, people might be scared for no clear reason as well as they might be scared or unable to do things that they used to do. For example, their anxiety might stop them from driving, going to work or doing social activities with friends and loved ones. Equally, anxiety might make someone going through the menopause to become paranoid, experience overwhelm, make them think a lot about bad memories or regrets. As well as they might experience heart palpitations or tightness in their chests, they might have tension or a lump in their throat and they might experience phobias. Whether these are new or menopause might make pre-existing phobias more severe. A final set of reasons how menopause can impact anxiety is it can make people experience panic attacks, especially at night or at the same time as a hot flush, people might be bothered by things that they never used to worry about, and they might experience intrusive thoughts. These are distressing thoughts, urges or feelings that keep popping into someone’s mind and they don’t go away. This is another important reminder about why it’s important to learn about menopause and mental health, because whenever you typically think about menopause, we always think about the hot flushes and not anxiety. As well as if we apply this information to clinical psychology, then at first, we might want to just treat this as we do with any other form of anxiety. We would offer the client individualised treatment, do some behavioural experiments and other cognitive interventions. Yet when it comes to anxiety that is rooted in a client’s menopause then we do need to adapt our approach because there is a critical factor that separates more “traditional” anxiety and menopause anxiety. The menopause, the changes and the things that the people is typically anxious about is actually happening to the client. This is different from more “traditional” anxiety because if you’re supporting someone with social anxiety, then the client will typically have anxious feelings about “what if” a person judges me and everyone will stare at me if I go to that party or social event. These are all anxious feelings that aren’t based in reality. They are concerns and fears about things that haven’t happened. Anxiety that’s linked to the menopause is similar, but if a client is anxious about their work performance decreasing because of their feelings of overwhelm, their brain fog and the other cognitive difficulties associated with menopause, and they’ve already received a written warning because of their work decreasing. Then that is a little different. As well as our client can see the biological changes happening to them in real time and they’re experiencing them every day. Therefore, whilst cognitive behavioural interventions can be effective for all forms of anxiety, I strongly believe when it comes to supporting someone with anxiety undergoing the menopause, we do need to take a step back, reflect on how the menopause is impacting our client and actually have an open and honest conversation about menopause. Try to understand the menopause for the client, especially if you’re male, because this will help the client feel listened to, supported and valued. This can have an immensely beneficial impact on the therapeutic alliance. How Does Menopause Impact Depressive Feelings and Suicidal Thoughts? The menopause can have an immense impact on a person’s mood because it can make them feel like they can’t cope with daily life, like life is slow or empty and like there’s a heavy weight or burden on their mind or body. As well as they might feel sad or unhappy more often than usual, they despair or have a feeling of dread about the world or future, they’re emotional or tearful a lot of the time and they’re hopeless about the future. Also, they can’t do the things they normally do and the techniques the client used to use to improve their mood no longer work. In addition, it’s unfortunately common to have suicidal thoughts during menopause, and when this happens, these thoughts about ending their life can be very scary, overwhelming and confusing. Equally, a client might be feeling numb or empty whilst they think about taking their own life. Moreover, a client undergoing menopause might feel very suicidal but then their mood changes quite quickly and they feel okay again. Whilst this is good in terms of it means the client no longer feels suicidal, these thoughts and feelings can be hard to understand and control, or a client might experience these thoughts all the time. It’s important to remind a person going through the menopause that they aren’t alone and things can get better with support, treatment and over time. The same goes when it comes to suicidal thoughts. Personally, whilst I’ll never go through the menopause, I do have a history with suicide so I want to take a few moments to stress that I know what it’s like. I know what it’s like to be in so much emotional pain and suffering that you just want a release, you just want all the hurt and pain to disappear and you want to be at peace. I know what it’s like to feel so numb that you just want to feel something, even the pain of death, and I understand how appealing suicide is because it really can seem like the only way out of the endless suffering that life can become. Yet I promise you that it isn’t endless. I tried to end my own life three times in late 2024, and I’m so glad that I wasn’t successful. Since my mental health and my life has improved so much and I’m so grateful for it. Your life can and will get better too with the right support, treatment and over time. If I had died two years ago then I wouldn’t get to interact with my amazing podcast listeners and readers, I won’t get to learn more about psychology or politics and I wouldn’t have gotten to meet all my friends and more. And most importantly, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy all my boys’ love anime that I’m devouring at the moment. Your life can get better, because I am living proof of it. So please, seek professional mental health support, look after yourself and please do not end your life. You are so much more important and loved and valued than you realise. Ultimately, if we apply this knowledge to clinical psychology then whilst suicide risk is always a part of our therapeutic work and we always ask about it. I think it’s important that we acknowledge that suicidal thoughts and feelings are a natural part of menopause and we need to manage the risk throughout therapy. As well as even within educational psychology, I think it’s important that we ask a member of staff experiencing mental health difficulties, whether it’s related to the menopause or not, if they’re experiencing any suicidal thoughts. Since if you ask them then you are not planting the thought in their head, you’re creating an opportunity for them to speak to you openly and you might be able to refer them or help them get support. This relates to educational psychology because helping a staff member get mental health support will have a great benefit for the children and their education compared to the immensely devastating effect that a suicide will have on the school community. How Does Menopause Impact Existing Mental Health Difficulties? So far in this episode, we’ve focused on mental health difficulties that developed during or after menopause, but what happens during menopause if you already have mental health conditions or difficulties? If a person already has a mental health difficulty before menopause then they can find that menopause impacts the condition. During menopause, the person might find it more difficult to manage their mental health, the things that used to help manage the condition don’t work as well as they used to and the client needs to make changes to their self-care or treatment during menopause. As well as the symptoms of their mental health condition might get worse or they notice new symptoms. On the other hand, some people have reported that during menopause, they don’t find that their mental health condition gets worse, some people argue that the difficulty becomes easier to manage and their mental health doesn’t change too much during menopause. As always, if you’re struggling with your mental health, then please talk to a mental health professional. Building upon this, if we outright apply this section to clinical psychology then this is why I wanted to do this podcast episode. Since the impact of menopause isn’t spoken about and if we have a client who didn’t have menopause at the start of treatment, but let’s say, halfway through they start the menopause and their mental health symptoms change. Then as aspiring or qualified clinical psychologists, we will need to adapt to this knowledge and biological process. As well as we cannot adapt our therapeutic work in light of menopause if we don’t know about it, and that is why podcast episodes like this one are so important. In addition, another thought that just popped into my head is the ending work seen in cognitive behavioural therapy. At the end of CBT, we’re focusing on consolidating and making sure that the client has all the tools and techniques they need in the future to deal with their mental health. If the client is going to experience the menopause, then maybe we should have a brief conversation about it with them, so they know that their mental health changing is okay, normal and it’s a part of the process. And most importantly, they won’t be alone in their struggles. Also, we could give them some links to online resources to help them manage their symptoms when the time comes. Therapy is all about making sure that our clients can deal with whatever the world throws at them, and that includes menopause. How Do You Know Whether Menopause is Causing Your Mental Health Difficulties? Like I always say, your mental health will never have a single cause because mental health never happens in isolation. Neither does menopause, because whilst experiencing menopause, it’s like that people will be coping with other things and challenges too. They might be dealing with relationships, caring responsibilities, children or money worries. Also, the person might have experienced discrimination, trauma, abuse or bereavement and this all interacts with the menopause to further harm a person’s mental health. As a result, it can be really difficult to understand if menopause is the cause, and this is why it’s important to realise that whilst our mental health is often impacted by a mixture of things. If a person gets treatment as well as support for menopause symptoms then they might help a person to feel better able to cope with everything, even if menopause treatment doesn’t help with everything in their life. So please, if you’re going through the menopause and struggling with your mental health, seek professional support. Clinical Psychology Conclusion I always enjoy psychology podcast episodes that focus on topics no one really talks about, because topics like the menopause are so natural, normal and every female goes through it. Yet because of the systemic inequality and the patriarchal world we live in, women and others are typically shamed or silenced into thinking that they’re weird, “crazy” or weak for experiencing these difficulties and “allowing” the menopause to impact their mental health. I really hope that this episode has highlighted how the menopause can negatively impact a person’s mental health, and I’ve given aspiring or qualified psychologists a lot of food for thought about how to use this knowledge to impact lives. Therefore, as a small recap, here are the main ways how menopause can impact mental health: · Feeling anxious · Feeling depressed · Brain · Feeling empty or numb · Anger · Feeling self-critical · Sleep problems · Suicidal feelings. And we also spoke about how menopause can impact existing mental health difficulties too I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Biological Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Brown, L., Hunter, M. S., Chen, R., Crandall, C. J., Gordon, J. L., Mishra, G. D., ... & Hickey, M. (2024). Promoting good mental health over the menopause transition. The Lancet, 403(10430), 969-983. Dotlic, J., Radovanovic, S., Rancic, B., Milosevic, B., Nicevic, S., Kurtagic, I., ... & Gazibara, T. (2021). Mental health aspect of quality of life in the menopausal transition. Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics & Gynecology, 42(1), 40-49. Garg, R., & Munshi, A. (2025). Menopause and mental health. Journal of Mid-life Health, 16(2), 119-123. Hooper, S. C., Marshall, V. B., Becker, C. B., LaCroix, A. Z., Keel, P. K., & Kilpela, L. S. (2022). Mental health and quality of life in postmenopausal women as a function of retrospective menopause symptom severity. Menopause, 29(6), 707-713. https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/tips-for-everyday-living/menopause-and-mental-health/how-can-menopause-affect-mental-health O'Reilly, K., McDermid, F., McInnes, S., & Peters, K. (2024). “I was just a shell”: Mental health concerns for women in perimenopause and menopause. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 33(3), 693-702. Thurston, R. C., Thomas, H. N., Castle, A. J., & Gibson, C. J. (2025). Menopause as a biological and psychological transition. Nature Reviews Psychology, 4(8), 530-543. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! 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Traditionally, whenever we think about grief, we tend to limit it to the loss of a loved one, a social or romantic relationship that we valued but it is now lost and we grieve when we go through traumatic events. Yet a lot of people traditionally don’t acknowledge that LGBT+ individuals grieve for the childhood, adolescence and life that was stolen from them because of the homophobic environment where they grew up, and how they needed to hide themselves for their own safety. This is what I talk about in my podcast episode that talks about the second adolescence that LGBT+ individuals experience after coming out and when they have more control over their lives. Therefore, in this social psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn why is grief part of queer healing, what is queer healing and how we can support and nurture queer people during their healing process. If you enjoy learning about trauma, discrimination and mental health then this will be a brilliant episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Social Psychology: A Guide To Social and Cultural Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Why Is Grief Part of Queer Healing? As I mentioned in the introduction, we tend to limit our understanding of grief to the loss of a loved one but in reality, we can experience grief over a lot of different experiences. Like the loss of friendship, rejection from a potential date, loss of a job and so on. Grief is a very painful experience that starts off as a pain response to the loss of something that we seriously value and the pain of longing for something that we simply cannot have. Then as we heal, we start to move on and experience less pain because of the loss, even if it is something that will always be with us. This connects to LGBT+ individuals because a lot of us adults seriously wish that things had been different for us growing up. I’ve talked about before on the podcast and in my books that I had an awful childhood from an LGBT+ perspective. I lived in an intensely homophobic environment, I was in fear of my life every second or every day and I was constantly being told that “we needed to beat the gay out of people with a big stick”. My mental health was awful, I was self-harming and I was just struggling to survive because of the sheer intensity of the homophobia and how I truly believed if my social environment found out I was gay. I would be killed. This isn’t an uncommon experience for a lot of LGBT+ adults. The majority of LGBT+ adults developed a lot of internalised shame during their childhood and adolescence because they felt different from other people, and the world told them this was wrong. This led LGBT+ people to hide themselves, deny who they were and intentionally or unconsciously try to change who they were because of their difficult adolescence. This is something I actually never thought I would ever admit in public or at all. No one knows this about me. Yet because I was so convinced I was going to die if my environment found out I was gay, I tried to “make myself straight” about three times as a teenager. I remember one of the times I tried to “go straight” by enjoying Hermine Granger and Draco Malfoy fanfiction, because I was really attracted to Tom Felton as a teenager. Of