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In different books and podcast episodes and to different people, I have always expressed the need for us, as future or current psychologists, to move away from harmful language about disorders and things that are wrong with people, towards more positive language. Thankfully this is the direction of modern clinical psychology, and in this clinical psychology episode, I wanted to address this even further. Since there’s new research that supports the argument that dyslexia is a cognitive strength, and dyslexia is not a mental disorder. This is must read episode. This clinical psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Biological Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Why Dyslexia Is A Cognitive Strength? Dyslexia was first discovered in the 1890s by Rudolf Berlin and it has always been called a disorder of writing and reading. Like with other conditions, it is this negative label that is preventing us from seeing that Dyslexia is instead a unique cognitive style and not a disorder. Especially if it did evolve because of it being helpful to early humans? The Research For Questioning The Disease Model of Dyslexia A new paper in Frontiers by Taylor and Vestergaard from June 2022 has argued that Dyslexia is an evolved cognitive specialisation with its own advantages as well as disadvantages, with Taylor promoting this viewpoint in different places for a number of years. As a result, the two researchers point to two very interesting facts about Dyslexia that help us to leave the disease model behind. Firstly, Dyslexia is universal in humans as well as it seems Dyslexia has a strong genetic component. This means that the genes underlying Dyslexia are probably pretty ancient. Secondly, Dyslexia is widespread amongst the human population with the low estimates proposing that 5% of the human species has Dyslexia around the world, and the high estimates propose 20% of the species has the condition. As well as to support this point even more, serious diseases of childhood tend to have a far lower prevalence rate. This is because natural selection tends to remove these diseases from the population. So why didn’t natural selection get rid of Dyslexia? This question has been partially answered by the researchers Brock and Fernette Eide in their book The Dyslexic Advantage, as they highlight that a worldwide “disorder” in childhood that occurs at such a high rate could only be there possibly if it helped us to survive. What Are The Benefits And Cognitive Strengths Of Dyslexia? There are a lot of cognitive strengths within people with dyslexia. For example, dyslexic people excel at “divergent thinking” meaning they have the ability to come up with multiple solutions to any given problem. As well as this could help to explain why about one-third of American entrepreneurs have dyslexia. In addition, people with dyslexia tend to see the bigger picture rather than getting lost in all the details. Such as dyslexic individuals are quicker to notice when a work of art shows an impossible figure, like in M.C Escher’s Waterfall. Also, it’s very important to note that people with dyslexia have an aptitude for engineering as well as art and architecture. As a result, this does point, in a way, to a massive problem within the western education system that prizes writing and reading so highly and attempts to instil it at a very early age. However, perhaps one of the most disturbing features of our education systems is the way that it is set up to shatter the confidence of dyslexic children. Due to they are constantly told unless they can write and read perfectly then they have no good future. And this is before we acknowledge that for ages, researchers have known that a person’s low confidence is associated with relationship troubles, substance abuse and negative moods. That’s why it is possibly vital that we seek a different approach? The Evolutionary Heritage of Dyslexia: Something else that Taylor proposes in human evolution is what she calls complementary cognition. The core idea of this type of cognition is that as humans, we were designed by evolution to have different cognitive skills and these skills complemented one another to enhance the overall group’s survival chances. This is actually really interesting to think about because if we look at other species they have similar characteristics. For example, in termite colonies, you have different termites that behave very different, like the workers, the breeders and the fighters, but it is their differences that allow them to thrive. Therefore, Taylor believes that human minds work in a similar way because with human societies facing all the same challenges, which is to acquire the information and resources that they need to survive and thrive. It is very important that different people use different cognitive strategies to help us achieve these aims. Putting this into practice, at the most basic level of this theory, there are two fundamental specialisations, which are exploration and exploitation. Since humans need to be able to explore new environments freely so we can get resources, like water and food. But the problem is once these are found, we need to develop ways to use or exploit these resources efficiently. Or putting this into a more abstract example, when we seek out new ideas to help solve problems, this is an example of exploration. Then exploitation is where you develop, in-depth, ideas that are already in existence. As well as it is probably more accurate to see exploration and exploitation as a spectrum and not as an either-or situation. As a result, Taylor believes dyslexia as well as ADHD are expressions of the “exploratory” cognitive specialisation, with the problem being western education focuses too much on the exploitative cognitive style whilst stifling the exploratory kind. And personally, this sort of argument can be seen in the literature of different fields because to grossly oversimplify this, there is concern about the amount of