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Whilst psychology students and psychology professionals often heard about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and other forms of individual psychotherapy, we don’t often hear about couples therapy. Leaving a lot of people interested in psychology in the dark about what is couples therapy, how it works and how approaches does it use to bring around the therapeutic change needed for the relationship to work. In this clinical psychology podcast episode, we explore how does couples therapy work, what psychological approaches does it use and more. If you want to learn more about psychological therapies, relationships and the therapeutic process, you’ll love today’s episode. This podcast episode has been sponsored by Psychology Of Relationships: The Social Psychology of Friendships, Romantic Relationships And More. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley How Does Couples Therapy Work? As we know from previous podcast episodes, the entire point of therapy is to help improve lives, decrease psychological stress and help a person with the difficulties they’re experiencing. That is the general basis of all therapeutic work. Yet the main difference between individual and couples therapy is that couples therapy introduces three parties into the therapy. Instead of the traditional two, being the client and the therapists. Since couples therapy represents the two clients and the therapist. This introduces extra complexity. Especially as the couples therapist has to deal with not only their own therapeutic alliance with each of the clients but the relationship between the two clients as well. Which if they’ve come to couples therapy are in a very bad shape and are normally negative towards each other. Also, it is worth noting that couples come to therapy because they are highly conflicting views on the same experiences and one of them or both is highly distressed about the relationship. As well as it might sound sad but it isn’t weird or odd for one client to be more hopeful or positive about the relationship and wanting to seek out therapy compared to the other one. What Happens In Couples Therapy? When it comes to how the therapy works, most couples therapy is done together where you have both parts of the couple in the therapy sessions together. Then contacting or seeing one member of the couple alone is sometimes needed when extra information about the relationship is required by the therapist. Yet it is always done with the permission of the other person. Although, sometimes a single person does couples therapy to help force a change in their relationship at home because the other part of the couple doesn’t want to attend therapy themselves. Which I think is a shame but it is great that this part of the couple still wants to try therapy in a less common but still useful way. In addition, if we dive into the details about couples therapy, we need to understand that couples therapists ask a lot of questions about a range of topics. Including some questions about each partner’s family origins and other questions that challenge their beliefs as well as their perspectives. Of course, it has to be stressed that therapists never ever take sides in arguments yet they might call out a person on the basis of their behaviour contributing to relationship problems. Since relational science has firmly demonstrated that one person alone doesn’t cause a relationship to experience problems, it is always both partners. Everyone in a relationship has a role to play in a problem. As a result, the entire point of couples therapy is to bring partners closer together or, if unfortunately needed, to intelligently end the relationship. This is done by the process of making the partners learn compassion for themselves and their partner, resolving dilemmas, rekindling the feelings that made them attracted to each other in the first place as well as helping the partners to develop constructive ways to manage their own negative feelings. Furthermore, similar to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, in-between therapy sessions, couples are asked (and they really should do these things) to practice the skills, insights and behaviours they’ve learnt in therapy at home. Since something I always remember about therapy is that therapy is never a passive process, a therapist is more of a tool-giver instead a magical fairy. In other words, the therapist can give the clients all the tools they can but unless the clients want to change, the therapy will sadly fail. Therapeutic Approaches In Couples Therapy As psychology students and professionals, we are definitely not strangers to different approaches to the exact same problem, and most of the time there is a “better” approach. For example, it is easy to argue based on the empirical evidence that CBT is better for depression and anxiety for example, compared to the systemic approach. Couples therapy follows a similar idea because there are several approaches that a therapist could take when helping clients. Also, these approaches have some level of empirical support behind them. However, whilst these different theories take different approaches to relationships, they all share the goal of improving a couple’s functioning and they seek to make a relationship a source of happiness and meaning for a couple. As well as similar to other therapists, couples therapists are normally trained in more than one of these approaches so they can be flexible and draw on different ideas from different approaches. We’ll look at three approaches to couples therapy now. Emotion-Focused Therapy This form of psychotherapy focuses on helping a couple restore a couple’s emotional and physical bond viewing this bond as the best deliverer of change in a relationship. The therapy draws on attachment theory to encourage a couple to express and access whatever lies under their anger or feelings of alienation. Then it is this revelation or disclosure of their vulnerabilities that becomes a very powerful means for making the other partner responsive. Following this and with the contact being restored in the relationship, the couples have a renewable source of comfort and this allows them to solve whatever problems they face, together. The Gottman Method Anyone who’s read into the field of relationship psychology is definitely familiar with Gottman because he designed this method and therapy. The therapy focuses on emphasising the outsize power of negative emotions in harming a relationship, stressing the importance of bids for connection and response from each other, a couple’s vital need to repair the damage done by them missing their bids and the value of sharing their thoughts and feelings. Gottman called these a couple’s inner worlds. Through this method the partners learn how to show their love, affection and respect for each other as a way of building closeness and make something Gottman called “love maps” that reflect the partner’s psychological world. Imago Relationship Therapy Our final therapy is certainly one I had never heard of before but it’s interesting to know that the theme of this therapy is “getting the love you want”. It basically focuses on enabling the partners to fulfil the ideal type of love they developed early in life through attachment to a caregiver. This can be thought of as the ideal type of love between a mother and a child. To achieve this each partner takes turns listening and talking, mirroring or reflecting what the other one saying to show that they’re listening and they’re understanding what the other is talking about. Then this has the added bonus of validating the other person’s feelings and perspective. In other words, I think the entire point of all these therapies is making sure that each partner does feel understood, listened to and valued. What’s The Difference Between Couples Counselling and Couples Therapy? For our final section, we need to understand that whilst couples counselling and therapy has a lot of overlap, there are immense differences too. For instance, couples counselling focuses on a single current problem between each member of the couple and this tends to be done in six sessions or less. Whereas couples therapy is a lot more involved and it is a deep exploration into the roots of current problems with the full intent of repairing the dysfunctional patterns of interaction that the couple has. As well as this has a lot to do with undoing the emotional damage each partner has inflicted on each other during the course of the relationship. In addition, this normally involves each partner helping the other to understand their needs so each partner knows what they want and how to support the other person as well. Normally couples therapy involves an average of 12 sessions but as everyone knows relationships are dynamic, complex and they really depend on the goals of the couple going for therapy. Since when dealing with problems like infidelity, this requires a lot more work by the partners and the therapist and require some time. Yeah I can understand how solving infidelity problems can be tougher than others. Relationship Psychology Conclusion Couples therapy is something I hope none of us ever have to go through or need in the first place. Yet as I’ve mentioned before being a psychology student or professional doesn’t make us immune to the topics we learn about and love. Therefore, if you do need couples therapy, then I’m saying unofficially go for it, it might be the very thing that saves a relationship you treasure. However, we now know that couples therapy is about improving feelings of closeness, feelings and generally making partners more understanding towards each other. As well as tackling the dysfunctional patterns of interactions that happen inside the relationship. Couples therapy can be a great area to work in with challenges, fights and domestic arguments from time to time. To say two days are never alike is probably an immense understatement but it is what makes our profession so much fun to learn about, study and want to work in so we can improve lives and help people. I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Psychology Of Relationships: The Social Psychology of Friendships, Romantic Relationships And More. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology Reference Beasley, C. C., & Ager, R. (2019). Emotionally focused couples therapy: A systematic review of its effectiveness over the past 19 years. Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work, 16(2), 144-159. Cross, L. B. (2013). Couples therapy. Routledge. Garanzini, S., Yee, A., Gottman, J., Gottman, J., Cole, C., Preciado, M., & Jasculca, C. (2017). Results of Gottman method couples therapy with gay and lesbian couples. Journal of marital and family therapy, 43(4), 674-684. Hewison, D., Casey, P., & Mwamba, N. (2016). The effectiveness of couple therapy: Clinical outcomes in a naturalistic United Kingdom setting. Psychotherapy, 53(4), 377. Clulow, C. (2018). Sex, attachment and couple psychotherapy: Psychoanalytic perspectives. Routledge. Gehlert, N. C., Schmidt, C. D., Giegerich, V., & Luquet, W. (2017). Randomized controlled trial of imago relationship therapy: Exploring statistical and clinical significance. Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy, 16(3), 188-209. Johnson, S. M., Hunsley, J., Greenberg, L., & Schindler, D. (1999). Emotionally focused couples therapy: Status and challenges. Clinical psychology: Science and practice, 6(1), 67. Rajaei, A., Daneshpour, M., & Robertson, J. (2019). The effectiveness of couples therapy based on the Gottman method among Iranian couples with conflicts: A quasi-experimental study. Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy, 18(3), 223-240. Rathgeber, M., Bürkner, P. C., Schiller, E. M., & Holling, H. (2019). The efficacy of emotionally focused couples therapy and behavioral couples therapy: A meta‐analysis. Journal of marital and family therapy, 45(3), 447-463. Schmidt, C. D., & Gelhert, N. C. (2017). Couples therapy and empathy: An evaluation of the impact of imago relationship therapy on partner empathy levels. The Family Journal, 25(1), 23-30. 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.