course, it didn’t work at all and it was awful and I never recommend that on anyone, but I wanted to try it just to survive and make sure I didn’t get killed. Ultimately, this leads a lot of LGBT+ people to miss out on meaningful, lovely experiences that our cisgender, straight peers take for granted and always have access to. For example, the majority of my straight friends had their first relationship at 13 years old, they had sex at 16 years old (that’s the age of consent in the UK) and so on. I had my first relationship at 23 years old and I lost my virginity at 24. This leads us onto the second adolescence that a lot of LGBT+ adults experience and I’ve already done a podcast episode on it so I won’t rehash it here. I will give a definition though from that episode. We can define the second adolescence as “the framework for healing and having the freedom to explore what being gay is to that person and they can understand what happened to them and how they can move on in adulthood.” Actually, since I wrote the original podcast episode where I introduced and discussed our second adolescence, I have lived a little more and I have to admit that your second adolescence is amazing, positive and I will always wish I had these experiences in my “actual” adolescence. But they were just as sweet, heartwarming and lovely now at the age of 24. Getting into a relationship for the first time, holding my ex-partner’s hand and kissing them for the first time was so lovely, so wonderful and it was everything I had ever wanted. Not only because of how beautiful my ex was, but also because I could be gay, I could be authentic and I could just experience gay stuff for the first time in my life. It was great to be able to live authentically for a change. Nonetheless, one topic I didn’t mention or stress too much in that original post was the grief portion of the second adolescence. Since the second adolescence is all about healing and giving ourselves the freedom to move and heal beyond the trauma that our younger selves endured growing up in an anti-LGBT+ world and what we wish we could have done for our younger selves. Grieving for what we’ve lost, what other people took from us and for what other people did to us, that is all core to the second adolescence. For example, to be able to heal and actually have a second adolescence, we need to grieve for the opportunities that we never had in our childhood and adolescence, and we need to grieve for the awful wounds that were inflicted upon us instead. I had to grieve for that I was never able or allowed to explore dating or sex in romantic relationships, I grieved how I was never able to ask anyone to Prom and I had to go to Prom with a straight female friend of mine and that was just awful. I hated that so much. I grieved for not being able to add to relationship and dating conversations with my friends, I grieved for never having a “meet the parents” situation and so on. Instead I was abused, had awful mental health and I suffered from chronic shame and fear and it’s foul. And as much as none of us really want to grieve because grief is painful and a lot of us are brilliant at pushing our emotions to one side just so we can survive. If we don’t allow ourselves to grieve then you will never be able to heal and if you leave your trauma unprocessed, then it can become toxic and really harm your mental health. This is why it’s critical that we grieve with and for the younger versions of ourselves. How Do We Grieve For and With Our Younger Selves? After my breakdown in August 2023, I went to private counselling and she recommended that I do this idea of grieving for my younger self, and this is a weird idea to me. I have never heard of this in a clinical psychology lecture, this doesn’t sound empirical and this sounds a little woo-woo. To me, this was a good reminder that psychotherapy is a mixture of science and an art form because grieving for our young selves might make us feel embarrassed or odd but this can be a really powerful tool for processing a form of grief. Reaching out to trained mental health professional is very important too. I’ll talk more about my own experience of grieving for my younger self later on in this episode. The first technique that people can use to grieve for their younger selves is to visualise an image of your younger self. You can bring to mind a particular version that you feel pulled too and it’s important that you really let yourself imagine them. Focus on what they’re wearing, how do they like to spend their time, what are they interested in, what kind of pain are they carrying and so on. After you’ve really imagined what they look and act like, sit with this image and notice what you feel as you see this younger version of yourself and hold onto this image of your younger self as if you are a living being. Personally, when I was grieving for my younger self, I always imagined a terrified 16-year-old child who was crawled up on their bed in a dark room with the curtains closed so no one could see them, hurt them and beat them. They were terrified, alone and convinced they were going to die at any moment. Seeing that younger version of myself used to make me feel sad, terrible and I wanted nothing more than to hug them and talk to them. That’s actually the next tip. The second way how people can grieve for the younger version of themselves is to communicate with the younger self about the experience of growing up in an anti-LGBT+ world. I always did this as a letter so you can do this, or you can imagine they’re sitting in a chair opposite you and you can talk aloud to the younger self. Like the previous activity, make sure you’re holding an image of the younger self in your mind and really let yourself see them and feel their presence. Afterwards, just start sharing with them what you know about their life. Tell them that you understand how scared or terrified or another emotion that they’re feeling, let them know you understand how scary the world seems and acknowledge all their hopes, desires, fears and pain. Give yourself the validation that you were denied as a child. The next step is to offer support and companionship that your younger self likely never received as a kid, so tell them that it isn’t okay that the world and people around them are making them feel this way. As well as mention how valuable and worthy the younger self is and counter some of the evil criticisms and sources of shame that they’re dealing with. In addition, let your younger self know that you’re grieving too about how you wish you could have kissed X that night, you could have asked out Y and you could have held your best friend’s hand when they were scared but you were too scared about being seen as “gay” and so on. Allow yourself to share a lot with your younger self and be empathetic for everything that you were denied for no fault of your own. Finally, for this technique, allow yourself to feel as you have this conversation with your younger self. Notice how you feel for them and what you’re feeling for them and let yourself imagine what it might be like for your younger self to hear what you’re saying to them. Then don’t forget the importance of endings and your parting words, thank your younger self for talking with you today, tell them how you’re trying to heal and live a life now that they could only dream of. Just tell your younger self what you think is important before you say goodbye for now. Personally, this was a very valuable exercise for me that I did twice and it really helped me to incorporate that abandoned, terrified, traumatised part of my self back into myself so I could become whole again. I really recommend that you do this exercise. A final technique how you can grieve for and with your younger self is to reflect on what it was like for you growing up in an anti-LGBT- world. You can do this through journaling or talking out loud. You can explore questions like the following: · What do you wish you didn’t have to endure? · What was life for your younger self like as an LGBT+ person? · How did your younger self feel about themselves? · Was your younger self aware of your LGBT+ identity or feeling that they were different? · And so on. Social Psychology Conclusion Healing as an LGBT+ person takes a lot of effort, energy and time. There were moments on my queer healing journey where I thought I would never heal, I would always be traumatised, terrified and alone in the world. Yet it does get better because I put in the effort, I sort out the right counsellor and I really did move heaven and earth to help myself move on. As well as I met some wonderful people along the way that helped me more than they will ever know. And yes, my child trauma because of the intense homophobia destroyed those relationships, but those relationships impacted and helped me more than those people will ever know and I love them for it. Even if they will probably avoid me like the plague if we ever meet again. Healing is possible. As a result, whether you go through the three techniques and exercises that I spoke about above or you do something similar, it’s important to find ways to be with, express and move through your queer grief. Since if you don’t go through your grief, you will never be able to heal from the impact of the anti-LGBT+ world we grew up in and are still currently living in. As much as we all wish it wasn’t, healing is a gradual, slow process of unpacking what happened to us. It’s important that we start slow and small and we do it for your younger selves. Let’s give our younger selves the love, justice and compassion that we were denied. I really hope you enjoyed today’s social psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Social Psychology: A Guide To Social and Cultural Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Alexander, Q. D., & Carruthers, C. A. (2022). “How We Are with Each Other”: Conversations on Queer Healing and Black Liberation. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 9(3), 209-215. Arani, A., & Winget, A. R. (2022). Introduction to “Queer healing and transformative justice”: A special issue of QED. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 9(3), 1-9. Awadalla, A. (2022). The Magic of the Margins: Rethinking Healing from the Perspective of Queer Exile. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 9(3), 194-200. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/second-adolescence/202306/the-grief-in-queer-healing Singh, A. A., Finan, R., & Estevez, R. (2023). Queer and trans resilience: Moving from affirmation to liberation in our collective healing. In Identity as resilience in minoritized communities: Strengths-based approaches to research and practice (pp. 1-22). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

This week at the time of writing marked the second school-based job interview that I’ve been in that required me to demonstrate my knowledge of restorative action plans and my awareness of a restorative culture within a school setting. It turned out my knowledge was already pretty good, but I wasn’t sure what a restorative culture was, I had no idea how to concisely phrase it in an interview and I wasn’t able to mention the full extent of my knowledge. A lot of other aspiring psychologists and qualified educational psychologists are not aware of what a restorative culture is within a school, much less how to cultivate a restorative culture. Therefore, in this educational psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what is a restorative culture in schools, how to develop one and I’ll focus on how to phrase this knowledge in a potential interview. If you enjoy learning about educational psychology, improving classroom behaviour and psychology job interviews, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Gamification of Autism: A Guide to Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy and Mental Health. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What is a Restorative Culture in Schools? Restorative approaches offer schools a flexible and innovative alternative to the punitive systems and sanctions that are typically used in schools, like detentions, exclusions and isolations, to manage behaviour in schools. These approaches aren’t a soft solution but they’re an additional tool that schools can use to create positive outcomes from negative behaviour and actively reinforce the view that inappropriate behaviour isn’t acceptable and it needs to be addressed. In addition, restorative approaches were first used by the native cultures of New Zealand because communities would come together to discuss wrongdoings and agree reparation. Then these approaches grew to become used in the criminal justice systems of Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. These restorative approaches have been found to significantly reduce reoffending and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of crimes. Afterwards, restorative approaches started to be used in schools in New Zealand and Australia in the 1990s and in the UK, Lewisham Borough Council subsequently piloted the use of restorative approaches in schools with great success. These approaches quickly spread to a range of other schools. In addition, restorative approaches are used in schools to help deal with bullying, truancy, classroom disruptions, friendship disputes, anti-social behaviour, relationship breakdown between staff and pupil as well as building a stronger sense of community and belonging. Furthermore, compared to traditional punitive interventions, restorative interventions see conflict as causing harm to a community and an individual, these interventions give the harmed party or those affected a chance to participate, encourages accountability, reintegration, and responsibility so this promotes change, and it brings those affected together to consider all viewpoints and find a solution together. Personally, this is why I am a massive supporter of restorative approaches because let’s use the example of a classroom disruption where a child is shouting and screaming. This will impact a lot of people outside of the traditional viewpoint of the classroom disruption only impacts the child-teacher relationship. It will impact the staff in the other corridors and classrooms, it will impact all the children in the classroom and it might impact other children in other classrooms. Traditional interventions do not take this information into account, and no child screams and shouts for no reason. There was a function behind this behaviour. This is why restorative approaches allow you to understand the viewpoint, the reasons and why this happened in the first place, so you can understand how to prevent it in the future. And if you just throw the child in isolation for the day because of the shouting and screaming then they aren’t going to learn the devastating impact their behaviour had on others, it will not help them find better, more adaptive coping mechanisms for the future and it will not prevent this disruptive behaviour from happening again. In fact, it might actually make it worse because if the child is simply thrown in isolation. Then it doesn’t allow the child to learn, sort out the distress and the root cause of the behaviour so they’re likely to be angry at the teacher, the teacher is likely to be annoyed at the student for disrupting their lesson and this will harm the pupil-teacher relationship. Therefore, in the future, the pupil might be less engaged in the teacher’s lessons, they might be more disruptive and they might cause more difficulties. When in reality, all this drama and trouble could be avoided if the student was simply allowed to be listened to and understood and the student was helped to understand the harm of their shouting and screaming. On the whole, restorative approaches can lead to a lot of positive outcomes in schools because schools that incorporate restorative approaches into their whole-school culture report significant benefits for staff as well as pupils. As well as restorative approaches focus on the following questions: · What happened instead of what have you done · Who has been harmed or affected instead of why have you done that · How can we involve everyone who has been affected in repairing the harm and finding a way forward instead of who is to blame · How can everyone do things differently in the future instead of what is the appropriate response to deter and punish the person at fault so they don’t do the behaviour again. As you can see restorative approaches and their mindset focus on the solution instead of the problem, so everyone can find a solution, decrease the chance of it happening again and making sure that everyone is okay