spoon-feeding information we are giving to our children and then just getting them to repeat the information in exams. Without getting them to creatively use or apply the information beyond what they need to repeat in their exams. Conclusion and Implications: Personally, I think this is a very interesting idea and even though this is only done by one researcher and their research. I think it is worthy of more research attention because this is the sort of research we need in clinical psychology to truly understand mental health conditions in more depth, and more importantly to help support us move away from the damaging labels and towards a place or point more accepting of these so-called disorders. Due to if Taylor is correct, this means continuing to see dyslexia as a “disorder” is not only a problem for those with dyslexia anymore. It is a massive problem for society as a whole because we are denigrating a cognitive style that has been key to our specie’s survival for the long term. However, as I’ve said before, we need a lot of research into this before we can draw any firm conclusions. But the point of this podcast episode is about the importance of moving away from damaging labels and “disorders” that only make the suffering and psychological distress for our clients worse, and towards something more positive. And something that is more positive for everyone. 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 Biological Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Clinical Psychology and Biological Psychology Reference: Taylor, H., & Vestergaard, M. D. (2022). Developmental dyslexia: disorder or specialization in exploration?. Frontiers in Psychology, 3374. https://complementarycognition.co.uk/ 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. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

Whilst it is very rare for us on the podcast to look at psychosis for some reason, and I truly don’t know why, I think it is always great to look at who is the most likely to recover from different mental health conditions. This not only gives us hope as current or future psychologists, but it can teach us valuable lessons that we can hopefully apply to other mental conditions. Let’s dive into this great topic. Today’s clinical psychology podcast episode is sponsored by Abnormal Psychology: The Causes and Treatments For 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. Can You Recover From Psychosis? Unlike a wide range of other mental health conditions, there aren’t really a lot of public models of successful people living with a psychotic disorder. There are thankfully plenty of successful people with autism, ADHD and dyslexia. But none that I can think of that have a psychotic disorder. Therefore, there is a cultural assumption in our society that once a person develops psychosis, there is absolutely no chance of recovery whatsoever and they are doomed. Granted that is a little overdramatic on my part, but it is how society sees psychosis. Additionally, this is reinforced even further in our culture by the media portrays of people with schizophrenia being negative, and definitely not helpful in normalising the idea that a person can thrive with a psychotic condition. Despite many of these people living and working normally in the rest of the world. As a result, false recovery models aren’t very true because there are actually a lot of people who thrive with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder. Including a rather public advocate by the name of Dr Elyn Saks, who is a professor and memoirist at the University of California, and people like John Nash. And in case you’re like me, that name isn’t ring a bell at first and that’s okay, but he was the mathematician who’s story was told in the book as well as film, A Beautiful Mind. It’s even worse that’s I’ve seen the film about twice years ago. Anyway, there are a lot more people that we think that thrive with a psychotic condition and there is even an entire database of people who are thriving with a schizophrenia disorder at the Curesz Foundation website. That’s a charity that aims to help people with schizophrenia spectrum disorder recover. What Predicts Recovery From Psychosis? Personally whilst all this new information is great because it is amazing to know that so many people are thriving with a condition that people see as a lost cause. I would rather like to know what actually predicts their recovery, and most importantly what makes these people diffierent to the ones that do not sadly thrive. Thankfully, Peralta et al. (2022) can help us answer that because the study investigated 243 participtans over a 20 year period that exhibited a condition with psychotic symptoms. Including bipolar disorder with psychotic symptoms, schizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia. To test the idea of recovery, they decided to look at three definitions, personal recovery. This referred to a person’s ability to forge their own identity, have a sense of purpose, find meaning in their life and take responsible for their condition and recovery. The second definition was about functional recovery, which referred to a person’s quality to participant in daily life without their condition disturbing it. As well as the final definition was about symptomatic recovery, referring the reduction of their symptoms overall. The results of the study found that the following definitions recovered: · 51.9% of people recovered according to the personal recovery definition. · 52.7% of people recovered according to functional recovery. · 51.9% of people experienced symptomatic recovery Therefore, the majority of participants clearly recovery in all three areas and 74.2% of participants showed recovery in at least 1 area of recovery with ultimately 32.5% participants displaying active recovery in all three definition. This is consistent with previous research findings. Therefore, now we know a lot of people are recover from psychosis, what exactly are the predictors of recovery? The most significant