Haters, the media and bigots tell everyone that the LGBT+ community are a threat and danger to children. But this is a lie. The LGBT+ community are not a danger to children, any more than heterosexuals are a danger to children. In this social psychology podcast episode, we’ll explore the two biggest myths about the LGBT+ community and why homosexuality does not link to paedophilia. If you like learning about LGBT+ experiences, the social psychology of prejudice and discrimination, you’ll love today’s episode. Note: please note that for the rest of the podcast episode I’m going to use the terms gay and LGBT+ interchangeably and to mean the same thing. I’m doing that because saying gay is so much easier to type on the blog post and say on the podcast, so if I offend you I’m sorry. Today’s 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Why We Need To Talk About This? Back before my friends and others knew I was gay and because the area I live in, I heard a hell of a lot of homophobia and some of that hate was spreading the lie that gay people love to rape children. That was actually what a very dear person to me said once, and as you can imagine I do not talk to that person anyone. And a lot of people from my childhood just believed that this was truth. They truly believed that gay adoption, gay people having children was wrong because they truly believed in the lies that gay people are paedophiles. I won’t lie or pretend to be strong for you, but this was extremely hurtful and damaging to me. In addition, you only have to look at the USA with over 400 anti-LGBT+ bills being introduced by Republican-led legislates across the country. Also, I remember the bill banning Drag Acts in front of children being done in Tennessee and the reason given on the news for that Bill was to stop children getting exposed to corrupting, sinful and paedophilic content. That is a lie because if we think about pantomimes. I always remember Aladdin and Widow Twanky. He was nationally loved and he was part of our culture at Christmas time, but he was a man addressing up as a woman and the entire world had no problem with him being a woman in a Christmas panto that was watched by thousands of children. Hypocritic much? Also, of course this legal action doesn’t just stop at drag shows. Below is a list of other activities that are now illegal in some US states because of this dangerous lie: · Gay story time · Books containing LGBT+ characters · Criminalising gender-affirming care · Criminalising healthcare to transgender people · Banning transgender youth from competing · Banning books that even reference homosexuality in passing There was a lot of silly points being banned and made illegal at the moment. Another negative consequence of this myth can be seen when the American musician Kid Rock was shooting Bud Light cans because the company “dared” to have a partnership with a transgender TikTok influencer. This is bad because it isn’t really a metaphor, it is basically saying that shooting transgender people is okay and it is only one step removed from actually doing that in real life. Anyway, this myth that LGBT+ people are a threat to children is engrained in our culture and it is a complete and utter lie that drives up hate, persecution and attacks against the LGBT+ community that care for the safety of children just as much as heterosexuals. This has a lot to do with politics and how anti-LGBT+ groups and politicians are stoking the flames and inventing “culture wars” that don’t exist to get the public to believe in these lies. And I think they have worked too perfectly for too long. So what’s the truth behind these lies? Why The LGBT+ Community Aren’t Paedophiles? All in all it is a very common lie and myth that “gay” means the same as paedophile. Since whenever the news talk about priests and scout leaders raping young boys, people think “gay”. Whenever people think about transwomen, they think about overly sex obsessed men that just want to get access to women’s bathrooms and toilets so they can interfere with them. Again both of those are lies. And my personal thoughts on the whole “transwomen are just sexual predators” lie is that if a man wants to harm and interfere with a woman. He isn’t going to go through the extremely long, heartbreaking and traumatic experience of getting a medical diagnosis, applying to change his birth certificate and then dressing up as a woman. A male sexual predator will just attack, harm and interfere with a woman without changing their gender. Transwomen are not sexual predators. The truth is paedophiles are almost exclusively straight white males that are attracted to and prey on innocent children. The idea of gay people being attracted to children and praying on them is a disgusting lie that is just peddled out by straight white men to deflect on their own group. And the very idea that gay and transgender people are just sexual beings that cannot control themselves is just wrong, a lie and seriously offensive. At the end of the day, gay people and trans people use the bathroom like everyone else. We want to do our business and leave and that is it. Why Homosexuality And Transgenderism Are Not A Choice? This is a massive myth that I laugh about a lot because I’ve seen it in so much homophobia in June 2023 alone, but there seems to be this utter myth and lie that being gay is a choice. And there’s a myth that if you expose children to LGBT+ content, you’ll make them gay. You won’t. Just like how if you expose a gay person to straight content, you won’t make them straight. Since no one “turns” a person gay or straight. It is simply how they are. This fear and myth becomes from the idea and is the driving force behind much anti-gay legalisation, when in reality exposure doesn’t make a child or anyone gay. In actual fact, we have little control over who we become in our lives and a child suffering from gender dysphoria can’t simply “shut it off” nor can they pretend to feel like their gender at birth without experiencing severe and extreme mental health difficulties. And again, this all leads to suicide in the end. Since a study by Toomey et al. (2018) found that over half of all trans male teenagers attempted suicide and the national statistic for the USA when it comes to trans suicide is 41%. That is outrageously high. And the not-so-funny thing about the bigots and the anti-trans and anti-gay activists. They always bang on about how important parental control and child protection and they want to prevent and prosecute parents that they are keeping to help their child transition. But this hate and prevention and prosecution of parents that are trying to support their children is actually increasing suicides across the world. Meaning they aren’t protecting children and I will say it point blank. These anti-trans activists are killing children. I don’t care if it’s indirectly but these anti-trans activists are killing children. Social Psychology and LGBT+ Psychology Conclusion I have to admit that this podcast episode might have taken a minorly dark turn towards the end but this is life. This is what millions of gay people and transgender people have to experience each and every day. Also, I was talking with a trans male friend a few months ago about homophobia and these exact myths and he said that we have to laugh about the stupidity of them or we would just cry about them. I agree. These myths are so ingrained in our society, so engrained in the media and so engrained into the minds of heterosexuals. That it is funny just how powerful and influential these lies are because they are based in delusions about a community most people have never met. Because the trans community is so, so, so tiny. I’ll wrap up with this podcast episode by saying that I am extremely grateful that you wonderful readers and listeners have been enjoying and supporting these podcast episodes. I have received some hate, I have had people unsubscribed from my email list and I know that I have lost podcast listeners because I’ve dared to cover these topics. But all these things that I have been talking about this month needed to be said because I want people to know the truth, I want people to realise that gay people aren’t predators and I want people to realise some of the hardships that they experience on a daily experience. And I can sum up why in two sentences from two memes I’ve seen on Instagram this past month. “I don’t put on Pride flags up to tell people who’s in my bed. I put them up so the family across the street knows they’re safe,” “Pride isn’t about turning straight kids into queer kids. Pride is about not turning queer kids into dead kids,” 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Social Psychology and LGBT+ Psychology References Toomey, R. B., Syvertsen, A. K., & Shramko, M. (2018). Transgender adolescent suicide behavior. Pediatrics, 142(4). https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/understanding-the-erotic-code/202304/silence-of-the-trans 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.

The question about whether or not a client should see a male or female therapist? Always plays on their mind because some clients strongly believe they should only see a same-sex or opposite-sex therapist when they go to psychotherapy. Yet research shows that the success of therapy doesn’t depend on the therapist’s gender as much as people think, and in reality the therapeutic alliance is a lot more important. In this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll look at why the gender of a therapist rarely matters, in what cases it could be important and why the therapeutic alliance is a lot more important for therapeutic success. If you enjoy clinical psychology, psychotherapy and learning more about therapists, you’ll love today’s episode. Today’s episode has been sponsored by Clinical Psychology Reflections Volume 3. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Why Do Clients Have Gender Preferences For Therapists? This is definitely something that I find really interesting about clients because sometimes they prefer to see the opposite sex as therapists because if they attended a same-sex school then they might be competitive in the presence of same-sex peers. Or they might want to only see same-sex therapists because we need to remember that often clients are already embarrassed and ashamed unfortunately for being apparently “messed up” as so many clients put it. Therefore, they might prefer to talk to a same-sex therapist because it might be less embarrassing for them. Equally, you might find that because of past events in the client’s life, they are more comfortable talking about certain topics with certain genders. For example, if a woman had major depression and she believed it was mainly caused by the horrific sexism she faced at work then she might want to say to a woman instead of a man. And that’s okay. On the other hand, I know if I ever decide to go to therapy for my past, I would most likely probably want a male therapist because I find it easier to talk about this stuff with men, considering it was a male friend that made me start talking about what’s happened to me in the past. However, this is all subjective preference and this is what a client feels. All these preferences are valid but they are certainly not the be-all and end-all of psychological therapy. So what makes good therapy? What Makes Good Therapy? Time and time again therapists (regardless of their age, gender and therapeutic model) all agree that the strongest predictor of whether a therapy will work or not is the therapeutic alliance. This is the strength of the connection between the therapist and the client that is very much built on acceptance, respect for each other and empathy. This is supported by tons of research and a lot of meta-analyses have found that all the studies show the same general direction of the relationship. The stronger the alliance, the higher chance the therapy has of working. Whereas when studies look at gender preference and therapy outcomes, the results are nowhere near as clear-cut. Since some studies show when a gender match happens, the therapy is more likely to work but other studies don’t. However, the real problem with this gender question is that the question is basically moot at this point in time. Since it doesn’t really matter what a client wants in terms of gender. Not only because public mental health services are so stretched, clients are thrown to certain therapists just to try and get through the backlog, but because clinical psychology itself is such a female-dominated workforce. What Shapes A Client’s Gender Preference? In all honesty, there isn’t much research on how many clients set out to start therapy with a certain gender of a therapist in mind. One study from Counselling Psychology Quarterly found that 60% of men don’t have a preference and the rest were basically 20% men, 20% women. There was no real difference found. Therefore, it seems that whatever shapes gender preference for a therapist is very individualistic but there are some common themes. For instance, trauma is an important factor because a lot of abused women are abused by men so a female therapist makes sense. Equally, men prefer male therapists because of the outdated and extremely pointless ideology about “you can’t look weak in front of a woman”. Talking about your feelings, your pain and your difficulties doesn’t make you look weak. And whilst this is all perfectly valid, clients need to know or be aware that these ideas and preferences about a therapist might be limiting their search. All because of ideas and notions that will be proved false later on in therapy. Why Could Gender Preferences Be Worth Listening To? Now that we’re looked at why gender preferences towards therapists aren’t a good idea, we now need to look at if there are any circumstances in which they actually are needed or should be listened to. Therefore, trauma is obviously one example because women who have been abused by men are a lot more comfortable with female therapists and this makes for a better bond. However, most of the time, gender preferences need to be challenged even more so when they are based in gender stereotypes. Like the idea of men not being able to show emotion in forward of women. That seriously needs to be challenged. Overall, finding a good therapist that works for a client will take time and some clients need to try a few different ones to find a therapist that works for them. It doesn’t mean that these therapists are bad, it is just that we are social creatures and we all need to find people we “gel” with at times. Especially when talking about something so personal. If you’re a clinical psychologist then this is important to be aware of that clients might have a gender preference that will probably need to be challenged as part of therapy. If you’re a client listening to this then just know that the gender of your therapist doesn’t matter at all. It is all about the relationship you have with them and that will ultimately predict whether your therapy will be a success or you both need to go back to the drawing board. I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Clinical Psychology Reflections Volume 3. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology Reference https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/therapy/does-a-therapists-gender-matter 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.