for the long-term. What Are Some Other Benefits of Restorative Approaches in Schools? Some other benefits of embedding restorative approaches in schools can include improvements in learning and teaching. Since restorative approaches reduce time spent dealing with re-occurring conflicts and they have a positive impact on attainment. This is because it means that teachers can actually focus on teaching instead of being classroom managers and having to deal with detentions and other ineffective punitive measures. As well as students can focus on learning. Restorative approaches can improve the learning environment because it decreases exclusions and improves attendance at school, it reduces youth criminal anti-social behaviour, it reduces conflict and behaviour that disrupts the learning environment, and it ensures that pupils develop and consolidate valuable life skills. And restorative approaches improve job satisfaction amongst staff. Now, I really want to take a moment to focus on the increase of job satisfaction amongst staff. This is critical in education for a wide range of reasons, but I want to focus on the recruitment and retention angle. In the UK, and many other countries around the world, there is a massive recruitment problem when it comes to teachers and from a young age, students are told point-blank by teachers themselves do not become teachers, do anything else. As well as you only need to look at the employment and government figures to realise that the vast, vast majority of teachers and other staff members in schools leave within five years, if not within the first year. This is one of the factors behind the degradation and annihilation of the UK’s education system. Therefore, if restorative approaches are an effective way to improve staff job satisfaction, retain them and prevent teachers and other staff from leaving the profession then this is a major reason why we have to incorporate restorative approaches into schools. Moreover, it makes pupils feel heard and valued because it develops empathy in harmers as they hear how their actions have impacted others, it encourages students to take responsibility for their behaviour, it meets pupils’ needs when they’re harmed, it empowers young people to be part of the solution to the problem as well as it provides the opportunity to learn from the experience in a safe environment. Personally, something that I am starting to notice more and more as I explore this topic is that essentially, restorative approaches are about bringing in the empathetic, compassionate and non-judgemental clinical skills that we use in psychological work and embedding them within the school to create a fairer, more understanding and compassionate educational system that actually allows children to thrive. Lastly, restorative approaches can benefit school relationships because these approaches focus on restoring broken relationships and building positive relationship skills. The restorative approaches build these skills by developing emotional intelligence, it encourages adults to listen to young people and allow young people the opportunity to feel heard, it promotes healthy relationships between staff, parents and students, as well as it repairs, maintains and builds relationships between students and their peers. In my opinion, the brilliant thing about restorative approaches in schools is that it teaches children life skills that aren’t being taught at the moment. Of course, restorative approaches complement the national UK curriculum in resilience building, Citizenship and PSHE and emotional literacy and intelligence, but the current teaching in schools just doesn’t go far enough. Children are struggling with how to respect others, how to develop healthy relationships and how to understand others. This is leading to a wide range of negative impacts and crimes, and as I’ve written about in my rape-focused podcast episodes if we teach children and young people how to have consensual, respectful and healthy relationships then the number of sex crimes will decrease. Thankfully, restorative approaches in schools helps educators to provide teaching, knowledge and emotional intelligence for young people. Summary of Benefits of Restorative Approaches in Schools On the whole, we can summarise the benefits of using restorative approaches in schools as the following: · restorative approaches benefit students because these approaches meet their needs when they’re harmed, it encourages them to take responsibility for their behaviour, it enables pupils to develop and consolidate life skills, hear how their actions have impacted others, be a part of the solution, learn from the experience and makes them feel listened to and valued through the process. · restorative approaches benefit staff because it repairs, builds and maintains relationships between pupils and their peers, it enhances a positive learning environment, reduces time spent dealing with recurring conflict and promotes healthy relationships between pupils, parents and staff. As well as it promotes job satisfaction, develops emotional intelligence and has positive impacts on attainment. · These approaches benefit the whole school because it reduces exclusions and the need for internal sanctions, increases school attendance and attainment, reduces disruptive behaviour, creates a greater sense of school community, creates a positive learning environment, builds stronger relationships, reduces staff absences and better support for staff and better support from parents. How Can Schools Implement Restorative Approaches? As an aspiring or qualified educational psychologist, or even in a job interview for a school-based role, you might be asked about how to implement a restorative approach in your school. Therefore, in the rest of this psychology podcast episode, we’ll learn how to implement a restorative approach in the school and how you might phrase this understanding in a job interview. How Do You Implement A Restorative Culture in Schools Using A Shared and Restorative Language? Firstly, to implement a restorative approach in your school, you need to have a shared language because schools need to identify the appropriate language that will be used throughout the whole school by staff and pupils. This is because poor language can damage relationships and cause both staff and pupils to become defensive, so this can create inappropriate responses that can easily lead to poor behaviour. Some examples of poor language by teachers can include: · Why is it always you? · He’s just like his brother. He’s nothing like his sister. · I can’t do anything with that kid. · I’m not interested. · What have you done now? Some examples of poor language by students can include: · We were only joking · It wasn’t my fault · Other teachers let me do that · It’s not fair · They wouldn’t listen to me Whilst this language is perfectly normal within a school and I’ve heard it a thousand times over my years in education, this is all problematic when it comes to creating a restorative approach within a school. Since the majority of the poor language by the teachers focuses on the problem, blaming the student and not focusing on the context and why it happened. Whereas the majority of the poor language from students focus on them not taking responsibility for their behaviour or understanding that their actions harmed others. These are all the opposite of what a restorative approach hopes to achieve. On the other hand, restorative language focuses on using open-ended questions as well as reflective statements to encourage productive discussions and problem-solving. This is another way of de-escalating conflict. Some examples of good open-ended questions to use can include: · How did you feel when… · How do you feel now? · What happened? · What happened before that? · What happened next? · What did you think when… · What do you think now? · How can we put this behind us? · What can we do so this doesn’t happen again? I’ll elaborate more on this point in a moment, but these questions, the wording and everything else that I’m about to mention will be very useful in job interviews for you, so please take note. Another important aspect of restorative language is assertive statements because these allow teachers to set limits without creating conflict. For example, a teacher might openly say that they’re going to challenge a student about what they just said because it was inappropriate so the teacher and the student need to talk about it. Then the teacher can be assertive and add when the student behaves that way in their class it makes teaching very hard and the teacher feels disrespected and frustrated. This is effective because it allows the teacher to feel heard and valued and set firm limits, it allows the student to start to understand the harm that they’ve caused and none of that wording was about blame or creating more conflict. Finally, teachers and pupils should use “I” Statements because it helps both staff and students to state their side of a situation without laying blame or accusing anyone else. This is something that I’ve written about a lot over the years when it comes to reducing conflict. On the whole, restorative language is about being open and respectful because it allows people to express themselves without blaming or accusing others. This means that everyone is less likely to become defensive or aggressive and this sets the stage for conflict to be resolved effectively using communication skills and empathy. Personally, in terms of using this information in an interview, this section is immensely useful because there are always interview jobs in schools (at least for the roles I go for) that involve something about deescalating. I tend to answer having an open, honest and compassionate conversation that allows me to understand why a situation happened and what we can do in the future to prevent it. Yet now I can use the information from this section to improve my answer, be more detailed and use more examples. For instance, I could give an interview answer along the lines of: “To de-escalate the situation I would use techniques from restorative approaches so I would focus on having an open, honest and empathetic conversation with the student, because there had to be a reason behind the disruptive behaviour. I would ask questions like, what happened, what did you think when the situation happened, how did you feel when it happened and how can we put this behind us? These questions will allow me to understand what happened without blaming or accusing the student of anything. This means the student is less likely to get aggressive or defensive so we can have a productive discussion and use our problem-solving skills to identify ways to reduce this disruptive behaviour from happening again. In addition, I would encourage the student and staff member to use “I” statements so they can explain their sides of the situation without blame or accusation. As well as I would use “assertive statements” to set limits without creating conflict.” That was a mock interview answer that I just created off the top of my head, but I hope that it starts to get you thinking about how to use this information in job interviews, job applications and tasks to help you show off your knowledge and understanding. What are Peer Support Programmes for a Restorative Culture in Schools? Another way how educational psychologists can work with schools to create a restorative culture is to use peer support programmes. Since peer support programmes help students to build skills and it creates an emotionally literate culture in the school that a restorative culture needs to be able to thrive. Therefore, schools typically use either one or a mixture of peer mentoring, peer mediation and peer restorative facilitators. Furthermore, the overall benefits of peer support programmes can include that it teaches students life skills, it promotes a culture of problem solving as well as cooperation, it raises self-confidence and self-esteem, it gives young people the opportunity to take responsibility, it creates open discussions on bullying and how it can be dealt with, it builds resilience in children and young people, it allows young people to resolve conflicts for themselves without involving adults and this saves teachers’ time, and it increases social skills and integration. What are Peer Mentoring Programmes in Schools? Peer mentoring programmes are relationship-based support schemes that match older and younger students together, and I’m sure that a lot of psychology students are familiar with this sort of scheme. I know when I was at university, there was a peer mentoring scheme where final year students could be paired up and mentor first year students. As well as when I reached third year, it was strongly encouraged that we joined the mentoring scheme so we could support younger students. Anyway, peer mentoring programmes help students to get advice and older students serve as role models for younger students. As well as peer mentors can offer short- or long-term support who might be experiencing a variety of difficulties that negatively impact their school life. This reminds me when I used to be a SEN teaching assistant and I was supporting a diabetic child, one of my ideas to help him adjust to his new diagnosis was for him to be paired up with another type 1 diabetic student from the mainstream school. This would provide the SEN diabetic child with someone of the same age to talk to, share strategies with and it just might have been a little more helpful than a bunch of adults saying that everything was going to be fine. It might have carried more weight if the same information came from another young person. In addition, peer mentors can be used in both primary and secondary schools (I think for our international audience that is junior high and high school), and peer mentoring programmes can be tailored to meet the individual needs of the school. For example, a playground buddy, support the transition of new students into the school and a peer tutor. Learning about peer mentoring programmes are important for aspiring and qualified educational psychologists because they highlight how to improve the sense of community within a school, how to effectively support students without hiring or delegating more staff and it can help the school to develop a supportive culture between staff and students. What are Peer Restorative Facilitators? Whereas peer restorative facilitators are when students in older year groups are trained to become peer conference facilitators. This is a critical part of a whole school approach to restorative approaches because it saves time spent by staff managing low level conflict because trained students can manage some of these issues. As well as this helps reinforce the shared language point from earlier because both the students and the staff are using the same practices to resolve conflict. Personally, I think this is definitely something that I could talk about in psychology job interviews in the future, because this isn’t a topic that is very well known about. Therefore, this might help me to seem extra knowledgeable, creative and it might help me standout in interviews compared to other candidates. As well as I can mention how there are nationally recognised courses in the UK for young people to become restorative practitioners, like the Restorative Approaches Practitioner Training developed by SALUS. This training will also help students gain employable skills that will help them thrive in the future. A mock interview answer might include: “To further reinforce the whole school approach to developing a restorative culture, I would work with older students for them to become restorative practitioners using the nationally recognised Restorative Approaches Practitioner Training course developed by SALUS. This benefits the school because it means students can deal with some of the re-occurring low-level disruptive behaviours so staff can focus on teaching, it will give students employable skills and it will help create an emotionally literate culture in the school. This is critical for our restorative approach to work,” As an aspiring educational psychologist, another reason why peer restorative facilitators are interesting to me is because I can see this as a method of boosting motivation, attendance within schools and it can make students feel heard, valued and trusted. A lot of students just don’t feel respected or listened to by teachers and staff members so this is why they can lack motivation to come and apply themselves in education. This is a good solution. As well as if we apply my favourite psychological theory “Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory” then peer restorative facilitators can improve the relationships between the student body and teaching staff, between peers and the student’s individual relationship with the school altogether. What is Peer Mediation? A final peer support programme for developing a restorative culture includes peer mediation. This is a useful intervention that schools can use to de-escalate incidents from potential conflict because peer mediation focuses on creating a constructive and positive agreement by focusing on the future and not the past. And unlike restorative conferencing, mediation can be successful even if no student or staff accepts responsibility for causing the harm. What are Restorative Conversations and Circles? Whilst the two other interventions or methods for developing a restorative culture within a school are specific interventions, restorative conversations and circles are a part of the everyday, smaller practices that schools can embed within their school culture to create a restorative approach at every level. Since restorative conversations and circles can promote emotional literacy and empathy, they can act as early intervention strategies to avoid the need for restorative conferencing, they can build healthy relationships between all members of the school community as well as they can be relatively flexible and informal whilst being very effective at reinforcing appropriate and consistent boundaries. What I personally like about the flexibility and informalness of restorative conversations is that because they’re informal, they are much less likely to make the student defensive, resistant and want to blame others compared to if you take them to a formal room for a serious conversation. You can do these restorative conversations as part of a “corridor chat” or something else that’s informal. Therefore, restorative conversations are, as you might expect, conversations that use restorative language between an adult and one or more young people. These conversations tend to go in the following way: · Hey student name, we need to talk about you being late. · What’s been happening? · What were you thinking or feeling when you were coming to class late? · Now that you’ve had time to think about what’s been happening, what do you think about it now? · Who’s affected by you being late? · What do you need to do to put things right? · What do I (the staff member) need to do to help you? As you can see, this approach to a conversation about lateness isn’t about blame, punishment or making a student feel bad about themselves. This is simply an opportunity to them to explain what happened, why it happened and it gets them to take responsibility for their actions and think about what they can do in the future to ensure this doesn’t keep happening. This is useful for aspiring and qualified psychologists to be aware of because they’re often asked to make recommendations and a lot of an educational psychologist’s work focuses on whole school approaches. Therefore, whilst it’s always useful to focus on the macro-system and the larger impact of the school system on students and staff. It is important to focus on the small actions that can be embedded into basic school practice to help reinforce and develop a larger restorative culture. These small practices can also help to reduce the gap between management and school policy and what’s actually happening on the ground and in classrooms. In terms of psychology job interviews, I think being aware of restorative conversations can be very useful, because it gives you another example to draw on, write about and explain how you would embed restorative conversations into the school as part of a restorative action plan and similar situations. In addition, restorative circles take place between an adult and a group of young people, like a class, and these circles allow an issue to be discussed using restorative language. Also, they help to develop a sense of community responsibility, they educate pupils on restorative principles and practices and how the students themselves fit into these principles, as well as they allow each student to perform a “check in” and “check out” and this helps to create a more respectful and caring environment. Two final benefits are that restorative circles help to tackle classroom disruptions because all students are expected to take responsibility and they help to build better relationships between staff when used as the format for staff meetings. These restorative circles tend to use the following type of questions: · We need to talk about being late to class. To do this we’re going to look at everyone’s needs and see if we can find a way forward. · What’s been happening? · What do you think or feel when someone comes into class late? · Now that you’ve had time to think about what’s been happening, what do you think about it now? · Who are affected by students coming into class late? · What needs to happen to put things right? · What do I (as staff member) need to do to help you? Personally, I really like this approach because if you’re a student and a teacher is telling you that you’re disrupting other students and you’re causing harm to them, are you really going to believe them? I probably would as a child because I loved teachers, but there were likely a lot of other people in my class that wouldn’t believe the teacher. Therefore, by getting the students to tell other students about the harm in their own words, that can be very powerful, useful and it helps students to take responsibility for their actions. Moreover, whilst the questions that a member of staff uses are important because they help to guide the conversation, need it restorative and they help everyone to benefit, they shouldn’t dominate the conversation. Instead, the conversation needs to be dominated by the students so they can have a conversation where there is no blame attached, it is respectful and dignified and the relationship between the students and teacher is maintained, or hopefully strengthened. This is even more important to consider when we remember that simply asking a student “why are you late” can be rather confrontational and it doesn’t help resolve the issue for the future. What is Restorative Justice Conferencing? The final method of how to develop a restorative culture in a school is restorative justice conferencing. This is a formal conference process that requires a higher degree of preparation, planning, structure and follow up. Since this intervention needs a trained facilitator to co-ordinate the process because of the number of people participating and the nature of their roles. For example, social workers, carers, police, family and students. As well as restorative justice conferencing tends to be used in situations like the breakdown of the parent-school relationship, when incidents occur in the wider community, when other restorative practices have failed, the student being re-integrated after exclusion, after an incident and the student is at risk of being excluded, after an assault that isn’t being dealt with by the police, after the breakdown in friendship groups and after incidences of bullying. Furthermore, restorative justice conferencing can be effective because let’s say a student did something seriously wrong in a school, like they broke a window because they were messing around. No one was hurt, it was cleaned up quickly and it didn’t cause any clear harm to any staff or students. Under the traditional punitive system, this student would likely be excluded because they damaged and broke school property. However, if this student went to a restorative justice conference with themselves, the student’s head of year or pastoral manager, their parents, the school caretaker and a conference facilitator. Then they could help the student to realise the harm that the broken window caused to the school and the school community, the school could understand what was happening in the student’s life and why they did it, and they could work together to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. As well as it helps the student to stay in education, learn and they can thrive. Building upon this, the likely consequences for the student who broke the window after a restorative justice conference can include an apology letter to the Head of Year, the student to help caretake after the school and the student to help organise a “safety at school” session for the year group. I like this approach because at least some good actually comes out of this disruptive and negative behaviour, so others don’t make the same mistake. Finally, in future psychology job interviews, this is something I would have to write about in any interview tasks because this sort of pops up from time to time. At least now I can understand and write about the sort of consequences and I can stress the need for helping the student to take responsibility for their actions and compassionately understand how best to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. A mock interview answer might include: “To help a student reintegrate into the school after an exclusion, I would call and coordinate a restorative justice conference. I would facilitate, plan, organise and follow up after the conference. I would ensure that it was attended by myself, the student’s Head of Year, the student and at least one parent. During the conference, I would use restorative language to help understand why the student was excluded in the first place, what they were thinking or feeling during the incident and I would ask how now that they’ve had time to think about the incident, how do they feel about it now. Also, I would ask the student and parent what we all can do together to ensure that the incident doesn’t happen again. This will ensure the student takes responsibility for their actions, they understand the harm they caused and we can productively find solutions to stop it happening again,” Then if I was doing a mock interview answer on another situation, I would write about the consequences and not exclude them. Educational Psychology Conclusion I have really enjoyed today’s podcast episode because this is what I was talking about with my parents when I was really stressed about still being unemployed, I enjoy learning from my job interviews. I realised that one area I was not confident in and my knowledge was lacking in was restorative action plans and how to use restorative approaches within schools. This is why I researched and created today’s podcast episode. I wanted to learn, get better and reflect on how to use this information in job interviews. Since in my experience, it is brilliant if you know the information, but if you can’t explain it in a job interview that comes across as knowledgeable, confident and actionable then it’s next to useless. Therefore, I really enjoyed learning about restorative approaches, understanding how to use them in schools and most importantly, how to possibly talk about them in job interviews. To briefly recap this episode, restorative approaches offer schools a flexible and innovative alternative to the punitive systems and sanctions that are typically used in schools, like detentions, exclusions and isolations, to manage behaviour in schools. These approaches aren’t a soft solution but they’re an additional tool that schools can use to create positive outcomes from negative behaviour and actively reinforce the view that inappropriate behaviour isn’t acceptable and it needs to be addressed. As well as restorative approaches are used in schools to help deal with bullying, truancy, classroom disruptions, friendship disputes, anti-social behaviour, relationship breakdown between staff and pupil as well as building a stronger sense of community and belonging. Finally, to wrap up this episode, if you’re ever in a job interview for a psychology-related role and you’re asked about restorative approaches, please remember: · To write about restorative language- respect, dignity and no blame · The need to help students take responsibility for their actions · Understand the harm that their actions caused · Restorative approaches are about understanding what happened and how to find solutions so the disruptive behaviour doesn’t happen again If you remember those basics at the very least then you should be able to write more correct, confident and knowledgeable answers in your job interviews that just might help you stand out and hopefully get the job. I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Gamification of Autism: A Guide to Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy and Mental Health. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Educational Psychology References and Further Reading A Guide to Developing a Restorative Culture in Schools by SALUS Hopkins, B. (2023). The restorative classroom: Using restorative approaches to foster effective learning. Routledge. Lodi, E., Perrella, L., Lepri, G. L., Scarpa, M. L., & Patrizi, P. (2021). Use of restorative justice and restorative practices at school: A systematic literature review. International journal of environmental research and public health, 19(1), 96. Mas-Expósito, L., Krieger, V., Amador-Campos, J. A., Casañas, R., Albertí, M., & Lalucat-Jo, L. (2022). Implementation of whole school restorative approaches to promote positive youth development: Review of relevant literature and practice guidelines. Education Sciences, 12(3), 187. McCluskey, G. (2018). Restorative approaches in schools: Current practices, future directions. In The Palgrave international handbook of school discipline, surveillance, and social control (pp. 573-593). Cham: Springer International Publishing. Weber, C., & Vereenooghe, L. (2020). Reducing conflicts in school environments using restorative practices: A systematic review. International Journal of Educational Research Open, 1, 100009. Zakszeski, B., & Rutherford, L. (2021). Mind the gap: A systematic review of research on restorative practices in schools. School Psychology Review, 50(2-3), 371-387. Gomez, J. A., Rucinski, C. L., & Higgins-D’Alessandro, A. (2021). Promising pathways from school restorative practices to educational equity. Journal of Moral Education, 50(4), 452-470. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