predictors that determined chances of recovery across all three definitions were: · Family history of psychotic disorders. · Parental socioeconomic status · Development delay at age 3 · Completion of high or secondary school education However, if a person isn’t born into a wealthy family without relatives with psychosis or no trauma, it doesn’t mean that the person is doomed like many people would see it. Instead the very nature of psychosis makes it difficult to find the major predictors of recovery, and psychosis could appear differently within each person. Within psychology you’ll probably hear psychosis being referred to as a condition of heterogenous make-up. And in case, like me, you have no idea what that means, a heterogeneous make-up means there are a lot of reasons why people develop psychosis and don’t recover. As a result, these the predictors above, only predict about 27.5%, 34.3% and 33.7% of people’s recoveries in respect to each recovery model/ definition the study looked at. Clinical Psychology Conclusion: To wrap up this episode, I wanted to mention something that has wider lessons for other areas of clinical psychology, we all need to remember that studies that look at predictors or positive or poor outcomes do not decide a person’s fate. That’s one of the problems with data given to mental health teams, policymakers and those within education, the data lacks a person’s life that could possibly be helped later on in life by social support, a non-profit or any other future possibilities that professionals come up with. And we risk losing sight of something even more important here if we focus on the negative. One third of clients with a psychotic disorder recovered. One third of a group of people that society deemed as lost hopeless causes. One third of people that now have their lives back. And that’s down to amazing professionals, friends and family members. That is an amazing achieve and I will certainly end this episode on a positive note. That is not something to be a shamed of, that is something to be very proud of for our profession and the amazing people we help. I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Abnormal Psychology: The Causes and Treatments For 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. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Clinical Psychology and Psychosis Reference Peralta, V., García de Jalón, E., Moreno-Izco, L., Peralta, D., Janda, L., Sánchez-Torres, A. M., ... & SEGPEPs Group Ballesteros A Gil-Berrozpe G Hernández R Lorente R Fañanás L Papiol S Ribeiro M Rosero A Zandio M. (2022). Long-Term Outcomes of First-Admission Psychosis: A Naturalistic 21-Year Follow-Up Study of Symptomatic, Functional and Personal Recovery and Their Baseline Predictors. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 48(3), 631-642. 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. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

On the podcast, we are always trying to push the boundaries of our psychological knowledge so us, psychology students and psychology professionals, can become even more knowledgeable about human behaviour. Therefore, if another clinical psychology episode, I want to look into cognitive psychology to see what interesting treatments they can offer people with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the results are fascinating. You definitely want to keep reading. This clinical psychology episode has been sponsored by Cognitive Psychology: A Guide To Neuropsychology, Neuroscience and Cognitive 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. A Brief Introduction To Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder I suspect the vast majority of us already have a passing surface-level knowledge of what PTSD is from our studies. But in case you don’t (or you’re forgotten which is perfectly fine) PTSD is a mental health condition that develops in a person after experiencing a traumatic event. Like being in a warzone or seeing a murder. As well as it is characterised by intrusive thoughts, reliving the event again and again and it impairs a person’s ability to function. However, there are now newly emerging therapies for PTSD coming out of research and that’s the focus for today’s podcast episode. Stellate Ganglion Block Therapy For PTSD The first therapy we’ll look at works in a rather interesting way because this treatment involves having an injection into a person’s neck resulting in calming the parts of the brain system that the traumatic event has caused to become overreactive. Even more interestingly results from research have been impressive enough that there are more than 50 stellate ganglion treatment centres across the United States where this treatment is done. As well as as always there’s a list of references and studies at the bottom of the blog post. In addition, some PTSD sufferers who have had the treatment thankfully reported: · Having better sleep · Decreases in panic attacks, depression and anxiety · Feeling less nervous or jumpy · Having the ability to connect with other people again · Improvements in sexual function and intimacy · Better concentration and memory And before we move on to the next type of therapy I wanted to quickly throw in my personal thoughts on the therapy. This seems great and I’m pleased for all the PTSD sufferers that the treatment seems to be working very well. However, my problem with this therapy is that it is biomedical model and it fails to address the psychological aspects of PTSD. Since all you’re really doing is treating the biological aspects of the condition, and yes this will have knock-on effects for the psychological aspects. But I just feel like this is too reductionist and biomedical model for my personal liking. Yet as I said, I am glad that is an effective treatment for PTSD. Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy The second treatment we’ll be looking at doesn’t come from or target PTSD specifically. Due to hyperbaric oxygen therapy uses pure oxygen to speed up a person’s healing, and is it often used for different conditions. Like gangrene and decompression sickness. Leading to the question of whether it can actually work for people with PTSD? It turns out that researchers at Israel’s Tel Aviv University and the Shamir Medical Center studied brain scans of Israeli soldiers that had wartime traumas resulting in PTSD. As well as the scans, as reported in the journal PLOS One, demonstrated physical damage in the front lobe regions and hippocampus. Therefore, showing that PTSD has an organic brain damage component that of course talking psychotherapies can be very ineffective at treating. As a result, oxygen therapy are argued to be able to effectively treat PTSD brain damage because there is a clear need for physical healing of the emotional wounds. Furthermore, the reference for this study is below, but in one study involving 65 war veterans with major PTSD, their before and after brain scans showed major improvements in both the frontal lobes and hippocampus because of this new therapy. But the study was small and, of course, a lot more research is needed to confirm the therapy’s effectiveness. Yet it still shows that the results for the therapy are promising. The way how hyperbaric treatment works is by increasing the supply of oxygen to the brain to activate the creation of new neurons as well as blood vessels. Then the oxygen infusion reactivates the brain’s stem cells and causes them to grow more, or proliferate if we’re being technical. Also the oxygen stimulates the production of new blood vessels, which is thought to result in an increase in brain activity and restore the normal functioning of the wounded brain tissues as well. Finally, these treatments are done in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber where the atmospheric pressure is higher than sea-level pressure and the air is rich with oxygen. Again before we move on, I wanted to throw my thoughts in here, and as always I absolutely love the great new innovative ways how new therapies can get created. It is great that we’re looking to medical treatment as well as psychological treatments for PTSD because psychological treatments clearly cannot fill every gap in PTSD treatment. However, there is still a lot of importance for psychotherapy, and it still has a critical role to play in the treatment of PTSD. Why Is Psychotherapy Still Vital For PTSD? I seriously couldn’t blame you if you’re wondering what’s the point of psychotherapy for PTSD when we have these great new treatments for the condition. However, psychotherapy is still critical for PTSD treatment because during and after these new treatments, psychotherapy is vital to enhancing the treatment’s success. For example, individual psychotherapy is vital for PTSD sufferers. Since PTSD generates habits that don’t disappear on their own and it’s important for PTSD sufferers to understand what has happened to them, so they can discuss their painful experiences. Hopefully resulting in the shame and guilt associated with them can go away or dissipate. This is often done through Cognitive Behavioural Therapy which can accelerate the change back from PTSD-based beliefs and reactions to normal healthy and functional responses to the stresses of everyday life. Family therapy is another vital psychotherapy in PTSD treatment because it can be important to treating the secondary PTSD that the family members suffer from, including children. Due to it’s important for everyone to understand the causes, symptoms and hopeful cures of PTSD to decrease to negative impacts of the emotional outbursts and tensions that PTSD causes within families to decrease. Lastly, couples therapy can be critical in the healing process of romantic relationships. Especially if they have been harmed by the PTSD-related anger and outbursts. As well as couples need strong skills for handling these difficult conversations, like cleaning up any resentment they have towards each other created by the PTSD’s impacts on quickness to anger and irritability. Thankfully, guidance from an effective couples therapist can speed up the healing of attachment between partners. And if this isn’t done then any angry or irritated outbursts from PTSD sufferers can do a lot of damage and harm to their marital bond. Clinical Psychology Conclusion PTSD isn’t a pleasant condition in the slightest and as future or current psychologists, it is our job to help support everyone with mental health conditions. So this is why it is so critical to keep learning, studying and creating new treatments so we can try to help everyone we possibly can. And whilst stellate ganglion block may be available right now for a lot of people, hyperbaric oxygen treatment is still in the research phase for PTSD (but thankfully it is widely used for a lot of other conditions). Yet the point is still clear, if you or someone you know or love has PTSD, then there is a lot of hope for the future. I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Cognitive Psychology: A Guide To Neuropsychology, Neuroscience and Cognitive 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. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Clinical Psychology and Cognitive Psychology References Hanling, S.R., Hickey, A., Lesnik, I., Hackworth, R.J., Stedje-Larsen, E., Drastal, C.A., & McLay, R.N. (2016). Stellate ganglion block for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder: A randomized, double-blind, controlled trial. Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine, 41(4), 494-500. Lipov, E.G., Navaie, M., Brown, P.R., Hickey, A.H., Stedje-Larsen, E.T., & McLay, R.N. (2013). Stellate ganglion block improves refractory post-traumatic stress disorder and associated memory dysfunction: A case report and systematic literature review. Military medicine, 178(2), e260– e264. https://doi.org/10.7205/MILMED-D-12-00290. Lynch, J. (2020). Stellate ganglion block treats posttraumatic stress: An example of precision mental health. Brain and Behavior, 10(11):e01807. https://doi.org/10.1002/brb3.1807 Lynch, J.H., Muench, P.D., Okiishi, J.C., Means, G.E., & Mulvaney, S.W. (2021). Behavioral health clinicians endorse stellate ganglion block as a valuable intervention in the treatment of trauma-related disorders. Journal of Investigative Medicine: The Official Publication of the American Federation for Clinical Research, 69(5), 989–993. https://doi.org/10.1136/jim-2020-001693 Lynch, J.H., Mulvaney, S.W., Kim, E.H., de Leeuw, J.B., Schroeder, M.J., & Kane, S. (2016). Effect of stellate ganglion block on specific symptom clusters for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Military medicine, 181(9), 1135-1141. Mulvaney, S.W., Lynch, J.H., Curtis, K.E., & Ibrahim, T.S. (2021). The successful use of left-sided stellate ganglion block in patients that fail to respond to right-sided stellate ganglion block for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms: A retrospective analysis of 205 Patients. Military medicine, usab056. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1093/milmed/usab056 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. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

After coming across a woman’s domestic violence survival story and her wish to raise awareness about domestic violence and Coercive Control. I really wanted to help honour her survival in a way so I wanted us to look on the podcast at this critical topic. So we can understand the psychology behind this outrageous behaviour, and in future episodes hopefully focus on helping ourselves avoid Coercive control. This forensic psychology episode has been sponsored by Forensic Psychology Collection. 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. Why Psychology Needs To Look At Coercive Control And Abusive Relationships? I always think it’s important to highlight why these are important topics to discuss on the podcast because that way I know I tend to focus on them, and you might enjoy them more because of their importance. I don’t know why I like to lay down a psychological foundation too before we dive into the meat of the topic. In terms of Coercive Control and abusive relationships, many people simply ask questions: why don’t victims simply leave the relationship? And of course that is a reasonable question, I think when I was younger I wondered that too. Yet from social psychology and the Need To Belong Theory, humans are resistant to breaking any relationship even ones that are bad for us. In addition, as we are all hopefully outside the abusive relationship the answer seems so simple to the abuse. Just report it and leave the relationship. But this is where the reality is different from the ideal and it was a lot, lot more complicated than this. As well as whilst there are many different reasons why victims don’t leave the relationship. One of the most common reasons is fear, and whilst the exact definition of fear is hard to pin down. A good definition is something along the lines of a very unpleasant strong emotion caused by a person’s anticipation and/ or awareness of danger. Due to like most emotions, fear can range from minor to severe, and the fear could be real or perceived to be real. And what’s critical to understand here is that the victim’s perception and whether the danger is real or not doesn’t matter. What does matter is that fear can be psychological or physical and it can be rather incapacitating and debilitating. Making leaving the relationship quite impossible. And I want to mention that the reason why I’m not mentioning gender here is because whilst women are the victims in the vast majority of cases. They are not in every single case and men can be and are still abused in some cases, so I don’t want to put a gender here instead of the word victim and help to reinforce a damaging stereotype. Additionally, to help show the importance of this topic some more, here are some numbers from the United States’ National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. For example, 1 in 9 men and 1 in 4 women experience severe intimate partner physical violence, intimate partner contact, sexual violence, intimate partner stalking with impacts. These impacts include fearfulness, post-traumatic stress disorder, use of victim services, injury and more. Furthermore, 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced some kind of physical violence in the past by an intimate partner. This includes a range of behaviour, like slapping, pushing and shoving, and in some cases might not be considered “domestic violence” when it actually is. 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men have been victims of severe physical violence. For example, beating, strangling and burning by an intimate partner in their lifetime. As well as 1 in 7 women and 1 in 25 men have been injured by an intimate partner. Therefore, as you can clearly see (or hear) regardless of the situation (except maybe the last one) regardless of gender a sadly high number of both have experienced domestic violence. And this only highlights why it’s critical to increase awareness of the topic. What Is Coercive Control? Moving onto the next section of the episode, one of the leading authorities on this area is a person called Dr Evan Stark and he defines Coercive Control as the following: “a strategic course of oppressive behavior designed to secure and expand gender-based privilege by depriving women of their rights and liberties and establishing a regime of domination in personal life.” As well as one of the problems with the literature on Coercive Control is that there is no, or no easy to find studies that have men as the victims. Now it would be great to imagine that meant no men fall under this area, but given how the myth of men being domestically abused is false. I personally doubt this and think this is a massive gap in the literature. You cannot seriously imagine that out of every single man on the planet, not a single one of them is being Coercively Controlled. Moreover, Stark adds in his work that 60% to 80% of all abused women experience Coercive Control