Many LGBT+ young people find an adolescence that isn’t filled with joy, sexual firsts and being themselves with the people important to them. Many LGBT+ youths face an adolescence of fear, hiding who they are and trying to manage the constant harm of anti-gay speech and actions in the world they live in. In this developmental psychology podcast episode, we explore the harm and impact this has on young people and most importantly what they can do to heal, thrive and recover an adolescence that was basically stolen from them because of the world we live in. If you enjoy learning about developmental psychology, mental health and LGBT+ experience, you’ll love today’s episode. Note: please note that for the rest of the podcast episode I’m going to use the terms gay and LGBT+ interchangeably and to mean the same thing. I’m doing that because saying gay is so much easier to type on the blog post and say on the podcast, so if I offend you I’m sorry. Today’s 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Why LGBT+ People Don’t Get Access To The Same Adolescence Heterosexual Peers Do? Let us imagine the typical adolescence for a moment. It is filled with excitement and firsts. Our first crushes that we giggle and laugh about with our friends, we have our first kiss and sexual experiences and we learn that can be who we want to be with everyone that matters to us no matter who we are. Overall, in adolescence, people don’t suffer from constant hateful messaging about the wrongness about how they feel and they don’t have this hate constantly swimming about inside them. In addition, from developmental psychology, we all understand the sheer importance of adolescence in the development of a person. Since our identity gets formed here as well as we’re now starting to understand that adolescence does actually stretch into a person’s early twenties. Also, looking beyond the puberty factors and the other physiological changes that happens to a person during this time, there are immense social and psychological parts of this teenage development too. On the whole, all teenagers have so much developmental potential and these social and psychological changes can be immensely powerful in forming a person. Unless something massive, evil and awful gets in the way. This happens to gay people all the time in adolescence and I hate it. It is disgusting and we need to change this. How Many LGBT+ People Have a Negative Adolescence? As you found out during your own adolescence, all of our romantic and sexual identities are a critical part of teenage development, and this is normally a wonderful experience for heterosexuals. They aren’t judged, they aren’t condemned and they can enjoy the experience. Of course, like everyone, mistakes will be made and hearts will be broken but they aren’t hated for it. On the other hand, when gay people want to develop their romantic and sexual identity, this becomes very complicated because we realise that our interests are different from everyone else’s and we live in a society that thinks these interests should be stopped outright. Therefore, many gay people grew up in a social world filled to the brim with both direct as well as indirect messages about how wrong, sinful and flat out disgustingly weird they were because they weren’t heterosexual. Of course, I will admit that times are extremely slowly changing, but the fact is we still live in a world where anti-LGBT+ bias and heterosexism (two things I spoke about in the last podcast episode) are embedded into the very fabric of society. Proof of this can easily be seen in the past and present religious belief systems, how humans and relationships are played out in the media and the sheer amount of current and past anti-gay legalisation. What Impact Does Growing Up In An Anti-Gay World Have On LGBT+ Adolescence? With many gay people growing up in this social and cultural context, we flat out don’t experience the typical adolescence that heterosexual people do. Due to we simply aren’t able to live safe and full lives at this age. And on a personal note, I will admit that I can even take years after typical adolescence for this feeling that you are safe and able to live full lives. That is just a sad truth of the world. As a result, many gay people experience an adolescence filled with major disruptions to our healthy development so this results in two main outcomes for child development. Firstly, gay people suffer from the trauma of chronic shame caused by anti-gay biases. Secondly, gay people miss out on integral psychosocial developmental experiences. And I don’t know if I was going to get personal in this podcast episode, because I will admit because of life circumstances, I do need to be extremely careful what I say. However, I will admit that I do suffer from trauma and at times I do have extremely negative automatic thoughts that do bias how I look at the world. I am very reluctant to talk to anything about my experiences, life or just general love life things you talk about with friends because what if? What if they abuse me? What if they hurt me? What if they beat me? All normal things that a lot of gay people can relate with because this is just what happens when you’ve experienced a lot of anti-gay abuse in your adolescence. In addition, I would have loved, absolutely loved to just have one or two experiences during my adolescence. I admit there were probably one or two chances where I might have had a shot to experience something, but again I wasn’t safe. I did not feel safe enough to do anything or try anyone, because what if? And like I said back in the coming out podcast episode, your safety is the most important thing ever. Don’t do something if it risks the risk to your life. So I didn’t have any experience. Overall, the impact of this negative adolescence is very simple and heartbreaking. In the years after coming out, we all find that we are stunted, underdeveloped and we are sort of lost in comparison to our heterosexual peers. A lot of gay people wish they could be adolescents again so they could have a better experience and they could develop the skills needed for healthy relationships and dating experience that we all need as adults. Personally, I completely agree with this finding because I know I simply don’t have the headspace or the knowledge about how to date right now. And I know I probably need therapy to help get over some of the things that have been done and said to me in the past. The clearest example was when a straight friend of mine said “he cared about how I was” earlier in the year and that just confused me more than I ever know how to put into words. Because I later found out that I believed that because I think I am nothing and I don’t know why anyone would care about me deeply. Again, something nothing short of therapy could help me with. So how could solve this problem? How Could LBGT+ People Get A Second Adolescence? When gay people move from an anti-gay adolescence into adulthood they experience something known as a Second Adolescence and this is 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. Everyone goes through this differently but it is made up of two critical sections. Firstly, a person has to address the experiences that their younger self missed out on. This includes gaining missed experiences (in the form of first kisses, dates, relationships, sex and more. As well as acknowledging what it means to us to miss out on those experiences. Basically, making ourselves deal with the grief that we experience. In my experience, this is something I am extremely looking forward to and when I was writing out the above paragraph (and even now) I couldn’t talk myself from smiling. I badly want to go on a date, kiss a guy and do so many times that I have missed out because anti-gay messages. That is something I cannot wait for and it does mean that I am looking forward to the future. Secondly, we have to admit and address the internalised homophobia we have. We can do this by exploring how our exposure to anti-gay messages impacted our former selves and by examining the ways that we internalised this homophobia we can understand how this influences our decisions and more. As well as we can begin to undo the evil work of this internalised homophobia. Personally, this is something I am always working on because whenever I think “that’s wrong” I make myself take a step back and I always realise this is just my anti-gay messaging talking. It isn’t what I actually believe because all that stuff is actually harmless. And it’s like when I was talking to a trans friend of mine a few months ago and he said that I might as well start dating or trying to get some of these first experiences done. But I couldn’t because I said that my life circumstances just weren’t fair on this future person but now I am wondering if it was the shame that I internalised during my adolescence a factor here. It is always something to work on now and in the future. Social Psychology and Developmental Psychology Conclusion Overall, a lot of gay people do grow up in a social world that hates them and sends them very firm direct and indirect messages that they are wrong, sinful and shouldn’t exist. But there is hope because once a gay person starts to realise that things don’t have to be this way then they start to have a second adolescence by freeing and healing themselves of all the hate they’ve experienced. And then they can start to find love, have their first kiss, their first relationship and so many more wonderful things that they never ever thought possible. There is always hope in the world and if you’re a heterosexual person listening or reading this, then please help to fight back against some of this anti-gay messaging because everyone deserves the same adolescence regardless of their sexuality. And if you’re a gay person listening to this, then you can have all your firsts. It might take a few years longer and there will be a lot of trauma, shame and hate to unpack inside yourself but you will get there. We can all get there if we simply have the patience, self-compassion and hope to drive us into our second adolescence and beyond. 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 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Developmental Psychology and LGBT+ Psychology References https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/second-adolescence/202305/the-second-adolescence-of-lgbtq-adulthood 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.

Some psychology degrees offer university students the chance to do a Placement Year giving you a chance to get a year of work experience. In this Careers In Psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what is a psychology placement year and what are the benefits of doing a year in industry? If you’re a present or future university psychology student, this will be an invaluable podcast episode for you and your future. Today’s podcast episode has been sponsored by Year In Psychology: A Psychology Student’s Guide To Placement Years, Working In Academia And More. What Is A Psychology Placement Year And What Are The Benefits? I know that universities never explain what a placement is very well, so I want to explain it now. A placement/ placement year is a year of work experience between your second and third year of university where you work in a certain setting or place for at least 30 weeks and it always has something to do with your degree. For instance, some examples of a psychology placement would be: · Working In A Mental Health Service, like the UK’s NHS. · Doing psychology research at a university. · Working in a Human Resource department (for business psychology students). There are plenty more settings and environments that you can work in as part of your placement. But you all need to remember is a psychology placement, is a year (or 30 weeks) of psychology work experience. Which is brilliant for the reasons I’ll mention in a moment, but I want to add that there will be some coursework as part of your placement. In my experience, there are two main pieces of coursework, a series of reflections that get you to reflect on what you’ve learnt, what you want to learn and how your placement is helping your personal and professional development. This is why this book is a series of reflections because it is an expanded version of my coursework, but of course the really honest reflections, I will not be sending to the university. That’s for you. Then the other part of your coursework will be some sort of research report that you have to write. Now I know a lot of students (including me at first) hated this, but this is actually great and it gives us a massive advantage over other students. For the sole reason that when we go into our final year we would have had an extra year of practicing how to conduct and write research to a high level. Meaning our dissertation should be easier because we could have extra experience on researching and writing up a professional report. As well as another great thing about placement coursework is that it’s pass or fail, meaning there is no harsh grade that could influence your final degree marks. In addition, you might have to do a poster presentation on your placement that explains what it was like, what you learnt and more. That is a piece of my coursework but because I’m not at the stage yet I’m not including it here as a major piece of coursework. Of course, depending on your university, you might have other pieces of coursework or there might be slight variations in what I have explained, but as with everything in this book, this is my experience as a placement student. What Are The Benefits of Doing A Placement? In case you bought this book to investigate placement years as an option or you know you want to do one, but you want to learn more. For the rest of the chapter, I’m going to be explaining the great benefits of placement opportunities. So this is where I can be very honest because the massive problem with university is they teach you all the theory and a LOT of practical things with essays, assignments and exams (that you never do in the real-world). But! But they never ever give you real world experience and that is the downfall of many degrees. For example, when I choose to go to university, I knew I was only going to do a “real” degree and by that I mean I was only going to do a degree that had a job at the end of it. Meaning there was a job that only I could get because I had a degree in the subject. This is why I choose psychology because you cannot get a job in psychology without a degree. And the exact same goes for subjects like medicine, Law, all the sciences and more. However, even though I choose a degree that means I wouldn’t have to “fight” off non-graduates for a job. All psychology students will have to compete with each other the jobs and postgraduate opportunities. As after you get your degree, you are about one in thousands with the exact same degree. So what could help you make yourself more attractive to these employers and universities? Experience. Everyone wants experience these days and that is the massive benefit you can get from a placement. Since placements will allow you to work in the real world, develop new skills and learn things that the classroom doesn’t teach you. Because since I started my placement, I’ve learnt more about certain modern topics that the psychology classroom won’t teach you and my academic writing has improved drastically. Which as we all know, university just presumes you can write academically. Additionally, another great benefit of placements is you can use them as testers. As you can go on placement to somewhere and test out how you feel about the setting and if you can see yourself working there in the future. For example, you might think you love working in a child mental health setting as part of your clinical psychology degree. But when it comes to your placement and you work there, you realise you hate it and you vow never to work in this setting again. That’s great. As you used your placement to find out what you liked and didn’t like so you can avoid making the same mistake with your “real-world” job in the future. And as we can guess and probably know, it’s a lot harder to suddenly change your mind and change jobs in the real-world. So it’s best to make a “mistake” in your choosing of jobs now than in the future when you could potentially be stuck with your chosen setting for longer than you want. Overall, I do actively encourage everyone to do a placement degree if they can because it can give you amazing work experience that will help you with the job market after university. Of course, having a placement and work experience doesn’t guarantee anything, but it can help. And we all need that. But why did I choose a placement? 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 Year In Psychology: A Psychology Student’s Guide To Placement Years, Working In Academia And More. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Careers In Psychology Reference Whiteley, C. (2023) Year In Psychology: A Psychology Student’s Guide To Placement Years, Working In Academia And More. 