Ever since I was born, I have always had a stutter (or stammer if we’re using UK English). This meant when I was a child, I had horrific difficulties with speech, forming sentences and I really struggled talking in general. Thankfully, as I’ve gotten older and more comfortable in myself and different situations, I have largely removed my stutter, but this week was a painful reminder at how badly I stutter in new situations. In fact, the other week in a job interview because I was stuttering, the interviewer actually asked me point-blank something along the lines of this role will involve talking to over 200 people in a hall, is that something you can do? I had to literally tell them whilst my interview performance wasn’t showing it, I was fine talking to massive groups of people and delivering large presentations when I was at university. I didn’t get the job and I strongly believe it was clearly because of my stutter and how they treated me as if I was stupid because of it. This reflects the sheer number of myths and misconceptions about stuttering. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what is stuttering, what causes it and how is stuttering treated. As well as what are the myths and misconceptions about stuttering and how can we support people who stutter. If you enjoy learning about speech difficulties, clinical psychology and mental health, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Developmental Psychology: A Guide to Developmental and Child Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What is Stuttering for Psychologists? According to the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, stuttering is when someone repeats sounds or syllables, like “mu-mu-mu-mummy”, as a word gets stuck or doesn’t come out at all and/ or a person makes sounds longer like “mmmmmmummmmy”. As well as the intensity and frequency of stuttering does vary from person to person and it depends on the situation, so someone might have periods of stuttering followed by times when they can speak relatively fluently. Personally, when I was a child I would tend to get stuck on certain words and sounds, and sometimes they just wouldn’t come out at all. Also, I would definitely prolong my sounds and I would use filters a lot of the time. For example, whilst I tend to edit most of these out in the podcast you have heard me say “though” and “like” a lot. This is normally during my stuttering that I try to edit out of the podcast as best as I can. Equally, as a child, I used to repeat “yes so then” a lot before I started speaking and I would constantly repeat the syllables “li-li-like” and “well,” before and during my speech, because talking was just so hard because of my stuttering. Building upon the situational point, even now this is a very annoying part of stuttering because talking with people I know, like my friends, my peers and my family. I am fine, I do not stutter much and my speech is very close to being perfect. Yet if you put me in a situation that is new, that is filled with people I don’t know and I am concerned, then my stuttering increases dramatically. For example, job interviews and canvassing (also known as door-knocking) I tend to stutter an awful lot. Additionally, studies show that around 1 in 12 children go through a phase of stuttering, around 2 in 3 children with stuttering go on to speak fluently and stuttering affects around 1 in 50 adults with men being 3 to 4 times more likely to stutter compared to women. On the whole, stuttering is important for psychologists to understand because stuttering can decrease someone’s confidence, their ability to be taken seriously, their self-esteem, their ability to be employed and so much more. This can impact their mental health in turn. What are the Types of Stuttering? There are two types of stuttering. Firstly, you have acquired or late-onset stuttering and this is a relatively rare form of stuttering and it happens in older children and adults. This is caused by a stroke, head injury or a progressive neurological condition. As well as it can be caused by certain drugs, psychological or emotional trauma or medicines. Secondly, you have developmental stuttering and this is the most common type because developmental stuttering develops in early childhood when speech and language skills are developing quickly. I definitely have developmental stuttering because I’ve had this difficulty since childhood. Overall, it’s important for psychologists to be aware of the two types of stuttering because this allows you to understand the causes, potential treatments and how best to support your client who’s struggling with stuttering. How Does Stuttering Affect a Person? Personally, it’s really important to me that we all understand how stuttering can impact a person, because on the surface it just looks like a person who stutters just can’t speak. Yet that isn’t a problem and it isn’t actually true. A person who stutters can be remarkably intelligent, fluent and they can be very confident in certain situations, but we’ll explore that more in the next section of the episode that focuses on myths and misconceptions. Yet stuttering can impact someone in a wide range of ways. For example, stuttering can involve using a lot of filler words during speech. Such as “like”, “um” and “ah.” Personally, I use a lot of filler words and “like” is my favourite it seems and sometimes my use of filler words is extremely painful. Sometimes it seems like every other word that I say is a filler word and I actually feel sorry for the people who have to listen to me because it means they have to decode my sentence and get rid of the filler words. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen as often as it used to when I was a kid. Another typical feature of stuttering includes the prolonging of certain sounds and not being able to move onto the next sound. This is something that you might have heard a few times on The Psychology World Podcast because there are some sounds that I seriously struggle with. For example, the “ex” in experience. That really causes me to stutter for some reason. For other people, this feature of stuttering can look like “mmmmmmmmmmmmmilk”. Thirdly, stuttering can cause a person to avoid eye contact with other people whilst struggling with sounds and words. Penultimately, stuttering can cause a person to repeat certain words, sounds and syllables when talking, so instead of saying “apple” a person who stutters might say “a-a-a-a-a-a-apple”. I know I’ve done this a million times and it was horrifically severe when I was a child but no specific examples thankfully spring to mind. And I will be very open on this episode that this is actually a little difficult for me to write about. It’s probably why I haven’t done a podcast episode on stuttering in the 7 years and over 400 episodes of The Psychology World Podcast. Since my stuttering did result in a lot of bullying in my childhood and even now, my stuttering is causing me to miss out on job opportunities and it’s causing people to think that I’m less intelligent than I am. And it sucks. A final feature of stuttering includes lengthy pauses between certain words and sounds and it can seem as though a child is struggling to say the right word, sentence or phrase. Personally, this is really annoying for me because I know what I want to say, I just can’t get the word out and then someone corrects me as though I don’t know what I’m talking about. It just annoys me to no end. Another way how stuttering impacts a person is that stuttering is more likely to happen when a young child has a lot to say, they’re excited and they’re saying something that’s important to them. As well as stuttering is often worse in situations where a child feels self-conscious about their speech and they’re typically under pressure not to stutter. For example, when reading aloud, speaking on the phone, talking to a person in authority and saying their name in registration at school. Personally, I completely agree because even now these situations still impact me. I was doing some phone banking for a local cause a few weeks ago and I stuttered a lot during that, because I find it hard to talk on the phone, I had to follow a script and it’s just hard. Since I have a lot to say to these people and it’s important to me. I was tempted to joke to some of the people if I ever saw them in person something along the lines of “hey it’s Connor, we spoke on the phone, and as you can see I can actually talk and string a sentence together in-person,” Lastly, stuttering can impact a person because there are certain behaviours associated with it. For example a child who stutters might develop involuntary movements like quivering lips, grimaces, eye blinking, tapping their fingers or stamping their feet. Yet they might also change the way they speak to prevent stuttering, so this can include talking very softly or slowly or with an accent, they might avoid social situations because of their fear of stuttering and this can include not asking for items in shops or going to birthday parties, as well as they might avoid saying certain words or sounds that they normally stutter on. Also, a child with a stutter might adopt strategies to hide their stuttering, like claiming to have forgotten what they were trying to say when they’re having trouble getting the words out. In my experience, quivering lips is a massive pain because sometimes my face and mouth really contort when I stutter. I don’t know why but it’s just my muscles and mouth trying to get the words out. As well as this is a useful reminder about why learning about stuttering is important for psychologists because if you’re seeing a client who stutters and they’re socially isolating themselves by not going to birthday parties, not going to social situations that might cause them to stutter and they feel fear, shame or frustration because of their stutter. Then this will negatively impact their mental health and their self-esteem. This is why psychologists might be immensely useful because we can work with the client to overcome their fear and their social anxiety whilst they hopefully see a speech and language therapist if required. What are Some Myths about Stuttering? Before we talk about the causes of stuttering, I want to focus on some myths and misconceptions about stuttering. This ensures that we’re all on the same page, we aren’t accidentally bringing in our biases or myths into our clinical work and it helps to ensure that we’re delivering the best possible care and support to our current or future clients. Firstly, it is a myth that nervousness or stress causes stuttering. Since a lot of people unfortunately believe that stuttering is caused by fear or anxiety, and research shows that this isn’t true because stuttering is rooted in brain function, not our emotions. Of course, it is true that emotions, like stress and anxiety, can make stuttering more severe, but it isn’t the underlying cause. As well as what I think is the most important fact here is that people, like me, tend to feel anxious because they stutter, not because their anxiety makes them stutter. This is one of the reasons why my stutter gets worse in job interviews is because I’m anxious that I’ll stutter, look less intelligent and I’ll miss out on the job because of my stutter. Secondly, it is a myth that people who stutter are less intelligent. This is a myth that drives me utterly insane because as I mentioned in the introduction to this psychology blog post. The other week in a job interview because I was stuttering, the interviewer actually asked me point-blank something along the lines of this role will involve talking to over 200 people in a hall, is that something you can do? I had to literally tell them whilst my interview performance wasn’t showing it, I was fine talking to massive groups of people and delivering large presentations when I was at university. I didn’t get the job and I strongly believe it was clearly because of my stutter and how they treated me as if I was stupid because of it. Therefore, the truth about stuttering is that stuttering reflects speech fluency, not a person’s cognitive ability. This means that people can be highly intelligent, successful and creative in any field and still stutter. Personally, if we look at myself, I have a BSc in Psychology and Clinical Psychology with a Placement Year, I have an MSc in Clinical Psychology, I write books, I podcast and I do a lot of other things. This means that I am intelligent, I am very creative and I am successful in my life. Yet because I stutter a lot of people think that I’m less intelligent than I am and that annoys me so much. Thirdly, it is a myth that stuttering is caused by a personality trait, like introversion. As we’ve already learnt stuttering is caused by neurological differences in the brain, it is not caused by personality factors. Since people who stutter can be confident, outspoken and assertive but past negative experiences can influence the person’s likelihood to hesitate. In my opinion, I am extremely outspoken on certain topics like mental health, politics and psychology, and I am confident, compassionate and I am very driven. And yet I stutter, so I am further evidence of this myth being false. Moreover, it is a myth that ignoring stuttering will make it go away. Unfortunately, some people believe that avoiding attention or discussion about stuttering will make it go away but this isn’t true. We’ll look at what improves stuttering later in the episode, but creating an open, honest and supportive space with good communication and evidence-based therapy are critical to improving stuttering. The final myth that we’ll learn about is that simple advice like “slow down” and “take a deep breath” will cure stuttering. This is something I hear constantly and a lot of people tell me to simply slow down. The reason why this advice is unhelpful for people who stutter is because this increases self-consciousness and can make stuttering worse. What actually happens a person with their stuttering is the people around them listening patiently, modelling clear speech and professional therapy that is tailored to the individual. On the whole, these myths about stuttering are important for psychologists to learn about because these facts provide us with clear insights into how to best support clients, it allows us to be a reflective practitioner and understand how our perceived notions about stuttering might impact our clinical work and most importantly, this knowledge means we can gently and compassionately challenge the client’s own beliefs about their stuttering. What Causes Stuttering? Whilst we are not 100% sure what causes stuttering, we do know that inherited and developmental factors play a large role in the development of stuttering, and small differences in how efficiently the speech areas of the brain operate. As well as we know that stuttering isn’t caused by anything that the parents have done. How Can Speech Development Cause Stuttering? Firstly, speech development can cause stuttering because speech development is a complex process (I’m sure any psychology student will tell you that) because speech development involves communication between the brain and muscles responsible for speaking and breathing and different areas of the brain. When these complex processes work, this means that the right words are spoken in the right order with the correct emphasis, pauses and rhythm. However, stuttering can happen if some parts of this developing system aren’t coordinated correctly and this can cause stoppages as well as repetitions. Especially, when a child has a lot they want to say, they’re excited and they feel under pressure. Personally, I strongly believe this is where the myths of “anxiety causes stuttering” and “slow down” will cure stuttering. Since when I’m under pressure in a job interview, my stuttering gets worse and slowing down isn’t really going to help me because it will not improve the coordination of my brain and speech system. The same goes for my stuttering getting worse when I’m excited and have a lot to say, slowing down will not help me much because it will not cure the neurological difficulties in my brain. And I’m proud of who I am, my difficulties and my neurological challenges, so I don’t want them to be fixed or cured. In addition, over the years, as the brain continues to develop, stuttering can be resolved or the brain might compensate for the neurological differences and this is why a lot of children stop stuttering as they get older. Or like me, it improves dramatically. How do Genes and Sex Differences Cause Stuttering? When it comes to how genes and sex differences cause stuttering, stuttering is more common in boys than girls but we don’t understand why this happens. As well as we understand that genes play in a role in the development of stuttering because around roughly 2 in 3 people who stutter have a family history of stuttering. This suggests the genes that a child inherits from their parents might make them more likely to develop a stutter. How is Stuttering Treated? The type of treatment offered to people who stutter depends on their age and their situation because typically a speech and language therapist will work with the parents, child and educational staff to make a suitable treatment plan for the child. Equally, a speech and language therapist can also work with adults to find ways to improve the fluency of their speech and reduce the impact that stuttering has on their life. Then psychology can be useful because people who stutter can be referred to psychological therapy if they have any emotional difficulties linked to their speech difficulties. Building upon this, when it comes to speech therapy for younger children, in the United Kingdom, the Lidcombe programme is a widely used direct behavioural therapy for the treatment of stuttering. The programme is based on the principle of providing consistent feedback to your child about their speech in a friendly, supportive and non-judgemental way. Furthermore, if a child’s stuttering has persisted into school-age then stuttering is significantly harder to treat as I know all too well. As we’ve spoken about already in this episode, if a child continues to stutter by the age they go to school then it can lead to anxiety about speaking, feelings of fear and embarrassment and it can cause other social and emotional difficulties. This is why direct therapy in older children who stutter focuses on improving their speaking behaviour as well as taking into account the social, psychological and emotional aspects of stuttering. This direct therapy for school-age children focuses on helping to improve fluency, share experiences with others who stutter, improve communication skills, develop positive attitudes and self-confidence, work on feelings associated with stuttering like anxiety and fear and help the child understand more about stuttering. What is Indirect Therapy in the Treatment of Stuttering? Indirect therapy is when parents make changes to the way they communicate in the home environment instead of focusing on