beyond the use of physical abuse. Meaning the physical abuse might have stopped but the Coercive Control continues. And Coercive Control can have deadly consequences as Stark argues Coercive Control is strongly correlated with murder. For example, for the sake of illustration only, between the years 2000 and 2006 3200 American soldiers were killed in combat, but during the same time three times as many women were murdered by their husbands or boyfriends. As well as 1 woman is murdered every 16 hours in the United State either by a current or former male partner. With the victims most at risk of being murdered are the people in which domestic violence, stalking and Coercive Control happen at the same time. And domestic violence and stalking is common. The Role of Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Interesting, there is some evidence that Narcissistic Personality Disorder is involved in Coercive Control alongside antisocial personality disorder, as all three of them are common among perpetrators of domestic violence. With people having Narcissistic Personality Disorder being described as manipulative, demanding, arrogant and self-centred. And they exhibit at least 5 of the following traits: · Exploitation of others · A lack of empathy · Envy of others · Have a need for excessive admiration · A grandiose sense of self-importance · Busy with fantasies of unlimited power, beauty, ideal love, success and brilliance. · A belief about themselves being special and can only be understood by or associated with special people and institutions. · Arrogant, condescending attitudes or behaviours · Sense of entitlement How Is Coercive Control Criminalised? Moving onto the last section of the episode, we need to address the very harsh topic of Coercive Control and the legal system. Due to very few elements of Coercive Control are technically a crime and criminal and psychological abuse is always harder to get evidence for and prosecute compared to physical abuse. And yes, I know physical abuse getting prosecuted is hard enough. This sadly results in the identification, criminally charging and prosecution of the Coercive Control cases is very much beyond challenging. To make matters worse, successfully prosecuting Coercive Control cases are incredibly rare. Yet there is a bit of hope because if a case does move forward to trial then the case will most likely be plea-bargained. In addition, if you live in Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland and France. Then you’re in luck because those countries have criminalised Coercive Control but the United States does not. New York State has become the first state in the entire country to start introducing criminalising legalisation for Coercive Control as a class E felony. Which for myself and our non-US audience, it means that Coercive Control is punishable by a maximum fine of $250,000 dollars and/ or a maximum of 5 years imprisonment but more than 1 year. And I just checked the New York State Senate Website for the bill and it says it is currently in committee. So it has another 4 stages to pass until it is signed or vetoed by the New York governor. Forensic Psychology Conclusion: At the end of this episode, I want to say that Coercive Control isn’t just another facet of abuse to look at it. It is very serious that we need to address and I truly hope that none of you listening or reading this will ever experience it. And whilst we didn’t look at how to avoid it and recognise the signs in this episode, I do want to do that in the future just to help protect all of us a little more. But until then, Coercive Control and abuse might be a dark topic to look at. But it is fascinating and very much worth investigating, because you never know when it might be useful. I really hope you enjoyed today’s forensic psychology episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Forensic Psychology Collection. 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. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Forensic Psychology Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-crime-and-justice-doctor/202107/coercive-control-entrapped-fear 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. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

Gaslighting is a very popular term in recent times and it is reasonably common to some extent, and it allowed victims and sufferers to name what was happening to them. But as the term started to gain popularity and currency, it started to lose its meaning. In this social psychology podcast episode, we look at what is gaslighting and most importantly, when is it gaslighting and when isn’t it. This is a great podcast episode, you need to be aware of. This podcast episode has been sponsored by Psychology of Relationships: The Social Psychology of Friendships, Romantic Relationships, Prosocial Behaviour 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. What is Gaslighting? Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse where someone uses psychological manipulations to cause another person to question their reality. It can happen between two people in any relationship. Like friendships, working relationships and romantic relationships. The gaslighter preserves their own sense of self and power over the other person who ends up adopting the gaslighter’s version of reality over their own. The reason why we need to look at this is because it’s important to distinguish gaslighting from normal and healthy behaviours. Like disagreeing and we need to understand when a conflict turns into gaslighting. When Is it Gaslighting? Therefore, to understand this harmful behaviour, the easiest scenario to see when something is not gaslighting is something similar to this fictional one below. Harry and his sister Claire used to spend a lot of time together and every Saturday you would go together, and bring your families along. Then when the pandemic struck they were forced to move their Saturdays together to a few hours on Teams together and they would catch up, play games