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 reader or listener of the podcast for a while then you know I can never stay on a positive topic too long, so in this forensic psychology podcast episode I wanted to explore domestic violence in homosexual relationships. This is a massive problem, this kills people and there are a lot of factors that make it even harder for LGBT+ people to get the psychological help that they need compared to heterosexual people. Domestic violence is wrong against anyone so we need to talk about it. if you enjoy learning about LGBT+ experiences, clinical psychology and forensic psychology, you’ll love today’s episode. Note: please note that for the rest of the podcast episode I’m going to use the terms gay and LGBT+ interchangeably and to mean the same thing. I’m doing that because saying gay is so much easier to type on the blog post and say on the podcast, so if I offend you I’m sorry. Today’s 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Another Episode To Note: Why It Is Difficult To Recognise Domestic Abuse Against Men? Why Do Clinical Psychology Students And Psychologists Need To Be Aware Of LGBT+ Domestic Violence? I’ve mentioned before on the podcast about domestic violence and the terrible impact this has on the victims. As well as there are a lot of terrible stories about how women that have been domestically abused get up the courage to flee and go to a shelter, and the staff there have made heterosexist comments to the woman, asking her about her boyfriend. However, the problem with this people is that if the victim is a lesbian then this question always leads to them shutting down, no longer talking and they don’t get the help that they need. Since these women were in abusive relationships with their girlfriends. Therefore, not only are these women having to develop the courage to flee, ask for help and the shame that comes from being in an abusive relationship. But whenever they come into services and they’re asked heterosexist questions then their shame is only added. These stories all show why gay-related intimate partner violence is one of the largest health problems facing the gay community with some research showing intimate partner violence happens in 1 in 3 people. That’s outrageously high. The problem with this intimate partner violence mainly comes from the shame and stigma being compounded, because you have the shame of the intimate partner violence and the anti-gay bias that comes from the abusers. Like internalised transphobia and homophobia. Both resulting in gay intimate partner violence not getting the attention it so desperately deserves. As well as because intimate partner violence is most common in heterosexual relationships, many gay people might not even realise they’re experiencing it. Additionally, as many similarities as there are between homosexual and heterosexual imitate partner violence, the gay violence towards takes place behind the backdrop of anti-gay bias. As a result of the bias making many gay people, for the most part unconsciously, that they deserve the abuse as punishment for their homosexuality or gender identity. And these shards of internalised homophobia continue to harm their lives and their relationships. Overall, when it comes to clinical psychologists and psychology students not knowing about gay intimate partner violence, this is mainly because it isn’t spoken about, it isn’t taken seriously and I think this paragraph from Doctor Susan Holt sums up why we need to know about this perfectly: “LGBTQ domestic violence is not the same as domestic violence in the heterosexual community. There are significant differences. If you don’t understand those differences, then you’re not going to be helpful, or even safe, as a service provider for those who need help.” On the whole, if you don’t know about something then you can’t help and support the person. For example, if you didn’t know about depression, anxiety and autism, how on earth could you ever hope to support these people that need our help? You couldn’t so this is no different. What Do Mental Health Professionals Need To Know About LGBT+ Intimate Partner Violence? Now we’re going to look at the three main causes of this form of abuse. Heterosexism And The Barriers To Seeking Help Interestingly enough, there is such a thing called Heterosexism and this is the belief that being a heterosexual and cisgender is the only way that has a right to exist, and it is the natural sexual orientation and gender identity. Personally, that does make me laugh because homosexuality is found in over 1,500 species of animals and yet homophobia is only found in humans. So what’s natural? Anyway, Heterosexism informs public and legal definitions of domestic abuse so these have a knock-on effect on the laws and intake questions that professionals ask. As well as the perceptions that professionals and laypeople have about both victims and abusers. Since at its very core, Heterosexism is about erasing gay relationships. That doesn’t help people to realise that gay people can be domestically abused too and they deserve the exact same help given to straight people. Internalised Homophobia I think this is one of the most heartbreaking things about the gay community at times. When we take all of the world’s hate, outrage and disgust for who we love and we allow that shame to take root inside of us. Resulting in gay people unconsciously seeking out punishment or to project our shame onto another person. This internalised homophobia takes many forms but sadly one of those forms is definitely intimate partner violence. As well as this helps to explain why some victims stay with abusers and why some abusers take out their shame on others. It is still disgusting but we cannot blame the gay community for the development of internalised homophobia. They can be blame if they don’t take steps to get rid of their shame and if they use that shame to harm others then the blame is right. But considering it is the bigots and other idiots that cause this shame to develop, I don’t blame my community. Because believe me, I definitely understand what some people have had to live under when we’re figuring out that they were gay. I understand how internalised homophobia can form, but it isn’t right at all. Anti-LGBT+ Bias This awful type of bias creates a societal stigma towards gay people and in terms of intimate partner violence, this results in the USA not having a single gay abuse shelter. This is made even worse by there only being two court-approved gay-specific batterer’s intervention programmes in the entirety of the USA. In comparison to over 150 court-approved programmes in LA County alone. This is problematic because not having these shelters for gay people means that they have to seek shelter with heterosexual people and get exposed to Heterosexism in the process, which when you’re being abused isn’t what you want in the slightest. Also if a transgender person tries to get shelter from a violent abuse situation, they are often turned away by heterosexual shelters, so they end up going back to their abusers and getting it ten times harder than before for daring to run away. What Categories Of People Result In LGBT+ Domestic Abuse? As clinical psychologists and psychology students, it is our job to be aware of the prevention strategies that can be used to help gay people out of abusive relationships. Therefore, Doctor Holt did some ground-breaking work and we now understand the four categories involved in abuse and how they relate to gay people. Firstly, there is a primary aggressor. This is someone who has the goal to maintain their control and power, so they mentally, emotionally, sexually, physically or financially abuse others. Secondly, there is the secondary aggressor. This is a common category for gay relationships. Since it is often seen as a mutual conflict but the secondary aggressor is a person who fights back in retaliation or self-defence. Yet what makes this person an aggressor is that they don’t disengage once a conflict has ended temporally. Thirdly, you have the primary victim. This is a person who seeks to disengage from any conflict as quickly as possible so there is no fighting back in defence or retaliation. Finally, there is the defending victim. This is another common category for gay relationships. Because I will be the first to admit that members of the gay community, we need to defend ourselves. There is a good chance that we will be beaten up on the streets and attacked, and this can happen at school, at home or on the playground as well. Therefore, when a conflict begins a “defending” victim will fight back in self defence. Yet once a person feels like they’ve won in defending themselves or have established a sense of safety, they stop and disengage from the conflict. On the whole according to Doctor Holt, the two most common categories that mental health services will see are defending victims and secondary aggressors. Since primary aggressors don’t really seek out mental health services, despite them needing it just as much as the other categories if not more. However, it is important to note that individual therapy isn’t useful for abusers, as well as obviously couples therapy is an extremely bad idea for victims and partners (Ford et al., 2012). Overall, when it comes to the best mental health intervention that we can use to address gay intimate partner violence, we simply don’t know. We don’t know because it isn’t research enough and this will continue to be one of the largest health problems the gay community faces for the foreseeable future. Yet until then, the best prevention strategy we have is to simply heal its cause and all roads of violence lead to homophobia and that shame that gay people are forced to feel by the haters, bigots and plenty of other nobs that I really hope people never to get meet. It is awful and I don’t wish it on anyone. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Social Psychology and LGBT+ Psychology References Ford, C. L., Slavin, T., Hilton, K. L., & Holt, S. L. (2012). Intimate Partner Violence Prevention Services and Resources in Los Angeles. Health Promotion Practice, 14(6), 841–849. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524839912467645 Mental Health America of Northern California and Equality California Institute, prepared for the California Department of Public Health Office of Health Equity. (2012). First, Do No Harm: Reducing Disparities for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning Populations in California, The California LGBTQ Reducing Mental Health Disparities Population Report. https://lhc.ca.gov/sites/lhc.ca.gov/files/Reports/225/ReportsSubmitted/… Messinger, A. M. (2020). LGBTQ Intimate Partner Violence: Lessons for Policy, Practice, and Research (First ed.). University of California Press. National Resource Center on Domestic Violence. (2007). Lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender (LGBT) communities and domestic violence: Information & resources. Harrisburg, PA: Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence. The Center’s Revered STOP Violence Program Turns 25. (2021, October 14). LGBT News Now. https://lgbtnewsnow.org/the-centers-revered-stop-violence-program-turns… 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 we watch a film or movie or TV or we read a book, we constantly see detectives going to talk to serial killers to get a unique insight or a clue about the real killer. All of this is fiction and a gripping, entertaining lie that keeps readers and watchers focused on the drama unfolding in front of them. In this forensic psychology podcast episode, we’ll be exploring why serial killers don’t offer the police any unique insights at all and you’ll learn about the truth behind serial killers. If you enjoy criminal psychology, serial killers and crime then you’ll love today’s episode. This episode has been sponsored by Criminal Profiling: A Forensic And Criminal Psychology Guide To FBI And Statistical Profiling. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Why Serial Killers Don’t Offer Police Unique Insights? As a mystery writer myself, I really do understand why filmmakers and writers add in scenes about their detectives going to see serial killers. It is gripping, extremely entertaining and it is a lot of fun for the readers or watchers. However, in reality, whenever serial killers do actually talk about the crimes of other killers, they just spin wild ideas based on their own killings and experiences. Therefore, instead of this conversation being useful to the police by enhancing their learning about the killer they’re hunting, they actually only learn more about the killer they have already caught. For example, back in 1984, the Green River Killer investigation was launched and after reading a few reports the serial killer Ted Bundy lured detectives down to his prison cell so he could talk to them about the killings. Yet instead of telling them anything important he merely just spun ideas about the killings off his own predatory motive. Therefore, Detective Keppel used this opportunity to get Bundy to talk about his own experience so the detective could learn more about Bundy. However, to even imply this conversation or visit actually led to the killer getting caught is pure fiction. Since the killer Gary Ridgway was only caught in 2001 because of DNA evidence. Another good example can be found with the “Toolbox killer” Roy Norris when he completely failed to give the LAPD an effective way to catch the Freeway Killer who turned out to be Bill Bonin. Again, similar to Bundy, he had been reading about the Freeway killer through some news reports and he just told the police some random things, some of it turned out to be true but to say it is a unique insight is again, fiction. For example, Norris mentioned how the Freeway killer probably had a partner and travelled in a van with a sliding door. Both of these details were correct. Yet as Detective Souza pointed out, these were impressive but they added little because it was actually one of Bonin’s own accomplices that led the police to the killer. A final example can be found when the serial killers Keith Jespersen and Joel Rifkin were invited to give their opinions on different unsolved murders by the people behind the TV show Dark Minds. Whilst there is some comment about the serial killers being important to the show and giving insights no one thought of, there are more comments in places like the New York Daily News that say the following: “The main disappointment, though, is that (Joel Rifkin) doesn't seem to have insights that differ dramatically from those of other psychological profilers on other, similar TV programs.” Overall, showing that if serial killers are bought in to offer insight there is very little evidence that they are helpful and not just talking about their own twisted experience. This experience tends to be very different from the real killer too. Where Did The Idea of Killers Having Unique Insights Come From? This idea based in fiction can be traced back to the 19th century because the French pathologist Alexandre Lascassagne wanted and encouraged offenders in prison to write “criminal autobiographies”. He wanted this because he hoped these books would reveal how they had become criminals and where they were born like this or they had developed it over time. Then each week, Alexandre would check on the criminal’s notebooks and he would correct them and guide them towards personal awareness. All whilst in the process of learning about the serial killers’ personal histories, including how the childhoods of violent offenders were filled with tension, criminality, abuse and disease. And we have to give credit where credit is due because this “project” did turn out to be useful because it helped us to start understanding that criminal behaviour was a lot more complex than we previously believed. Why Research Offers Unique Insights Into Serial Killers? Furthermore, I want to point out that the entire point of this forensic psychology episode isn’t to argue that we have nothing to learn from serial killers, the point is that research can learn from serial killers and the serial killers have no unique insights that research cannot get using the empirical method. For example, Dr Carlisle did a lot of good studies and assessments on a lot of serial killers like Arthur Bishop, Ted Bundy and many others. This research resulted in the doctor proposing a theory about the ability of serial killers to compartmentalise, and this was thought to help explain the psychological dynamics of these offenders who was for all intents and purposes socially functioning. Yet what I think is one of the most important findings is that absolutely none of the interviews between Carlisle and the serial killers reveal that the serial killers were able or capable of being in a positive, helpful investigative partnership between them and the police. In other words, serial killers are not capable of being helpful to the police. Forensic Psychology Conclusion As we wrap up this criminal psychology podcast episode, I have to admit that it is always fun to look at serial killers, because they are scary, they are fascinating and they are dangerous. I’ve spoken before Why Serial Killers Are Fascinating and I still stand by that episode. However, in terms of serial killers actually offering anyone anything useful, this simply isn’t based in fact and this is a fictional device used by writers, like myself, to make a piece of entertainment gripping, engaging and captivating. Especially, as the more we learn about serial killers because of good research, the less we find that serial killers are able to offer anything too special or insightful. Partly this is because the term “serial killer” isn’t a personality type, it isn’t a type of person and it isn’t a concrete definition of a person. It is simply a description of behaviour where some person has killed two people at two different times at least. Then as this is a description it has tons of room for variability in the actions and behaviours and methods and motives used by the serial killers. Overall, as fascinating as I think the idea of to “catch a killer you need a killer”, it simply isn’t true and come on, even if a handful of serial killers were to give you good information. What are the actual chances they are the only people in the entire world, all 8 billion of us, to have the same insight? Zero. I really hope you enjoyed today’s criminal psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Criminal Profiling: A Forensic And Criminal Psychology Guide To FBI And Statistical Profiling. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Forensic Psychology References Artières, P. (2006). What criminals think about criminology. In Peter Becker and Richard F. Wetzell, eds., Criminals and Their Scientists: The History of Criminology in International Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 363-375. Carlisle, A. C. (2000). The dark side of the serial-killer personality. In Serial Killers, edited by Louis Gerdes. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press. DeNevi, D. & Campbell, J. H. (2004). Into the minds of madmen: How the FBI Behavioral Science Unit revolutionized crime investigation. Amherst, NY: Prometheus. Ramsland, K. (2012). The mind of a murderer. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. 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.