their child’s talking. Since indirect approaches are based on the idea that children start to stutter when they cannot keep up with the demands on their language skills, and these so-called demands might come from the people around them or from the child’s own enthusiasm as well as determination to communicate. This is one reason why this is recommended for children who stutter under 5 to try first instead of direct therapy. Since the aim of indirect therapy is to create an environment where a child feels under less pressure when speaking. To achieve this, parents might speak calmly and slowly to their child, encourage taking turns and listening within the family, not criticising and interrupting their child, making the family environment as calm and relaxing as possible and doing more of what seems to help a child’s fluency. For instance, talking about what the parent and child are doing together, like looking at favourite books, walking to school and playing together. How to Help a Person who Stutters When Talking to Them? The reason why I saved this section until last is because this is a very important section for me as a person who stutters. If different people around me knew this information then maybe my stutter could decrease, I wouldn’t be subjected to the awful myth that I am less intelligent because I stutter and I wouldn’t have experienced so much bullying as a child. Therefore, when you’re talking to someone who stutters, it’s important that you don’t, or at least try to avoid, finishing their sentences and you give them enough time to finish what they’re saying without interrupting. Since if you do this, it will have a negative impact on their self-esteem, it will draw attention to their stuttering and it can make it worse. It just isn’t helpful. In addition, when talking to someone who stutters show interest in what they’re saying instead of how they’re saying it and maintain eye contact. This will help the person who stutters to feel at ease, like they don’t need to rush to maintain your interest and it’s more helpful. As well as avoid asking them to speak faster or more slowly. Personally, I never find it helpful when someone says this to me because it just makes me more self-conscious and it doesn’t help me in the slightest. Furthermore, this is important for psychologists to be aware of because we might have a client one day who stutters, and as part of the therapeutic alliance, we need to make sure that the client feels comfortable with us. We’re asking the client to reveal their deepest and darkest thoughts, feelings and emotions so it’s important that we help them to feel comfortable, at ease and they want to open up to us to maximise the likely success of the therapy. These tips about how to talk to someone who stutters can be very helpful in building that early rapport and maintaining it when the therapy gets difficult. Another reason why this information is useful for psychologists is because if you’re an educational psychologist, then you can share this information with schools, teaching staff and parents of children who stutter. This helps to create a more welcoming, inclusive and supportive educational environment for the child so they can enjoy school and contribute to the learning environment without feeling stressed, fearful or less intelligent because of their stutter. As well as if you’re a clinical psychologist working with the speech and language team because your client stutters, then you might want to share or reinforce this approach with the family system. This means that you and the speech and language team are on the same page, you’re giving consistent advice and this increases the likelihood of the family system taking it on board. Speaking of which, it’s helpful to speak calmly and slowly when talking to a young child who stutters and you should use short sentences and simple language to reduce the communication demands on the child. Of course, I am flat out not saying you should talk to your child as if they are less intelligent, but you’ll be supporting their language development and reducing their stuttering if you place less demands on their language abilities. Finally, it’s best if parents (and psychologists working with children) don’t overwhelm their child by talking too quickly, because you need to make sure that you give the child time to understand as well as process what you’ve just said, and work out their own response. Again, this applies to aspiring and qualified psychologists in a range of ways, but I want to focus on one situation. If you’re a psychologist who just transferred from an adult mental health service to a children and adolescent mental health service then you might be used to talking at your normal speed, using more complex words and you might not realise the extent to which you need to adapt your language for children. This self-awareness about the way you speak, communicate and the speed of your responses are even more important to reflect on when working with children who stutter. And a final point that I just thought about was if you’re an aspiring educational psychologist, if you have children who stutter in your educational setting then you might want to ask about creating some kind of Continued Professional Development session to educate other staff members about stuttering. You could use the session to combat myths, explain what stuttering is really about and how to best support children who stutter in the educational setting. The advantage of creating this CPD session is that it shows you can apply psychological theories to education, you have experience in delivering CPD content like qualified educational psychologists and you have experience of using psychology to improve schools. Just a little thought. Clinical Psychology Conclusion Personally, certain parts of this episode were difficult for me, because my stutter has had a major impact on my life. It led to a lot of painful bullying, a lot of people being nasty to me and even now, at the age of 25, I am missing out on career opportunities because employers think that I can’t speak, I’m less intelligent and I won’t be able to do the job. All because of my stutter that is nowhere near as severe as it used to be and most of the time, I don’t really stutter. Therefore, whilst we’ve covered a lot of great information like what is stuttering, how it impacts people, what the treatment options are, how this information applies to psychologists and so much more. I want to wrap up this episode with a little reminder. As a result, according to the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, stuttering is when someone repeats sounds or syllables, like “mu-mu-mu-mummy”, a word gets stuck or doesn’t come out at all and/ or a person makes sounds longer “mmmmmmummmmy”. As well as the intensity and frequency of stuttering does vary from person to person and it depends on the situation, so someone might have periods of stuttering followed by times when they can speak relatively fluently. Finally, I would add that now we know this information, it’s our duty as aspiring and qualified psychologists to share this information, incorporate it into our clinical and educational work and use it to make the world a better place for everyone. Including people who stutter. So, I’ll leave you with a simple question: · What small act could you do today to improve the life of someone who stutters? I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Developmental Psychology: A Guide to Developmental and Child Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Gembäck, C., McAllister, A., Femrell, L., & Lagerberg, T. E. (2025). Online indirect group treatment for preschool children who stutter—Effects on stuttering severity and the impact of stuttering on child and parents. International journal of language & communication disorders, 60(2), e70008. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stammering/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stammering/symptoms/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stammering/treatment/ https://www.stutteringhelp.org/five-myths-about-stuttering https://www.westutter.org/post/myths-about-stuttering Johnson, G., Onslow, M., Horton, S., & Kefalianos, E. (2023). Psychosocial features of stuttering for school‐age children: A systematic review. International journal of language & communication disorders, 58(5), 1829-1845. Kohmäscher, A., Primaßin, A., Heiler, S., Avelar, P. D. C., Franken, M. C., & Heim, S. (2023). Effectiveness of stuttering modification treatment in school-age children who stutter: A randomized clinical trial. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 66(11), 4191-4205. Nonis, D., Unicomb, R., & Hewat, S. (2022). Parental perceptions of stuttering in children: A systematic review of the literature. Speech, Language and Hearing, 25(4), 481-491. Rasoli Jokar, A. H., Salehi, S., & Yaruss, J. S. (2025). Variability of stuttering in young children: Caregivers' perceptions and experiences. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 34(4), 1992-2009. Walsh, B. M., Grobbel, H., Christ, S. L., Tichenor, S. E., & Gerwin, K. L. (2023). Exploring the relationship between resilience and the adverse impact of stuttering in children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 66(7), 2278-2295. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

Across all of society, artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots are becoming more common and they’ve seeped into all aspects of our daily lives. From internet searches to education to our workplace, artificial intelligence is everywhere. However, there is a debate currently going on about whether artificial intelligence should become a part of the clinical psychology doctorate training. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, I’ll reflect on my experience, my thoughts and I’ll propose what this debate means for our great profession. If you enjoy learning about cyberpsychology, psychology training and the future of psychology, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Beyond The Lecture Volume 7: 20 Reflections on Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Should AI Chatbots Be Used to Train Future Clinical Psychologists? Last week, I took part in a new psychology study that a lecturer who I’m friendly with was running and he wanted to conduct his study using clinical psychology master's students. Besides from his preferred research sample, I didn’t really know anything else about the research study. Artificial intelligence had been mentioned but besides from that, nothing else was said. His master's students emailed me a day later and we arranged a date and time to meet. I mention this because here’s a little tip, if you are contacting a research participant and you have no idea what they look like and if they have no idea what you look like. Please, do not ask them to meet you in a public space that will be very busy. Give them a specific room or location. Ideally the place where you’re going to be doing the experiment. Anyway, the study involved me having 12 minutes to ask questions to this chatbot that was pretending to have anxiety and depression. I needed to interact with it how I would with a client in the real-world during the psychological assessment. I needed to find out their presenting difficulties, their life situation, how long they have had their mental health difficulties amongst other factors. To do this, I needed to type in my questions to the chatbot and a second or two later, it would give me a response. That answered my question very well and similar to how a real client would answer it with the pauses, nervousness and accurate wording. When the 12 minutes were up, the researcher came back into the room and she asked me a few questions about my experience, would I recommend using this chatbot in clinical psychology training and how could it be improved amongst other questions. Personally, I want to reflect on this study because I strongly believe that this will be used in the future of clinical psychology. Artificial intelligence is already dominating and revolutionising our world. For example, there is artificial intelligence baked in all electronic devices these days allowing for smarter, easier and faster search. It might not always be accurate but it is there. A lot more tools and pieces of software are incorporating artificial intelligence, businesses are using AI more and more to make work easier and more effective. You cannot escape artificial intelligence. Even within clinical psychology, artificial intelligence is already being used to deliver psychological therapy as part of mobile mental health apps as I discuss in my book Could Apps Improve Our Mental Health? Therefore, it is truly impossible to escape the impact of artificial intelligence on our profession. Moreover, I do realise that my responses are slightly biased in a way because I am not part of the ideal research sample. The aim of the study I later found out was to see if clinical psychology masters students’ opinions on whether this chatbot should be used in professional training. Nonetheless, it’s important that this chatbot should be researched with actual trainee clinical psychologists because they have the training, they have the professional experience and they have the clinical expertise to “truly” judge if this chatbot is remotely effective at developing the psychological assessment skills that qualified clinical psychologists need. Just a reflective note. Should Artificial Intelligence Be Used In Clinical Psychology Training? I’ll start off with what I like about this training chatbot. I appreciated how it responded very realistically, similar to how a client would in the real-world. It paused, conveyed nervousness and sometimes the client didn’t know how to answer the question I was kindly asking them. Also, I remember that the majority of answers involved the client picking at the fabric of their sleeve to show that they were nervous. This is similar to what a lot of clients would do in a real therapy session, so I will admit that it’s realistic in that sense. In addition, it was good how the chatbot was a little difficult to get to open up. Similar to working with some clients who you need to find a certain angle or line of questioning before everything starts to flow out of them and you can really start to get to the core of their mental health difficulties. However, I did have a few issues with the chatbot and this is why I do not believe artificial intelligence and chatbots should be used in clinical psychology training. Firstly, my issue is that whenever you do psychological assessments, besides from getting certain information that you need from clients, you need to use a range of therapeutic skills. For example, you need to show active listening, you need to respond to what the client is saying so they feel listened to, and you need to phrase your questions in non-judgmental and compassionate ways. However, the issue with using an AI chatbot is that because I only had 12-minutes to try and get as much information as possible, and I was having to type out each question. After a while, I stopped trying to respond carefully and considerately to what the chatbot was telling me. I was just typing in my questions and asking them. The chatbot wasn’t able to tell this wasn’t how I was actually meant to ask questions, because the study wasn’t looking at my ability to conduct an effective assessment. As a result, I don’t believe that the chatbot would be useful in developing the interpersonal skills that psychological assessments require, because it doesn’t get me to practice how you need to ask them in the real world. A second issue with the chatbot being used in training is that it doesn’t reflect the real world. In a real psychology assessment, even one on video call, I would be able to see the client, read their body language and hear their voice. As well as I would need to think about my body language a lot more because the client would be interpreting my actions too. Yet a chatbot isn’t a real person and whilst the text responses did give me some details about the client’s body language, it is one thing to read it and quite another to see it and then reformulate my questions and approach based on that body language feedback. As well as using a chatbot fails to get me to think about my own body language and how I am presenting myself to the client. These factors could all harm or help the therapeutic alliance to form, and if the client is uncomfortable round me then that will have a large negative impact on the assessment. Finally, I have a minor issue with how chatbots might be used in the training programmes. As an aspiring clinical psychologist, I want to do the doctorate of clinical psychology because I want to help people, I want to help make the world a better place and I want to improve lives. I can only achieve these aims if I am able to talk and interact with real clients, interacting with a chatbot will not help me. Therefore, I think there could be a perception issue within clinical psychology. If clinical training providers want to use chatbots as part of training then I think they will need to work on selling this idea to trainee clinical psychologists. They will need to sell them on the idea that chatbots are useful, that chatbots will not take away from their real-world experiences and that the trainees are still going to be getting their money’s or time’s worth out of the training programme. Since I believe in the future because of how advanced artificial intelligence is getting, I imagine anyone will be able to get or create a chatbot that can pretend to be a client with depression or anxiety. In this future, this chatbot might be nothing new so in an extreme case, why should people join a doctoral programme to become fully qualified when they can simply use the same artificial intelligence chatbot in the comfort of their own home? On the whole, I think there is a place for artificial intelligence in clinical psychology training, but I want us as a profession to be extremely careful. We work with humans so trainees must always get experience with other people before some AI chatbot that will never be as good or useful in the development of the key therapeutic skills that clinical psychologists need. What do you think? Should chatbots be used in training or not? I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Beyond The Lecture Volume 7: 20 Reflections on Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy.. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology Reference Whiteley, C. (2026) Beyond The Lecture Volume 7: 20 Reflections on Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy. CGD Publishing. England. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