and have dinner together. However, when the pandemic eased and the restrictions were relaxed. Harry started going back out, going out on day trips and living life again to the fullest. Yet Claire wasn’t comfortable with that and she doesn’t feel like going out too much. So, the siblings spoke and they don’t agree on where to go for their Saturdays together, because Harry wants to go out-out somewhere nice and Claire wants to stay in. Resulting in the siblings being judgemental about each other, and each one is calling the other selfish, inconsiderable and horrible. As well as Claire might accuse Harry of not wanting to spend time with her and her family. Now this isn’t gaslighting because even though both siblings are interpreting the same facts very differently, and they want the other sibling to adopt their perspective. They aren’t causing each other to question their own reality and they aren’t trying to manipulate each other. However, this could turn into gaslighting if one of the siblings were so insistent on their interpretation that it caused the other one to start doubting themselves. This would create a power imbalance in their relationship that would allow the gaslighter to undermine the victim’s sense of self. As well as the gaslighter’s need for control, the very act of manipulating and leveraging of power of this relationship are essential components in gaslighting. And hurt feelings and challenging each other’s viewpoints is not gaslighting. On a personal note, I think it would be rather tragic if those things were gaslighting because it means you could never question other people or challenge their views on anything. I suppose that would also put clinical psychology in a difficult spot considering it’s our job to challenge the client’s maladaptive coping mechanisms, and cognitive processes. As a result, if we apply this knowledge to our fictional example, if Claire was the sibling who was more powerful and pushed Harry around. Then Harry would be vulnerable to Claire gaslighting him in adulthood. Especially if Harry really does start to believe he is selfish, awful and horrible person by not submitting to Claire’s wishes. Then he might start withdrawing from their relationship. Again this would result in a gaslight dance if you will, because if Harry ends up being unable to sleep at night at night because he’s wondering if Claire is right and he is selfish. Because he fears she’s right about him not wanting to spend time with her then he’s starting to question his own character and the very integrity of her relationships. Then gaslighting is very much present. You Need Two People To Gaslight Moving onto the last section of the episode, I want to mention that gaslighting happens when there is a power dynamic within a relationship that ends up causing the person being gaslighted to question themselves, along with their sense of reality. Typically, the gaslighter is constantly manipulating and attack the gaslightee as well as being verbally aggressive towards them. In addition, the gaslighter is very likely to turn a discussion between the two into a blaming game against the other person. And they will most probably outright lie about what took place just to further their own manipulations because if the gaslighter is so certain about something then it’s easy to make you question if you’re memory or perception is right. Then it all ends up leaving the victim of the gaslighting to feel worn out, unsure of themselves and wondering if they are crazy like the gaslighter said, and they might even end up avoiding future discussions out of fear of disagreements escalating this already disorienting discussion. Additionally, the most concerning thing is that over time the victim may even accept the gaslighter’s views of reality as their own. And these are critical defining elements of gaslighting. However, the most critical to remember when it comes to gaslighting is that it can only work if there are two people taking part in it. The gaslighter and the victim. In other words, gaslighting can only happen if the victim allows it to. You can keep yourself from ending up in a gaslighting relationship by being aware of the topic and the sort of language used in arguments. As well as how it makes you feel, and noticing how you react to it. Some helpful phrases that might be helpful to stop you engaging in a verbal loop or power struggle include: · “What you said hurt my feelings and I’m too upset at the moment to talk about it,” · “Let’s agree to disagree,” · You’re twisting what I said. Let’s take a break and talk about it later,” Social Psychology: Conclusion To wrap up this social psychology episode, I must admit that as more and more people use the word “gaslighting” in our world, we risk its meaning becoming blurred or forgotten. Therefore, it is critical that we clearly understand what it actually means and when something is and isn’t gaslighting. Sometimes you will be involved in disagreements, it’s natural, but sometimes you might meet person who wants to gaslight you. And that’s when you need to be aware of what’s going on for your own sake, but just remember sometimes a disagreement is simply that. Two people disagreeing and not gaslighting in the slightest. I really hope you enjoyed today’s social psychology episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Psychology of Relationships: The Social Psychology of Friendships, Romantic Relationships, Prosocial Behaviour 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. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Social Psychology and Relationship Psychology Reference Stern, R. (2018). The gaslight effect: How to spot and survive the hidden manipulation others use to control your life. Harmony. 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. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