Continuing with our psychology Pride Month celebrations, I am super excited to take a developmental psychology perspective in this episode by focusing on how can LGBT+ youth focus on healing, resilience and thriving into adulthood in the face of horrendous acts against our community. If you enjoy learning about developmental psychology, mental health and LGBT+ psychology then you’ll love today’s episode. Note: please note that for the rest of the podcast episode I’m going to use the terms gay and LGBT+ interchangeably and to mean the same thing. I’m doing that because saying gay is so much easier to type on the blog post and say on the podcast, so if I offend you I’m sorry. Today’s 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Why Do LGBT+ Youth Need Resilience? I’ve covered before on the podcast that everyone needs resilience in episodes, like 3 Tips for Building Psychological Resilience and 3 New Tips For Building Psychological Resilience. However, it could be argued that gay youth need more resilience than non-gay youth because of the discrimination, mass shootings and acts of mass violence encountered by members of this community. For example, the mass shooting at Club Q in the USA in 2022 is a mere drop in the ocean of every single act of legislative and mass violence portrayed against the gay community. This is important for psychologists to take note of because discrimination goes hand in hand with oppression and this in turn leads to increased suicide rates among gay youth (Horwitz et al., 2020). Therefore, gay youth need to learn resilience and learn to thrive in this world so this fear, oppression and acts of discrimination don’t begin to control them or define them as a person. In addition, everyone can help to create a safer world for everyone at school, the workplace and the at home. This can be done by creating a more inclusive space as well as adults can nurture resilience in all gay youth, so these youths can have the increased capacity to navigate biases against them, heal and thrive in life. That is the most important thing about this episode. I want to give gay youth the ability to thrive in life. Furthermore, a lot of people might think that resilience is just another term for grit and that everyone just needs to soldier through. I do understand that bad definition but resilience is more than that because it resilience needs to be nurtured through making sure a gay youth has supportive relationships and environments where they feel safe. Personally, this is why I will always be extremely grateful to my best friends growing up because they were amazing. No matter what happened, what was said about my community or anything else, they made sure I was okay, loved and supported. That is why I am a resilient person first and foremost, and I call myself a survivor. In addition, resilience starts by valuing young gay youth and affirming that they’re okay. This is something I cannot stress enough and this honestly sounds so stupid to me, but it is so true. Simply telling a gay person that they are okay, there is nothing wrong with them and they shouldn’t have to hear the hate is so powerful. It is actually the reason why I cried so much during Heartstopper on Netflix because that show said everything I had ever wanted something to tell me. Linking The Resilience Of LGBT+ Youth To Developmental Psychology Focusing on the developmental psychology content here, a person’s affirmations depend entirely on their identity. This is a critical part of adolescence, where every single teenager learns who they are and their identity is central to the mental health of all teens, regardless of sexuality. Also, I have to mention it here that when I talk about gender identity, this is the social construct, and this is completely different to biological sex. Therefore, developmentally speaking, gender identity for everyone develops over time and adults can affirm gender identity by learning youths’ pronouns depending on what they want to be called. And believe me, this does take practice and that’s perfectly okay. And I think one of the biggest right-wing myths here is that transgender and non-binary people get angry if you make a mistake. That isn’t true in the slightest. They only get angry if you’re intentionally being a horrible person. Yet one of my author friends is non-binary and become I learnt that I called them “her” because they were a biological woman so I just presumed on the book recommendation I was writing. Were they mad? Of course not, I just got a polite message in my inbox asking me to change “she” to they and I did it. It wasn’t hard and I was promoting a new Kickstarter they had coming out earlier today and I used their pronouns correctly. I almost didn’t by accident but I was trying to be respectful. That is what this is all about and if you make a mistake, no one care as long as you’re respectful enough to learn from it. I will admit (and tons of others will too) that it takes a lot more practice to use the “them/ they” pronouns for a single person because it goes against a lot of grammar rules. Like I had to restructure some of my sentences above but I don’t mind. Yet in all honesty, when it comes to making a young person feel safe and loved and valued, no one should ever give a toss about grammar structures and words. What’s The Research On LGBT+ Youth? Moreover, when it comes to the evidence base, a Gallup Poll mentioned to Generation Z are 7 times more likely to than Baby Boomers to identify as LGBT+. Just remember that this is up from a tiny, tiny sample of the population at the start. As well as 3.5% to 27% of teens are transgender, non-binary or otherwise non-comforting in the USA (Gower et al., 2022). But I will note that this isn’t nationally representative data and this is only from the USA. Nonetheless, of course this increased gender diversity seriously does not make society any safer for gay youth and as much as I don’t want to pick on the USA. Considering the amount of anti-gay laws that have been introduced so far in 2023, society is far from safe for gay youth and I am seriously scared to learn about the suicide numbers whenever someone decides to study them. All because discrimination and trauma are widespread leading to increased rates of mental health difficulties, suicide, homelessness and physical health concerns too. Moreover, when it comes to the school environment, transgender youth are two times more likely to be bullied than cisgender youth and 29% of them have been injured or threatened with a weapon at school. That is disgusting. Also, as of 2022 in the USA, 60% of adults believe (remember this is public belief not fact) that gender is determined by sex at birth, increasing by 6% from 2017 (Parker et al., 2022). As well as whilst about two-thirds believe transgender people need to be protected in law against discrimination, a majority still believe that progress towards trans right have gone far enough or too far entirely. Resulting in some US states limiting the healthcare these people are able to receive. Something else I find beyond disgusting. How Can LGBT+ Youth Resilience Be Nurtured? Moving onto the unofficial tips section of this psychology podcast episode, I want to mention that a recent study found a massive way that adults and others can support a gay youth is to use their correct pronouns to affirm their identity, actually have a respectful conversation about their LGBT+ identity and this was found to reduce suicide attempts by 40%. And I can personally say that having that simple conversation about their gay identity is so, so powerful in making a youth or anyone for that matter feel respected. I would love to that have a conversation with my family but it hasn’t happened yet. Furthermore, another way to nurture and respect gay youths are to respect their expression, be this through clothing or hairstyle choices. Because seriously how does what a kid wears impact or make the family look bad? Also, adults learning about LGBT+ issues instead of thinking they know everything. This is a massive problem that I have with certain people I know, they moan and groan and completely invalidate me and my community thinking they know everything about an LGBT+ issue. When in reality every single thing they say is wrong and I have to force myself not to laugh at their ignorance. Again, my problem isn’t that they don’t know the stuff, it is how they pretend to know everything knowing I am gay and continuing to believe their complete disregard for me and my community doesn’t impact me at all. Anyway, just having conversations between parents, welcoming their partners and creating a positive environment can reduce suicidal thoughts as well. Developmental Psychology Conclusion As we start to wrap up today’s podcast episode, I want to say that regardless of sexuality, all teenagers and youths need adults to act as guardrails as they journey towards adulthood. This means enforcing healthy boundaries and limits but never when it comes to identity (be it gender or sexuality). Since come on, every single youth hates screen time limits but it is just part of being a teenager and there is no problem with limits like that. Yet when an adult or another teenager for that matter questions or wants to debate the very existence of a teenager’s identity then that isn’t okay. Since that can start a teenager towards hating themselves and their lives leading to mental health difficulties and in the worse situations, suicide. No one will ever lie and say that nurturing resilience in a child is easy. Due to part of it is an adult or another teenager admitting their own mistakes and learning from them. Be it when they don’t use the right name (like deadnaming a transgender person) or pronoun or failing to offer any type of support to them. When this happens saying sorry can be hard as can allyship. However, these mistakes can be simply overcome by correcting ourselves in the moment or listening and learning at times. Everyone needs to make sure that we create a safe space for gay youth to be themselves, valued and they can thrive once they have cultivated that most important sense of resilience. Finally, societal change will always be a fight and ongoing considering most of the time it feels that society seeks to criminalise, restrict healthcare and simply deny that LGBT+ youths exist in the first place. That will always be an uphill battle. Yet the most important change that will benefit youths in the short-term and in day-to-day interactions is so much simpler and easier than everyone would ever believe. Just be kind, respectful and validating and you really never know, you might have just saved a life and put a gay youth on the path to becoming resilient, healing and thriving. 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 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Developmental Psychology and LGBT+ Psychology References Horwitz, A. G., Berona, J., Busby, D. R., Eisenberg, D., Zheng, K., Pistorello, J., Albucher, R., Coryell, W., Favorite, T., Walloch, J. C., & King, C. A. (2020). Variation in Suicide Risk among Subgroups of Sexual and Gender Minority College Students. Suicide & life-threatening behavior, 50(5), 1041–1053. https://doi.org/10.1111/sltb.12637 https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-ticks-up.aspx https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/resilient-and-thriving/202212/how-lgbtq-youth-can-navigate-bias-heal-and-thrive Gower, A. L., Rider, G., Brown, C., & Eisenberg, M. E. (2022). Diverse sexual and gender identity, bullying, and depression among adolescents. Pediatrics, 149(4). Parker, K., Horowitz, J. M., & Brown, A. (2022). Americans' complex views on gender identity and transgender issues. 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.

On the 29th May 2023, the Met Police said they would no longer take calls from mental health crises from September. This caused anger, confusion and concern from me and after doing a lot of research I continue to have my concerns. Therefore, in this forensic psychology podcast episode, we explore this fascinating topic of how the police overlap with mental health professionals. If you enjoy mental health, forensic psychology and police psychology then you’ll love today’s episode. Today’s episode has been sponsored by Police Psychology: The Forensic Psychology Guide To Police Behaviour. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Background Information On Police Answering Mental Health Crisis Calls So, just to give you a bit of background in information though, the Metropolitan Police, which serves the London area in England, the United Kingdom, has decided that from September, so the 1st of September 2023, the Met Police will no longer respond to 999 calls about mental health incidences. At first, I think that sounds logical because they're the police, they're not healthcare. But then when you start thinking about the state of the National Health Service in the UK and how police are so much better equipped than psychologists to deal with this stuff when there's a mental health crisis, this is extremely concerning, I think. And this is quite dangerous because let's face it though, let's say you've got a suicidal person who's gonna kill themselves, and what number would someone call? 999 is the only one you could possibly think of. No one would call the NHS because they're doctors and they wouldn't be able to respond quickly. You wouldn't do the fire brigade and an ambulance call. The NHS is in such a disarray in the UK, an ambulance would never get done. And again, it's not a medical emergency yet. You need someone to talk that person who's about to kill themselves from jumping off a cliff. So, again, if you are a family member, you could call their psychologist because the suicidal person might have given you their number. But again though, if I'm a psychologist in bed, I've just been woken up and I have to jump into my car. Okay. So, that's fine, fair enough. One, you've got London traffic, two, as far as I know, not everyone has a car in London. So, if my client is about to jump off, let's say a bridge 20 miles away, I'm not sure if that's right, how I, as a psychologist, going to travel 20 miles in London on the Tube. And for the American audience, just imagine trying to travel 20 miles in New York traffic. Okay. I think that's quite a good example. A psychologist cannot do it, but the police can because they have police sirens. So, unless the police are gonna give psychologists sirens to get to mental health crises, then that's not gonna work. Now, I know we're in Tier 4 CAMH services, and I've covered this on the podcast before, that there can be suicide, not so much suicide pacts, that's the wrong word, but an agreement between the psychologist and the client that if they're gonna be suicidal, you have to call them just so they can talk you out of it. But again, if you're a member of the public and you see someone looking like they're about to jump, you just do not know any other number to call. So, that's why I'm concerned because 999 is the only number you would honestly call in that situation. However, though, I do have to admit that this is a quote from the letter that the Met Police commissioner did say. "Where there is an immediate threat to life, officers will continue to respond." So, that, I think, is great. I think that is brilliant because, of course, if there's a suicidal person, it means that they will likely still be responded to by police. However, immediate threat to life, that's subjective. And as we saw in a few episodes ago when I was talking about the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services crisis in the UK and how some services require a child to have two believable suicide attempts before they get psychological treatment, it comes back to that believable question. What is a believable question, and also what is an immediate threat to life? If someone's on a bridge but hanging on, is that immediate? Because immediate to me would be like they're gonna climb up, jump straight away. That would be immediate. And it also depends on how will a person on the phone watching this relay it to the 999 operator, and then it'd be the 999 operator's job to say if it's immediate or not. How would they know if it's immediate or not? So, just, that sort of subjective stuff I'm quite concerned about and questioning. So, well, something else that the Met Police said was, "In the interests of patients and the public, we need to urgently readdress the imbalance of responsibility where police officers are left delivering health responsibilities. Health services must take primacy for caring for the mentally ill," I hate that word, "allowing officers to focus on their core