If you’ve been a long-time listener of The Psychology World Podcast then you might be well aware that I flat out love anime and manga. Especially, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Go For It, Nakamura and Stranger on the Shore. Those are some amazing animes from Japan. For a while, and more to support my obsession or autistic special interest in them, I’ve been wondering about the clinical psychology or possible mental health implications, because in my experience autistic individuals and other nerdy people tend to be drawn to these niche interests. Of course, there is barely any research on the topic but I managed to find a fascinating study from Hajek and Konig (2024) that explores the relationship between interest in anime and manga and mental health, social connectedness and more. Therefore, by the end of this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll understand more about anime and manga, how interest in these forms of Japanese entertainment relate to mental health and other wellbeing outcomes and I’ll discuss possible implications for aspiring and qualified clinical and educational psychologists too. If you enjoy learning about social psychology, popular culture and mental health, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What are Anime and Manga for Psychologists? As I mentioned in the introduction to the blog post, the main source for this episode comes from Hajek and Konig (2024) and the study made use of over 5,000 people between the ages of 18 and 74 from Germany. As well as because I flat out love animes, like Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Go For It, Nakamura and Stranger on the Shore. Therefore, to ensure that everyone is on the same page about anime and manga we first need to define them. As a result, animes are animated films and series that come from Japan and mangas are Japanese comics, and whilst they come from Japan, they are increasingly becoming popular across the world. For example, Demonslayer, Dragon Ball, Pokémon and Sailor Moon are extremely popular animes and mangas across the world. As well as across the world, mangas and animes are giving rise to pop culture phenomena where people are becoming really interested and almost obsessed with different series. What are Some Reasons Why Mangas and Animes are Popular? Whilst I could go into the depths of how different animes and series gave rise to subgenres in different countries, I am not because this is a psychology podcast. Therefore, I want to briefly mention my take on mangas and animes from a more psychological point of view. Firstly, I think animes are brilliant for neurodivergent people because the issue I have with Western media is that if you want a genuinely good programme with great characters, gripping plot and great emotion, you need to commit to a 45-minute programme. I do not know a single piece of Western media that’s a 20-minute episode and can deliver the great characters, plot and emotion that I want. I cannot commit to a 45-minute episode. I am busy, 45-minutes is a long time to me and I have signs of ADHD so sitting still for 45-minutes to watch an episode isn’t my idea of fun. However, animes are brilliant because in a 20-minute episode, you get amazing characters, amazing plots and you get such in-depth emotion that I don’t see the point of watching a 45-minute programme. Of course, there are some anime episodes that stretch on for 45-minute or 50-minutes, like the season opening and ending of some of the later seasons of Demonslayer. Yet I don’t mind because I know they’re going to be brilliant. Therefore, one take on anime is that they are great for people with neurodivergence and busy people because they are so impactful and quick. For example, the boy love anime film “Stranger on the Shore” was only 53-minutes but because it had such a deep, emotional and profound impact on me that it was better than any 2-hour Western film. Another reason why I believe animes and mangas are very popular is because they deal with a lot of themes incredibly well. For example, Demonslayer deals with trauma, loss, grief and so many more relatable themes for a lot of young people. Such as, the reason why I flat out love Tokito from Demonslayer is because he was so traumatised as a kid, he lost everything and his larger story is so relatable and I can see parts of myself in Tokito and that’s what anime does very well compared to Western media. Another quick point I want to make is that animes and mangas allow individuals to explore topics, like sexuality, a lot better than Western media. Since if we look at the major LGBT+ programmes in the western world, you have Heated Rivalry and Red, White and Royal Blue, these are okay programmes but they focus on sex. I stopped watching both of those because I felt that these western programmes focused more on sex than actually building strong characters. As well as I flat out loved season 1 of Heartstopper because it was really sweet, it focused on the relationship and it focused on the characters. I wasn’t sure about the later seasons. Anyway, when you look at boy love animes and mangas, yes there are the sexual ones, but most of them are very much focused on characters, acceptance and figuring out who you are. They’re very relatable and it’s why I love Go For It Nakamura. It's so sweet watching these two boys fall in love. Nakamura is still clueless but he really cares about Hirose, he respects him and all his little quirks are so true to what teenage love is like. Like in episode 5 when Hirose and his friend are pretending to be a couple, I don't blame Nakamura for being jealous. If any of my teenage crushes were holding hands, flirting and showing interest in a guy that wasn't me, I would also be jealous. And it is that quirkiness of real teenage love that I love about this anime. My point is that these are some of the reasons why animes and mangas are very popular. Cultural Shifts in Anime and Manga Perception In addition, there are a lot of events around the world where anime and manga fans can come together, like in certain cinema events, comic conventions and people can cosplay so they dress up as some of their favourite anime characters. Back in September 2025 when the new Demonslayer Infinity Castle came out, I went to see the film in my Tokito t-shirt but there were some people who went in cosplay. It was fun to see. Interestingly, there has been a cultural shift in perceptions towards people who enjoy anime and manga in recent years, because in the past, someone who had a strong passion, or even an obsession, for Japanese things like anime and manga were seen as weird, nerdy and completely uncool. Yet in more recent years, anime and manga have gone mainstream and you can have more open conversations about it. For instance, last month, I was at a job interview and I ended up talking about Demonslayer is one of the interviewers and it led to a useful conversation about interests, being able to bond with young people and so on. I didn’t get the job but it wasn’t because of my niche interest in anime and manga. A few years ago, you would never ever dream of talking about such a nerdy topic in an interview. This cultural shift is one of the reasons why there’s been an increase in research interest into how people who enjoy anime and manga perceive themselves and their state of their health as well as their subjective wellbeing. Since some of the discriminatory or more judgemental Japanese terms used to describe someone who has a strong passion for manga and anime tends to refer to someone as socially isolated. A previous study found that non-fans of anime and manga typically saw someone who enjoyed anime and manga as creative, socially awkward, introverted and these people often find solace and refuge in their enjoyment of anime and manga as shown in Ryesen et al. (2016). Why Should Psychologists Care about Interest In Anime and Manga? Before we continue, there are two reasons why this is already of interest to aspiring and qualified psychologists. Firstly, if it’s true that people who are interested in anime and manga are at risk of becoming socially isolated and detached from reality because they find solace and refuge in their anime and manga. Then this raises a few questions for us. Why does the client feel the need to find a refuge, and if these are children, then we can question what is it about the school or home environment that makes the child feel the need to have a refuge. Also, whilst we should never deter someone from enjoying manga and anime because it is innocent and harmless, is there a need to create some form of social intervention to make the student feel more connected to their peers to make them less socially awkward? Those are just some thoughts. Secondly, if it is true again that interest in anime and manga is associated with social isolation, then seeing or hearing a child being interested in this topic might be a way to subtly refer them to some kind of support. Yet honestly, I am not sold on this idea because I’ve worked with SEN kids before who are passionate and obsessed with anime, some of them are socially awkward and socially isolated, others seriously are not. Then I have spoken with a lot of adults who are interested in anime and manga and again, they are not socially isolated and they are able to function fine in their everyday life. Therefore, I am not sure this relationship is cut and dry at the moment. Let’s continue. How Do People Treat Others Who Enjoy Manga and Anime? Another reason why this is interesting for psychologists is because there’s a range of factors, like the perceived introversion of people who enjoy anime and manga, that actually makes people want to distance themselves from individuals who enjoy anime and manga. Another factor is because non-fans perceive anime and manga as detached from reality, socially awkward and these factors influence prejudice towards people who enjoy anime and manga. This is important for psychologists to understand because it can lead to people making fun of others who enjoy anime and manga, and it can lead to maladaptive coping mechanisms to handle the stigma like concealing parts of their identity (Reysen et al. 2021). This was actually shown rather well in episode 2 of Go For it Nakamura, because in a part of this episode he was fighting hard to keep it a secret that he read boy love mangas because he didn’t want his classmates to know he was gay. Yet you could tell that in a lighhearted way this was taking a toll on him and it meant everything to him when his love interest Hirose (who he assumes is straight) tells him that he doesn’t need to hide it because different strokes for different people. Furthermore, research from Reysen et al. (2021) found that anime fans have some experience with bullying in the past and as they age, the bullying increased. Yet research also shows that increased interactions with other fans increases subjective wellbeing. So this highlights how someone might be being bullied because of their membership to a certain social group, but the membership of the social group can be a protective factor for their mental health. On the whole, researchers generally agree that whilst it’s understandable that there would be negative associations with enjoying anime and manga, there are also a lot of positive benefits of liking these forms of Japanese entertainment. Since as the anime and manga niches continue to grow around the world and their communities get larger, this will have a lot of social benefits. Even though, these larger communities do not automatically lead to the development and maintenance of relationships because cultural preferences in anime and manga foster connections with like-minded individuals according to the principle of homophily (McPherson et al. 2001). As a small side note, the idea of cultural preferences is very interesting because whilst I love the anime Go For It Nakamura, there are 2 questionable scenes in the original manga that left Western anime and manga fans to bully the author so badly that she had to quit social media. It’s been argued online that in Japanese cultures these scenes were fine because it’s culturally okay and there’s an understanding that these animes and mangas are just fiction and not real life, and online critics of the digital pile-on have argued that Western anime and manga fans just need to understand the difference between fiction and reality. Therefore, this is a useful reminder how just because one scene is okay in one culture, it doesn’t make it okay in another culture. What’s The Relationship Between Anime, Manga and Mental Health? The main aim of Hajek and Konig (2024)’s study was to investigate the relationship between someone’s interest in anime and manga and the association it had with their mental health, their subjective wellbeing, their joy and their social disconnectedness. The study found that having higher interest in anime and manga was associated with negative mental health as well as social disconnectedness. Although, a higher interest in manga and anime was also associated with increased joy and there are interesting differences between these findings depending on the independent variable that the study used. In addition, the association between having an increased interest in anime and manga and negative mental health outcomes, like increased loneliness as well as perceived social isolation, isn’t casual and it can be explained by a range of factors. For example, a person’s excessive immersion in anime or manga culture could contribute to social withdrawal or social isolation, and this is even more true if a person focuses on virtual relationships compared to real-life social connections (Williams et al. 2011). Therefore, it could be argued that because a person has prolonged engagement with fictional narratives then this might decrease their development of meaningful interpersonal relationships with others that do not like anime or manga, and this might contribute to feelings of isolation or loneliness. Another possible explanation for the negative mental health outcomes associated with manga and anime interest is the potential stigma for liking such a niche interest. This stigma might contribute to further marginalisation and increase the person’s feelings of not belonging to society (Reysen et al. 2016). As well as I will note that anime communities are very well known for being extremely toxic places and there can be immense elitism in fan groups (Plante et al. 2020) so this can be a problem for mental health as this elitism can contribute to feelings