responsibilities of preventing and detecting crime, and keep communities safe and support victims." And I do just, I want to go on to, like, something else here quickly. So, this is another extract that I got from the Sky News Report. Met spokesperson told the BBC that officers spend an average of 10 hours with a patient when they are sectioned under the Mental Health Act. "In London alone, 500 to 600 times a month, officers are waiting for this length of time to hand over to patients, and it cannot continue," said a statement. And then another quote was, "Police are not trained to deliver mental healthcare." Unpacking The Information First of all, I completely agree, it is not the police's job to do mental healthcare. I know they are not trained for it and I know they basically are clueless in this responsibility. I completely get that, I really do. So, I do understand that it's unfair on them because these are not trained mental health professionals. However, because of the reasons I said earlier, when there is a mental health crisis like if someone's having a breakdown, if someone's suicidal, if someone's having a psychotic break, or hallucinating, and they cause a risk to others, police are able to respond quicker than psychologists. And again though, the NHS just is not structured for a psychologist who's not on call, for example, to actually respond quickly. And if any psychologists have actually worked in Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services which is also known as IAPT in the UK, then a psychologist that might be working eight hours a day, and as I understand it, they have eight back-to-back therapy sessions. So, if you get a call during that time, that one of your other clients is suicidal, then you are actually in a massive problem because you cannot just quit a therapy session. You can't say to your client, "Right, I'm really sorry but I have to go to save another client," as much as you might want to. If you are just making progress with that client, then the last thing you want to do is break the session, answer your phone, and just dash off because that client might not want to open up again. It might have taken so much courage for them to actually want to talk to you and for you about to tell them that if you just dash off when they're about to tell you, they might go, "Well, what's the point of therapy? It took me so long to trust you and commit and actually want to tell you this stuff that happened to me, and you just go and dash off. That's outrageous. I'm not coming anymore." And that would be really damaging to clients, I think. So, again, police are better suited for this to deal with mental health crises. But again, though, I think this just goes to show that the NHS does need a lot more money. It needs complete restructuring because as every psychologist tells you, at least in my experience, 50% of the workforce does not need to be backroom staff and managers. Like, you do not need as many managers. And 10 hours, I do understand why that's annoying because, of course, 10 hours with a patient in an accident and an emergency department is unacceptable. So, in an ideal world, well, the police would just be able to come into a mental health hospital or a ward, pass over to healthcare professionals and then just go on, like, their way. But of course, because of NHS cards done by, like, government over the years, we don't have mental health hospitals. Of course, I think that's a good thing because, of course, the psychiatry stuff and how they just used to, like, drug up people. But again, mental health services are basically dead and on their knees. This is not helping matters for the police. So, something else I actually wanted to talk about is this. "We are failing them first by sending police officers, not medical professionals to those in mental health crises and expecting them to do their best in circumstances where they are not the right people to be dealing with the patient. We are failing Londoners a second time by taking large amounts of officers' times away from preventing and serving crimes, as well as dealing properly with victims in order to fill gaps for others. The extent to which we are collectively failing Londoners and inappropriately placing demand on policing is very stark." Again, I do agree. This is a massive, massive problem for the police, and this just goes to show that the mental health services just aren't... They are fit for purpose, but they need more money, they need more resources to deal with the challenges they face. And again though, I think that you need something to replace this with, which I really hope I've actually mentioned this in the introduction, which is why something like that and other police forces has actually brought in, but Met Police are not doing this, which is really dangerous. And another bit of data, which I find quite interesting. And again, all of this is from the Met Police commissioner. "He added the Met had received a record number of 999 calls on the 28th to 29th of April, but only 30% were crime-related." Again, that's really bad that 70% were down to mental health. So, we clearly have a mental health crisis in the UK, but again, mental health services just are not fit to handle this many people. So, the police have to pick up the slack, sadly. What Is The Right Care, Right Person Scheme? So, onto this other scheme. So, what this scheme is is that Humberside Police, what they did was that they created this scheme called Right Care, Right Person. And it is designed to be implemented nationally, but the Met commissioner has lost patience because the way how this is meant to work is that a UK police force is meant to stop taking 999 calls for mental health crises when this thing is actually introduced. The Met Police is not doing this, so London will not benefit from the scheme, I'm about to tell you. Of course, something might change by the time September happens. But this is right now as of 1st of June, 2023. So, Humberside Police identified that before the introduction of Right Care, Right Person, the force was deploying to an average of 1,566 incidences per month relating to issues such as concerns for welfare, mental health incidences, and missing persons. Oh, yes, and I should also say that this information is coming from a website which you can find on the blog post called college.police.org. I think, like, that's, like, the references are better. This is an official police college website. RCRP is a program of work that has been carried out over a three-year period involving partners in ambulances, mental health, key hospitals, and social services. These partnerships ensure RCRP can achieve its aims to provide the best care to the public by ensuring the most appropriate free response to calls for service. This reduces stress on the police and health agencies responding to these requests. So, again, that is brilliant. I have no problem with this, but you need the partnerships there. Like, the Met Police can't just decide to stop these calls expecting nothing bad to happen without these partnerships because it's these partnerships that actually make this scheme work. So, the fact they're not doing it is stupid, I think. "Early internal evaluation of the initiative in Humberside Police has shown a more collaborative, informed, and appropriate response to RCRP incidences. It has also shown a large reduction in the deployment of police resources to these between January 2019 and October 2022. This has allowed the force to relocate safe resources to specialist teams such as missing persons." So, again, that is brilliant that the police are actually getting more resources too, but these really specialized teams though, just so they can actually find missing persons. Types Of Mental Health Callouts The Police Currently Answer However, what I do want to focus on on the type of calls that the police normally respond to because yes, I've been focusing on suicidal people, but there're actually a lot of other ones and a lot more common ones. So, one of the first type of calls is actually concern for welfare. And this includes when mental health services report to the police so that an individual hasn't attended any sessions, so the mental health services are actually concerned about them. So, they call the police to go and check on them. Again though, if the Met Police just scrap this, which they are, then mental health services will have absolutely no idea what's actually happened to this client which has not shown up for any sessions. Voluntary mental health services, and I actually do wanna read the thing from the website. "Voluntary patients taken by police to emergency departments of an acute hospital and a free ambulance. Police were asked to remain as the individual was assessed. Walk out of healthcare facilities." Now, this one I think is really important because an example of this is when an emergency department calls the police because a man or woman has actually, like, walked out with the hospital equipment, like, is still in them. Because if someone has a cannula in their hand, then they're clearly not well, but they've just walked out of the hospital. Again, are you really going to get nurses and doctors to actually go out searching for that person? No, but you're gonna call the police because the police have access to all the security cameras. And it means that the nurses and doctors can actually get back to treating people. So, and I have an example of where the police were actually called out is after the Mental Health Act, Section 136. And this is actually used by the police to detain people. And the police have to stay with the person if there are no clinicians free to accept them. And on average, this meant the police had to remain with the person that they detained. I just wanna point that out, that the police themselves have detained this person for 12 hours, which is bad and the police shouldn't have to stay with someone for 12 hours. But again, there's basically a national crisis, though, of that, for the demand of mental health services, we have not got the supply of mental health professionals. It's absent without leave. So, this is when sectioned patients have actually gone AWOL after a... Section 17, escorted leave with a staff. So, like, if this person has actually, like, "escaped," then the police have to go and find them, which again the police are the best people suited to actually go and find them. The police have to take this call. So, the fact that the Met isn't, I think is really bad. And finally, the police are asked to convoy patients from acute hospitals to mental health services. The Threshold For Police Involvement Under RCRP Something else I actually want to talk about is threshold tests for police intervention. So, under this Right Care, Right Person plan, though, for the police to be able to get involved, there have to be this, like, threshold test, meaning that it basically has to be serious enough, which I think always gets rather interesting. So, the first one is, is it a medical emergency? Which I think is quite weird because surely the whole idea of this is that if it's a medical emergency, then the ambulance or another service or partnership has to get involved. But again, when we're focusing on mental health, if someone's self-harmed, then that is a medical emergency and the police are best to respond to that, so I guess. Is a child at risk of significant harm? Good. The police absolutely have to deal with that because again, that's more of a threat to others. Like, if a parent is hallucinating or something and having a really bad violent hallucination, again really rare, but again though, it still happens. Is there a real and immediate risk to life or serious harm to the identified person? Again, it's too subjective. It's too subjective about immediate risk. Especially if you are just a member of the public, you don't know the person. They might be hanging on the bridge. But you cannot say to the police if you don't know them that, "Yes, I know for a fact that this person will jump in a matter of minutes." You just can't say that. So, an operator might, not twist it because that is the flat-out wrong word, but again though, they might convey it to the police as, right, "This is not an immediate thing," especially when we have this meaning like a burglary is going on. Is the person suspected to have a mental health problem? Difficulties in language. Use more positive language. Like, these people aren't criminals. They're people that are suffering and need help. But again though, if you are a public...if you are a person in the street and if you see someone or if someone's having a mental health crisis and a family member isn't about, you are not gonna know that information. Has a crime been committed? No. Chances are those people with mental health conditions don't really. It's a massive myth. Is this a missing person report? So, I guess that means if someone with a mental health condition has actually, like, gone missing, right, and they've been found so that the police get involved just so they can close that case. Again, it's not perfect. I think there are situations where the police just should automatically get involved. And I think that the Met just should not get rid of this because I just think it's too risky, just honestly too risky. The Data On The Results Of RCRP However, because psychology is a science, and in clinical psychology, you've got the scientist-practitioner model, let me just say about the data from this pilot. "Internal evaluation has highlighted the following positive outcomes for police and partners. An average of 508 fewer deployments per month, 1,132 officer hours saved on average per month, 32,828 officer hours saved between June 2020 and October 2022. Reduction in the proportion of RCRP incidences deployed from 78% in January 2019 to 31% in October 2022." Forensic Psychology Conclusion Though I have to say overall, I think this does work. I think this scheme is the best thing we are gonna have because I completely agree and I do understand why the police are annoyed at this because they're not mental health professionals. They're there to solve crime. So, they should be solving crime, they shouldn't be dealing with mental health. But again, though, the NHS in the UK, I'm sure my UK listeners can back me up here, its mental health services are definitely really struggling. And to be honest, it does break my heart every time when I have to report on this, comment on this, and it's why I wanted to today's episode. I wanted to explore my own thoughts on this because, to be honest now, I'm not at university a lot. I can't really have these, like, debates with different people though. So, thank you, podcast listeners, for actually giving me a place here to actually talk about this. So, there just aren't enough space in mental health services to actually deal with this, so it does fall to the police. I understand that the police are annoyed and yes, something's got to be done. But I think it's more the case that instead of it being police blaming mental health services, which I'm not saying they're doing, they actually aren't, to be honest. It's more that the government needs to sort out mental health services. They basically need to get a massive scalpel, cut off all the fat over the NHS, including the bosses, the manager, put their salaries actually where they need to be, actually back into the services themself. And we would actually be a lot better off because again, I say this every single time, but requiring children and adolescents to have suicide attempts before children get mental health is disgusting. Actually, that goes for anyone though, because tons of people have mental health difficulties, but the threshold for mental health services is they basically have to be suicidal. That's disgusting, it's wrong. And of course, we need to be helping people before they ever get to that point where they want...where they think suicide is the only way out. It's not right, it's not fair. So, overall, my final conclusion is that the Met Police, I fully agree, they should stop taking 999 calls for mental health crises, but not without something to replace it. If they decide to stop taking these calls without something to replace it, people will die, people will suffer, and the Met Police will completely fail in their duty to protect the innocent Londoners they're meant to serve. I really hope you enjoyed today’s forensic psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Police Psychology: The Forensic Psychology Guide To Police Behaviour. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Forensic Psychology References https://www.college.police.uk/support-forces/practices/smarter-practice/right-care-right-person-humberside-police https://news.sky.com/story/metropolitan-police-to-stop-attending-999-calls-linked-to-mental-health-incidents-12892351 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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Ever since this psychology podcast started back in the cold days of November 2019, every single June I have always wanted to do something psychology-related for Pride Month. And I always forget without fail. However, because I am absolutely determined to do something this month, every Thursday in June 2023 we will be looking at an LGBT+-related topic from a psychology viewpoint and coming out and mental health is a brilliant way to kick off Pride Month. If you want to learn about gay people, mental health and clinical psychology at a deeper level then you’re going to love today’s episode. Note: please note that for the rest of the podcast episode I’m going to use the terms gay and LGBT+ interchangeably and to mean the same thing. I’m doing that because saying gay is so much easier to type on the blog post and say on the podcast, so if I offend you I’m sorry. Today’s podcast episode has been sponsored by Psychology of Human Relationships: The Social Psychology of Friendships, Romantic Relations and More. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley How Was Homosexuality Declassified As A Mental Disorder? We cannot hope to look how the whole process of “coming out” increases mental health and benefits people if we don’t know homosexuality was taken out of the DSM first of all, and it was all because of a great, amazing man called Charles Silverstein. I’ve researched him a lot and he is a very impressive man and therapist. Since he sadly passed away in January 2023 but he left behind an amazing legacy of saving so many lives because he was the psychologist that stood in front of the American Psychiatric Association and gave them a passion talking to about why homosexuality was not a mental disorder from a psychologist’s perspective. As well as even in his “old” age he was still campaigning and being an activist because he was always fighting to destigmatise homosexuality and he was advocating for the mental, sexual, emotional and relationship well-being for every single gay person in the world. Linking to the topic of “coming out”, Silverstein stressed that it’s critical that people are able to live openly and how they want to live their life even if it creates conflict with others because this is critical to a person’s mental health. As well as a person’s ability to relate to other people. Also, Silverstein stressed that without support and encouragement to come out, even more so when there are no models for the closeted person to look up to. Silverstein believed people would be at a much higher risk of psychological harm (O’Connel, 2012; Silverstein, 2007). Therefore, that’s why this podcast episode is focusing on this topic from a clinical psychology and mental health standpoint. But first let me mention something. A Personal Perspective On The Whole “Coming Out” Thing Whilst I will not talk about my own coming out experiences because they’re been great with only one questionable experience, I want to highlight something that a lot of gay people feel about the whole coming out thing. It is so weird. Since no gay person comes out to themselves, we all realise we’re gay and different from other people at some point, but we never come out to ourselves. Therefore, a lot of gay people think it is weird in the sense that straight people don’t have to come out as straight, so why should gay people? Can’t gay people just mention they’re gay and no one cares and this becomes a normal thing? So there is no need for a coming out. Of course, I blame Hollywood, a bunch of books and other societal features that hyper up the importance of coming out when in reality, “coming out” is just such a weird phase that sort of encourages being gay or revealing you’re gay is a much bigger deal in society then it actually needs to be. Since true equality would be a person saying that their gay is no bigger a deal than a person being straight. How Coming Out Is Good For Mental Health As Revealed In Books One interesting book that I really like is The Family Outing by Jessi Hempel and this explores the topic coming out very well. Since Jessi was the first in the family to come out as a lesbian then her father came out as gay, her sister as bisexual and her brother as trans (so he was a female at birth). As well as her mother was a survivor of complex trauma. The really interesting thing about mental health and coming out in this book comes from how Jessi writes about each and every one of these journeys and accounts with such heart, passion and insight that you feel like you are living through these journeys with these real people. As well as it deals a lot with intergenerational trauma, something we’re spoken about before on the podcast, and our parents’ shame and pain becomes our shame. In addition, according to Emotional Inheritance by Galit Atlas, PhD, this intergenerational trauma “shapes our lives in ways that we don’t always understand,”. That’s why in Emotional Inheritance, the author emphasises why we need to find words and explore these feelings so we can all move beyond our past and the shame and pain that holds us all back. This in turn allows us to become the people that we want to be. Personally, I want to hammer a point home here because I don’t want anyone getting lost. What I am saying is that Jessi in her nonfiction book explores how each member of her family, including her straight mother, started and explored a long journey for each of them. They all had something to overcome and some horrific stuff happened to her mother and father that Jessi realises was passed onto her and her siblings negatively impacting their own sexuality journeys. None of them felt like they could be who they wanted to do until they dealt with the past, their fears and everything bad that had happened to their families. This is why relational support like Silverstein mentioned earlier is so important. Then linking to the topic of the podcast explicitly, both books stress that the people got their well-deserved outcomes that allow them to live the lives they always wanted to, because they can finally be themselves. And the books show the great mental health benefits everyone experienced. Additionally, I really like the following quote from The Family Outing because it really does sum up everything rather well. “Coming out is the act of letting go of our planned lives in pursuit of the lives that wait for all of us,” Personally, I love that quote because it is so, so true. Granted I am not in a perfect position to find out what the end of that quote means for me personally. Yet I want to explore the life that I want to live instead of the life that everyone has planned for me because they believed (or present tenses for some people) that I’m straight. Just the hope that that single line inspires really does give me hope and increases my mental health because of what is possible for the future. And straight people can learn a lot from that quote too because it teaches all of us regardless of sexuality that we need to live our own lives. Instead of living the lives that everyone around us and society wants us to live. Furthermore, this is supported by psychology research, like a paper from January 2013 from the University of Montreal who found that Lesbians, gays and bisexuals who had come out to other people had lower stress levels, fewer symptoms of burnout, depression and anxiety. Further emphasising the argument that coming out is good for mental health. Clinical Psychology and Mental Health Conclusion To conclude this psychology podcast episode, there are three things that I want to say. Firstly, I know this is an episode mainly focused at gay members of the podcast audience to show them that if they are struggling with their mental health then coming out could be an option. But there are lessons for straight members of the audience too, because personally I think the entire point of the conversation around gay people is that every single person has the right to be who they want to be and live the lives they’ve always wanted to. That goes for straight people too in the sense that if everyone wants you to follow a particular path in life but you don’t want to. Then you don’t have to. Secondly, I highly recommend The Family Outing so you can understand what Jessi went through and each member of her family did it. You will probably see some similarities and relate to someone’s journey too. Finally, I want to caveat this podcast episode because whilst coming out is good for mental health. If there are any gay people listening to the episode that haven’t come out yet just make sure you’re safe. For goodness sake, I don’t care how badly you want to come out if you are not in a safe environment. If you have concerns that your friends and family members will react violently, badly or abusive when you come out then don’t. Your life and safety are far more important than coming out. I promise you it is and in my own experience, no matter how bad it gets and how horrific your mental health is. Things can and do get better over time even if it takes years. Things do get better. I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Psychology of Human Relationships: The Social Psychology of Friendships, Romantic Relations and More. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology and LGBT+ Psychology References Atlas, G. (2022) Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma. Little Brown Spark. New York. Hempel, J. (2022) The Family Outing. Harper One, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers. Chicago / Turabian O’Connell, M. (2012). Don't Act, Don't Tell: Discrimination Based on Gender Nonconformity in the Entertainment Industry and the Clinical Setting. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health 16:241-255. Silverstein, C. (2007). Wearing two hats: The psychologist as activist and therapist. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy, 11(3/4), 9–35. Universite de Montreal. (2013, January 29). Health benefits of coming out of the closet demonstrated. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130129074427.htm 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.

Considering the popularity of the topic of Artificial Intelligence in recent years because of the release of ChatGPT and other massive language learning models, we need to investigate could these have any implications for psychologists. To explain simply this is a massive piece of artificial intelligence that is trained on millions, if not billions, of pieces of conversational text so the AI knows what to say and how to respond at a given moment depending on the language input or prompt a user gives it. That is one oversimplified explanation of the language model these Chatbots runoff. Therefore, in today’s episode we’ll be looking at the pros and cons of how these chatbots could be used as future therapists. If you enjoy learning about psychotherapy, clinical psychology and the future of psychology then you’ll love today’s episode. Today’s episode has been sponsored by Abnormal Psychology: The Causes And Treatments Of Depression, Anxiety and More. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Are There Any Signs Chatbots Are Useful In Therapy? Before we actually dive into today’s episode, I want to be honest and upfront with all of you that I do have massive problems with the inputs of Artificial Intelligence. I don’t have a problem with how artificial intelligence is used for bad, because everything is both good and bad. Just look at what great benefits the internet has given us as a species but also the damage the internet can do at the same time. My problem is a more advanced issue that affects me as an author but not as a psychology person but I will not explore the topic in depth. Yet my problem is how these Artificial Intelligence programmes are illegally taking copyrighted works and training their models on them. This is illegal and if you’re interested in finding out more then you can look up at the lawsuits currently going on especially surrounding AI Art. And this is why I’ve put off doing this topic for so long. Anyway, whilst I’ve learnt a lot about mobile mental health apps in recent years and I’ve learnt a lot about how Chatbots are used in those apps, I wanted to focus a little more on the research side. Since there are early signs that chatbots can be used as psychotherapists. Due to research shows chatbots are promising therapists for certain types of therapies that are structured, skills-based and concrete (Abd-Alrazap et al., 2019) making chatbots effective for Cognitive Behavioural Therapies, Health coaching as well as Dialectical behavioural therapy. And chatbots are effective for getting people to stop smoking (Whittaker et al., 2022) and chatbots are being used in almost every single industry on the planet. Especially as whenever we go on Amazon, Google, YouTube, etc. we are training artificial intelligence on our preferences. Moreover, and this is something I learnt when I was investigating mobile mental health apps during my academic placement year, there are apps, like Woebot, that use chatbots to help people’s mental health that are “based” on cognitive behavioural therapy. Now I say in air quotes because the problem with the literature in this area is that it hasn’t really been empirically validated, but this is definitely beyond the scope of this podcast episode. Anyway, Chatbots are already being used on mobile mental health apps as therapists with some effectiveness. What Could The Benefits Of Chatbot Therapists Be? Personally, I think this is a really interesting question because a lot of people don’t think there would be any but let’s really think about it. Firstly, chatbots would be absolutely amazing for public health services because they’re cheap, accessible to everyone with a phone and they’re scalability. Since if the chatbots are used correctly then this can bring mental health services to more people in the comfort of their own homes in their own time. Secondly, a very interesting idea is that chatbots could be good for personalisation of therapy because it’s important to note that ChatGPT generates conversations and answers based on what the person inputs, making the chatbot more likely to respond more personally to the client compared to older, less effective chatbots. Thirdly, there is an argument that chatbots could help connect our clients to more psychoeducation resources. Since the current “problem” is that if a therapist wants to give a client a particular resource for them to use outside of the therapy session then the human therapist needs to remember to do that, find the link or reference, send it to them and know exactly what resource would be good for that particular client in that particular moment. Chatbots could connect clients to a particular website, book or online tool instantly by giving a link the moment they need it. Therefore, clients might be able to get more psychoeducation through chatbots. Finally, and I think is this is an important one because clinical psychology is a science, chatbots allow therapies to be uniform, standardised and trackable. This is important because chatbots can deliver a more standardised and predictable set of responses allowing researchers to be able to review and analyse these interactions later on. However, I personally think that chatbots will only ever be able to augment psychotherapy alongside a human therapist because you need that human interaction too. Or do you? What Could The Limitations and Challenges of Chatbot Therapists Be? Firstly, the biggest problem and this is something I kept finding when I was researching these mobile mental health apps was retention rates. Due to people are more likely to show up and be accountable to human therapists when compared to chatbots and user engagement with mental health apps is very, very questionable. Especially as Kaveladze et al. (2022) only 4% of users continued to use a mental health app after 15 days and only 3% of users continue after 30 days. When we consider that CBT typically takes 3 months of weekly sessions to bring about therapeutic change, this is extremely worrying. Secondly, another major problem I found when I was researching mobile mental health apps was the increasing need for improved data security, privacy and transparency. These are all very unethical and questionable uses of this very sensitive data because users have no idea how their data and discussions about extremely personal topics are being used by these massive companies. This is even more alarming when only 2% of mental health apps have research to back up their claims about their effectiveness and user experience (Wei, 2022). Thirdly, I am strongly against artificial intelligence being used in high-risk cases because AI augment with human oversight is safer than AI replacement in these kinds of situations. These high-risk situations include suicide assessment, crisis management and other mental health difficulties that would typically be seen by a Tier 4 Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in the UK. This is even worst when we consider the open legal and ethical questions surrounding who is liable in cases of faulty AI. Since we have no idea who is responsible a chatbot therapist fails to assess or manage a mental health crisis, including suicidality. We also don’t know if a chatbot therapist will alert a human therapist or at least flag them, if a client is self-harming or suicidal or poses a risk to others. These questions are important to saving a person’s life and the lives of others and until these questions are ethically and legally answered then I will always be opposed to AI chatbots being therapists to high-risk clients. Finally, and I feel like this is the most important limitation of all. A chatbot cannot have the level of empathy required in certain therapeutic situations. Since research shows that even if a chatbot offers a person empathic language and writes the right words for a person then this isn’t always enough. You still always need that human-human interaction in certain emotional situations, like if you’re venting to someone or being angry. This might have been shown best in Tasi et al. (2021) because these researchers showed when a client was angry they were less comfortable and satisfied with a chatbot compared to a human. As well as people don’t always feel heard or even understood when they don’t have a human at the other end of a conversation. The therapeutic alliance might need or depend on the human-to-human connection between the therapist and the client because the client might want another human to witness their difficulties and suffering. An AI replacement will likely never work for all these situations. Clinical Psychology Conclusion Personally, forgetting my concerns about copyright and artificial intelligence, in the realm of psychology and mental health, I am not against artificial intelligence being used in therapeutic settings. I think there is a place for it but chatbots can never and should never replace human therapists because humans are a social species and we need that social connection in therapeutic settings. I think chatbots will only ever be able to augment psychotherapy alongside a human therapist, and that’s relatively okay, I don’t mind that. I just don’t think chatbots will ever be able to replace human therapists. And when we consider that depression is one of the most common mental health conditions, and the extremely close relationship between depression and suicide. I don’t think chatbots ever should be allowed to replace therapists just in case suicidal and other high-risk clients slip through the cracks. I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Abnormal Psychology: The Causes And Treatments Of Depression, Anxiety and More. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology and Cyberpsychology References Whittaker, R., Dobson, R., & Garner, K. (2022). Chatbots for Smoking Cessation: Scoping Review. Journal of medical Internet research, 24(9), e35556. https://doi.org/10.2196/35556 Abd-Alrazaq, A. A., Alajlani, M., Alalwan, A. A., Bewick, B. M., Gardner, P., & Househ, M. (2019). An overview of the features of chatbots in mental health: A scoping review. International journal of medical informatics, 132, 103978. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2019.103978 https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/08/project_december_openai_gpt_3/ Kaveladze, B. T., Wasil, A. R., Bunyi, J. B., Ramirez, V., & Schueller, S. M. (2022). User Experience, Engagement, and Popularity in Mental Health Apps: Secondary Analysis of App Analytics and Expert App Reviews. JMIR human factors, 9(1), e30766. https://doi.org/10.2196/30766 Camacho E, Cohen A, Torous J. Assessment of Mental Health Services Available Through Smartphone Apps. JAMA Netw Open. 2022;5(12):e2248784. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.48784 Goldberg SB, Lam SU, Simonsson O, Torous J, Sun S (2022) Mobile phone-based interventions for mental health: A systematic meta-review of 14 meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials. PLOS Digital Health 1(1): e0000002. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pdig.0000002 Garland, A. F., Jenveja, A. K., & Patterson, J. E. (2021). Psyberguide: A useful resource for mental health apps in primary care and beyond. Families, Systems, & Health, 39(1), 155–157. https://doi.org/10.1037/fsh0000587 Tsai, W. S., Lun, D., Carcioppolo, N., & Chuan, C. H. (2021). Human versus chatbot: Understanding the role of emotion in health marketing communication for vaccines. Psychology & marketing, 38(12), 2377–2392. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21556 CBT at your fingertips: A review of mHealth Apps and their ability to deliver CBT to users. (Under Submission) 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.

We all know that social media has a negative impact on mental health, but why? Also, how does social media impact mental health? The answer is a lot more nuanced and complex than you might imagine at first because social media can benefit and harm our mental health in equal measure. In this clinical psychology podcast episode, we’ll explore this topic in more depth and you’ll start to understand how social media impacts mental health. Today’s episode has been sponsored by Social Media Psychology: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Cyberpsychology and Depression. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Extract From Social Media Psychology by Connor Whiteley Copyright 2023 CGD Publishing I’m going to lay the groundwork for the rest of the book in terms of mental health. Since in the last chapter, we definitely spoke about mental health and how it relates to social media, but now we dive into it even deeper. Which is critical just so the rest of the book makes sense and why we’re looking at the different topics that we are. Therefore, given that social media has been reported to produce both negative and positive effects within different people (Gitlow et al., 2019). We do need to question who is at greater risk on social media platforms. Is it those with mental health conditions or those without? One example of this sort of thinking can be seen in Primack and Escobar-Viera (2017) who noted the possibility for social media to negatively impact people with depression and a person’s subjective well-being (Kross et al. 2013). Then just to emphasise how complex this all is, despite the findings of Primack and Escobar-Viera (2017), there have been several case study reports that show possible evidence for social media being a useful, and not harmful, tool for people with mental health conditions. Especially amongst people who are considered to be reclusive as social media can help them improve their social integration (Veretilo & Billick, 2012) and connections with other people with stigmatizing mental conditions (Primack & Escobar-Viera, 2017). In addition, social media has been cited as playing a large role in the long war (my terms but hardly an exaggeration) against the stigma around mental health conditions. Other people have compared it to another on-going battle but the long war is definitely what it feels like. The reason for this is because there are positives and negatives of social media for mental health stigma. Since it does allow people to share with their own thoughts and experiences with other people who could benefit from these social exchanges (Betton et al., 2015). However, as a personal note, you also get trolls and other idiots who bang on about how people with mental disorders need to be locked, shot or cleansed for religious reasons or to stop them from further polluting the human gene pool. Whenever I see comments like that I seriously laugh, because it just goes to show how stupid these commentors are and just how little of an understanding they actually have of how these so-called disorders or illnesses work. Then I tend to feel sad because of the sheer amount of damage these commentors are doing with their toxic views. Anyway, social media use as well as depression, in particular, seem to be closely linked with the greater amount of social media use being associated with a greater risk of developing Major Depression Disorder (Aydin et al., 2020; Cunningham et al., 2021; Ghaemi, 2020; L. yi Lin et al., 2016; McDougall et al., 2016; Mok et al., 2014), self-injurious behaviour and suicidal ideation (George, 2019; Memon et al., 2018), as well as suicide rates (Twenge et al., 2018). In addition, research suggests that people with depression might experience social media differently compared to people without depression. For example, social media might have a negative effect on those with depression and people with depression might experience decreased social activity on social media (de Choudhury, Gamon, et al., 2013), and they might have fewer social media interactions compared to control groups in research (Sungkyu Park et al., 2013). Nevertheless, Park et al. (2013) found that people with depression thought of social media to be a tool for them and others to become more socially aware and have more emotional interaction, compared to people without depression who described social media as an information consuming and sharing tool. In my opinion, I can definitely see where these studies are coming from because I don’t have depression and as I mentioned early, I tend to use my personal social media to learn what my friends and family are up to, and I’m a part of a few Facebook groups that is all about learning and asking questions around a certain topic. As well as on my Twitter list of profiles I want to check daily or at least regularly, I want to learn what these people are doing and what they have to share with me. And in case you’re wondering, the people on my Twitter List aren’t celebrities or anyone. They tend to be author friends that share interesting articles from time to time that I can learn from, in fact I think the only celebrity on my Twitter list is the amazing Joe Locke but that’s it. But my point is I do tend to use my social media accounts for information gathering and social interactions. Anyway, the reason why we’re looking at these studies is that they are actually very important and their significance can’t really be overstated. As they all highlight a possible negative mechanism within people with depression that results in even though these people use social media less for interaction compared to non-depressed people, these people still see their interactions on social media to be more important and a central function of SM. As well as the reason why this is bad is because even though they might feel like they’re getting benefits of these online interactions, their social media use might increase their feelings of loneliness, leading to negative effects (Casale & Fioravanti, 2011). As a result, this could suggest that these negative outcomes from social media might work, at least in part, by the mechanism of social media’s perceived purpose, and before I actually go onto the next bit. Let’s take a moment to consider what that actually means, because this really is all about perception. As I’m fairly sure that when I was talking about what I’ve used social media for, you probably haven’t agreed, and that doesn’t make you or me wrong. It just means that we both think social media has a different purpose. For example, in terms of concrete purposes, the purpose of social media for me is to learn more and interact in groups and reach amazing as well as interactive readers. Again, this is only my perception, and yours will probably be very different, but it’s the idea of personal perception that is important here. Therefore, this perceived purpose is important because depressed people don’t have the same levels of interaction and support as they perhaps expect, and their real-world social support network might be rather small. In addition, social media platforms, like Facebook, can be used by people to develop as well as maintain social connectedness. Which has been shown by research to be associated with decreased depression and anxiety, and improvements to quality of life (Grieve et al., 2013). As a result, people with depression might therefore struggle to develop social-media-derived connectedness because they’re having fewer interactions when they are online. So this could lead to them increasing or maintaining their levels of depression. Leading to exacerbating the negative outcomes associated with the condition. Moreover, broader research into social media suggests that online social interaction, or in this case a lack of social interaction is at the epicentre of the negative social media-related outcomes. Like the mental health difficulties, the psychological distress it causes and how it links within various mental health conditions. As well as potentially the perception of what social media is used for and by extension, the perception of how other people use it. Because as we near the end of the chapter, we all need to get one thing very straight right now. We all need to understand that the relationship between depression and social media isn’t as simple as social media only being negative towards depressed people, because it could have potential benefits that we’ll explore later on in more depth. But to give you a little taster perhaps, it’s worth noting that research has found that social media has been found to act as an affective adjunct therapy for treatment-resistant anxiety and depression (Mota Pereira, 2014; Rice et al., 2020) and social media has been associated with a decline in depressive symptoms, when used to strengthen pre-existing relationships (Bessiere et al., 2010). Therefore, even from those two quick examples, we can all start to see that this social media and depression relationship is very complex and it isn’t as clear cut as perhaps any of us thought before we started this book. Consequently, social media may have different outcomes based on the way that people use it. Such as, if people use social media to strengthen pre-existing social relationships, it’s thought to be more beneficial to their well-being compared to them using social media for extending relationships beyond these circles, or in other words making more online friends. This could be because of the different levels of social support that the person gains from each of these types of social media use (Pantic, 2014). Equally, another type of social media use is called ‘compensatory’ SMU (Kardefelt-Winther, 2014), were the person sadly uses social media as the place where they make their social connections, instead of forming real-life connections, with it probably being no surprise whatsoever that this has unfortunately been associated with higher levels of depression (Zhou et al., 2020). Whereas phubbing, this is where you use your phone in social contexts, has been associated with feelings of exclusion and subsequent increased SMU. Then this because the person feels excluded and using social media more is linked to higher levels of anxiety and depression (David & Roberts, 2020). So this relationship, I suppose, could be called as sort of being like a vicious cycle because someone might start feeling excluded and lonely so they use social media more. Then this causes their loneliness to get worse. That’s exactly how complex this relationship is at times. And now that’s I’ve given you a thorough introduction that links social media to mental health and depression, I’ll give you a quick outline for the rest of the book as now we really need to deep dive into this complex relationship. Because I’m guessing that you’re now very interested in what these positives actually are? How could social media possibly benefit people with depression? I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Social Media Psychology: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Cyberpsychology and Depression. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology and Cyberpsychology Reference Whiteley, C. (2023) Social Media Psychology: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Cyberpsychology and Depression. 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.