of exclusion even within the anime community. Moreover, there are certain themes in anime and manga that can represent or nihilistic content (Olivier 2007), like my former best friend was telling me about the manga “Suicide Boy” a few years ago and this entire manga is dedicated to a teenage boy determined to end his own life. Therefore, this content might exacerbate depressive symptoms or trigger anxiety symptoms (Forsythe and Mongrain 2023) in vulnerable people. I do want to take a moment here to mention that so far in this section, we are not exactly learning many good things about anime and manga. Yet later on in the episode, we will talk about the positives of manga and anime, and personally, I think this really comes back to you need to live your life with balance, purpose and variety. For example, as I talk about in my books, especially Social Psychology and Your Unshakable Self, if you want a resilient sense of self that will help you to protect your mental health then it’s a good idea to get your self-esteem and positive self-image from a range of internal and external sources. Internal sources are always going to be best but still. My point is that if your entire identity is wrapped up in anime and manga then it will end up decreasing your mental health for reasons that I talk about in my other books. This is why whilst I flat out love anime, especially Demonslayer and the boy love genre, I make sure that I get my sense of achievement, happiness and self-esteem from writing, running a business, podcasting, being with my friends and my family, doing good in my local community and so on. There is so much more to my identity than anime and manga. Anyway, moving on to the more positive aspects of the study’s results were that a greater interest in anime and manga was associated with a lower preference for solitude and this is interesting because people interested in anime and manga tend to be introverted. The explanation for these findings are that the anime and manga community provide people with opportunities for social interactions and socialise through online forums and conventions. As well as anime fans who cosplay have higher levels of extraversion than non-cosplayers (Reysen et al. 2018c). These social opportunities give people interested in anime and manga a chance to share their experiences and to develop long-lasting and meaningful relationships with others (Reysen et al., 2024). Hence, this means people can find fulfilment and satisfaction in the anime and manga communities so they don’t desire solitude and the benefits of these communities can be used to explain why interest in manga was associated with lower objective social isolation. Building upon this, having a strong interest in anime and manga and having increased subjective wellbeing and joy outcomes can also be explained by a range of factors. For instance, if you engage in the fictional narratives of mangas and animes then it can provide individuals with some escapism and this can help them cope with the stressors of daily life, and over time, this could improve subjective well-being. As well as similar to what I mentioned earlier, a lot of the stories in anime and manga stress the important themes of resilience, friendship and personal growth (Born 2010; Cooper-Chen 2011). As a result, these themes can inspire viewers and readers, especially if they strongly identify with their favourite character which anime and manga fans typically do (Reysen et al. 2022b), to tackle their own challenges with improved determination and optimism (Ramasubramanian and Kornfield 2012). For example, I really strongly identified with the side character Tokito in Demonslayer and at the time when I was watching Season 4 (the season that he is a main feature in) I was dealing with my anorexia and my insecure attachment and his story, his feelings and his own trauma really did inspire me in ways that I never thought were possible. Tokito led me to research new ideas, write new books and it was brilliant how the character inspired me to deal with my difficulties in new ways. In fact, my book Your Unshakable Self only happened because of a quote that Tokito says in the English subtitles of the anime. In addition, one of the most powerful benefits of anime and manga is that the community gives people with a higher interest in this form of entertainment a sense of belonging as well as acceptance (Reysen et al., 2024). Since anime and manga communities are vast and there are entire online forums, websites and pockets of social media that are dedicated to fans sharing their experiences and interests without fearing judgment from others (Krishnamurti et al., 2023). This can lead to higher interest in anime and manga improving mental health and joy scores because it is the mutual understanding as well as camaraderie that makes people feel good and less alone. Personally, because I love Tokito as a character so much, I follow a few Tokito-focused twitter accounts and sometimes I’m flicking through the posts and I go “oh, you would never ever be able to get away with saying that in person”, but these anime and manga communities provide a safe, accepting and non-judgemental space. A final positive outcome associated with higher interest in anime and manga was how a higher interest in anime was associated with higher levels of subjective wellbeing but there was no such significant association for higher level in manga. As someone who is starting to watch a lot of anime, I find this really interesting because I love anime and manga. When I read the last five volumes of the Demonslayer manga, I was really hooked, interested and it was flat out amazing and I got the same feelings when I watched the Demonslayer Infinity Castle film, so these are interesting results. The researchers proposed that one possible reason for these findings could be that an interest in reading manga might reflect a more solitary activity compared to watching anime. Since watching anime can be done with friends or in social communities, like some cinemas host anime events. Another explanation might be that streaming services have made it easier for individuals to consume anime alone, but we also know that streaming services could also be used to share anime for friends. I definitely agree with that idea because to be honest, it’s only been in the last two weeks that I’ve really been watching anime alone. When I used to live in Canterbury, I watched anime with my friends and my ex-partner, and me and my ex-boyfriend watched anime together when I was back here living in Medway. Watching anime really can be done as a social activity. These results are further reinforced by the findings of Reysen et al. (2018b) because the researchers found that cosplayers reported higher levels of wellbeing compared to non-cosplayers. This might suggest that for anime and manga to have a benefit for mental health that it’s important that the person is fully immersed within their hobby, but we also know from earlier results that that is unlikely to be true. Reysen et al. (2024) is another study that supports these results because their study highlights how fandom, the social component of fan identity, predicts psychological wellbeing. In other words, the study found that fan friendships mediate the association between psychological wellbeing and fandom identification. As a result, Hajek and Konig (2024) assumed that the social aspect of real life interactions that are associated with high interest in anime and the media consumption associated with it might lead to higher levels of subjective well-being. For me, where my mind goes in terms of applying this information for aspiring and qualified psychologists is two-fold. Firstly, as an aspiring or qualified educational psychologist, it’s important that we encourage schools to allow students to follow their passions and give them spaces to really connect. We know from research that especially after the COVID lockdowns that children are struggling with communication and social skills in general, and even more so in schools and colleges. This means that we need to come up with interventions, new ideas and new ways to provide students with rewarding social interactions where they can connect and form communities with their peers. If you’re working in a school and you learn that some students have an interest in anime and manga, then suggest that the school, the librarian or someone provides the students with a space to come together, connect and form those social relationships to improve their mental health. Secondly, if you’re an aspiring or qualified clinical psychologist then it might be an idea to suggest that your client joins an anime or manga community. If you learn that your client has an interest in this form of entertainment, then you could share with them ways to connect with others online. Of course, the main aim of therapy or counselling will always be to address the developmental and maintaining factors of the condition and help them develop in-person, real-life relationships, but online connections might be a good bridging idea for a little while. It allows the client to develop their social skills, talk to like-minded individuals and it can improve their mental health whilst you work on other things. Just a thought. What are the Strengths and Limitations of Hajek and Konig (2024)? Additionally, just as a little critical thinking section, it was good that the study used established and validated tools to quantify the outcome measures, so this increased the credibility of the study. Also, I really like how the study used a large sample size to give them a lot of data points to support their conclusions with and their quota-based online sample was representative in terms of age, sex and federal state in Germany. Yet there are some issues with the study. For instance, the study might not have been completely representative because the study was only available in the German language and because the study used a cross-sectional design, they cannot establish directionality. Such as, they cannot tell if it is a change in loneliness and social disconnection that causes an increased interest in anime and manga, or if an increased interest in manga causes social disconnection. There were some other issues with the study mentioned in the research paper, but I want to mention another issue that the researchers did not. In the anime community, Germany is a bit of a strange case because when it comes to German voiceovers according to an ex of mine, there are basically only four voice actors who do the anime dubs in German. This means that the same four people basically appear in every single anime in Germany, and we also have to bear in mind that the German language, which is very similar to a lot of languages, is still different to languages like English. Therefore, I suppose the point that I am trying to make here is that because this study was only done in one language, in one country on one continent, I would be very interested to see how these results replicate or change in other cultures. As well as I understand that anime and manga are very big in the United States because after its original cinema run, Demonslayer Infinity Castle did a second cinema run in the USA and this was hailed as a massive success. Overall, I just think it would be interesting to see how these results be replicated if done in other cultures that have stronger or weaker national interest in anime and manga. Clinical Psychology Conclusion As someone with a high level of interest in anime and manga, especially Demonslayer, Deathnote and Go For It Nakamura, this episode was so much fun to put together. Since I have heard a lot of prejudice and dislike aimed towards people and students who like anime and manga, so it was fun to look at the truth behind how high levels of interest in these forms of Japanese media can impact mental health. As a result, in this episode, we looked at the relationship between having an interest in anime and manga and how it impacted social disconnectedness, mental health, joy and subjective wellbeing scores. We learnt that having a higher interest in anime and manga was associated with negative outcomes, like decreased mental health and increased social disconnection, but there were positive outcomes too. For example, higher interest in anime and manga was associated with improved wellbeing and feelings of joy. I feel like this entire episode highlights the importance of looking at behaviour and mental health in a very nuanced way, because it’s clear that anime and manga does harm mental health in some people but in others, it improves it. Why? This reminds me of my book, Social Media Psychology, because social media isn’t good or bad for mental health. It’s all about how you use it because people who engage in active social media use like commenting, sharing and engaging with posts, these people tend to report better mental health outcomes. Yet people who engage in passive social media use so they aren’t liking, they aren’t commenting and they’re only scrolling on social media, they report negative mental health outcomes. I have a feeling that interest in anime and manga might be something similar. Nonetheless, now that we have this research, we can expand on it. The main problem that the relationship between mental health and anime and manga have at the moment is there is just next to no research on it. This means that further studies, that must include cross-cultural comparisons, must be done. Also, future research can look at different constructs within the anime and manga communities, like how the construct of fandom “I love the manga community” differs from fanship “I love manga” in relation to impact on mental health, and the researchers Hajek and Konig floated other ideas for future studies too. Now if you excuse me, I have some anime to watch myself. I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Hajek, A., & König, H. H. (2024). Interest in anime and manga: relationship with (mental) health, social disconnectedness, social joy and subjective well-being. Journal of Public Health, 1-11. Ramasubramanian, S., & Kornfield, S. (2012). Japanese anime heroines as role models for US youth: Wishful identification, parasocial interaction, and intercultural entertainment effects. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 5(3), 189-207. Reysen, S., Baring, R., Plante, C., Sarmiento, P. J., Samia, C., Bonus, B., & Lumanlan, P. (2022). A brief report on sex differences in identification and engagement with anime. Phoenix Papers, 5, 36-46. Reysen, S., Plante, C. N., Chadborn, D., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2021). Transported to another world: The psychology of anime fans. Stephen Reysen. Reysen, S., Plante, C. N., Chadborn, D., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2022). Intragroup helping as a mediator of the association between fandom identification and self-esteem and well-being. Leisure/loisir, 46(3), 321-345. Reysen, S., Plante, C. N., Chadborn, D., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2021). Transported to another world: The psychology of anime fans. Stephen Reysen. Reysen, S., Plante, C. N., Chadborn, D., Roberts, S. E., Gerbasi, K. C., Miller, J. I., & Ray, A. (2018). A brief report on the prevalence of self-reported mood disorders, anxiety disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and autism spectrum disorder in anime, brony, and furry fandoms. Phoenix Papers, 3, 64-75. Reysen, S., Plante, C. N., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2018). A brief report on differences in big five personality dimensions between anime fan cosplayers and non-cosplayers. Phoenix Papers, 3, 46-53. Reysen, S., Plante, C. N., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2024). Social activities mediate the relation between fandom identification and psychological well-being. Leisure Sciences, 46(5), 681-701. Reysen, S., Plante, C. N., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2024). Social activities mediate the relation between fandom identification and psychological well-being. Leisure Sciences, 46(5), 681-701. Reysen, S., Plante, C. N., Roberts, S. E., Gerbasi, K. C., Mohebpour, I., & Gamboa, A. (2016). Pale and geeky: Prevailing stereotypes of anime fans. The Phoenix Papers, 2(1), 78-103. Reysen, S., Plante, C., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2022). Empirically testing the veracity of otaku stereotypes. Phoenix Papers, 5(1), 210-233. Reysen, S., Plante, C., Roberts, S., & Gerbasi, K. (2018). " Coming Out" as an Anime Fan: cosplayers in the anime fandom, fan disclosure, and well-being. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.