With this podcast occasionally looking at forensic psychology, I really wanted to get a better understanding of poisonings. There are so many different types of poisons in the world from synthetic to natural to poisons made up of two or more components to become deadly (called duo-poisons). However, it still doesn’t explain why some people decide to use poisoning as their method of murder, so that’s the focus of today’s forensic psychology podcast episode. Today’s episode has been sponsored by Forensic Psychology Collection. 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. And Bettie Private Eye Mysteries Kickstarter includes a gripping private eye mystery about poisonings. Only available until the 28th July 2022. What Is The Criminal Psychology of Poisoning? There have been a lot of famous cases involving poisonings in the past and poisoning people definitely isn’t a new way to kill people. For example, healthcare killers like Harold Shipman, tend to overdose their victims on medication. As well as in 1993 Glenn Turner named his wife to be the sole beneficiary on his life insurance policy, so she killed him, made it look like natural causes and it wasn’t until she killed her second husband and their mothers got suspicious that she was investigated. Leading Dr Michael Farrel to write his book called the “Criminology of Homicidal Poisonings”. Which Dr Farrel was in a good position to write because he’s a private consultant on the use of poison in murders, as well as he has a substantial background in medical research and psychiatry, with his book linking research in the fields of forensic toxicology with criminology. And the text makes a solid contribution to both of these fields. Additionally, I want to highlight why this is important to look at on a psychology podcast. Since one of the many things I absolutely love about psychology is that anything to do with human behaviour is under our remit. As psychology people we are within our right to investigate all aspects of behaviour, and poisoning someone is a behaviour, and poisoning is a type of crime, which again is a behaviour. Therefore, as these two are behaviours, we get to study them in psychology. Hence why I’m talking about it on a psychology podcast. Furthermore, Dr Farrel goes beyond simply describing how murderous poisonings fit with the most popular criminological theories as to why people kill, but he also examines the deadliness and nature of different poisons, provides a history, identifies trends in poisonings and shows offender traits and victim characteristics. Of course, as we know from forensic psychology, we always need to be wary of these offender traits and victim characteristics because they can be inaccurate and just plain unhelpful. But it is still “good” to make a reference at the very least. Then Dr Farrel also discusses issues for prosecutors and investigators taking a poisoning case to trial. The Criminal Psychology of Poisoners: However, what is really interested to this podcast is that poisoners actually have a lot on their side when they poison someone. Since case reconstruction often depends on largely circumstantial evidence with an emphasis on the killer’s motive. For example, Kristin Rossum was having an affair and her husband supposedly died of a fentanyl overdose because she wanted everyone to believe he had committed suicide. But he was very well known to be averse to taking pills and the suicidal note and rose petals Kristin had left behind made no sense. Then after years of family members protesting the police and getting the police to admit their errors. The investigators finally decided that something was wrong because if she hadn’t leave the suicide note and the rose petals. Then there is a chance she could have been more successful as the investigators might have decided with her husband being in such a state, he might have overcome his aversion to pills. I don’t know but it is just a point showing how badly these case reconstructions rely on circumstantial evidence that isn’t always present. I’m just glad that for the sake of Kristin’s husband there was this type of evidence left behind. In addition, and much more interestingly, many poisonings actually look natural or accident at first, or they can be passed off as suicide. Yet if the circumstances look suspicious, even if only a little, should be investigated (of course not all of them are sadly but still). And when it comes to poisonings which can be difficult to investigate anyway due to the difficulties in finding what poison was used, and breaking the alibi of the killer (since that’s a good benefit of poisons. You don’t need to be in the same room at the time the poison takes effect) intentionality is key. It’s up to investigators to work out what do the suspects gain from the poisonings? Resulting in poisoners can go undetected for years, or forever, especially if their victims are members of populations who are expected to die. Like the sick and the elderly. What Makes A Successful Poisoner? Moreover, a successful poisoner is cunning, remorseless and often greedy or looking for a way out of a difficult situation. They also have to have the intelligence to study a poison and to plan ahead for its use and its consequences. As well as they need to know if how long the poison will take to affect the victim so they can plan their alibi according, and that’s all before knowing if the killer would prefer a slow or quick death, and how to hide symptoms. Then staging plays a significant part as well. For example, stagers try to find ways to defer investigations or mask symptoms. Since if you get investigators to believe that no foul play or poison was used then they aren’t going to investigate, meaning you don’t go to jail. Some techniques for stagers include they could be flat out against an autopsy being performed and have the body cremated, they could write a suicide note or “confide” to a doctor that the victim was suicidal. Equally, they could clean up the crime scene, surround a search with context that obscures the value of what they find or wipe a computer search. And what this idea of obscuring is about is the killer might have a ready explanation to explain away what the investigators find. For instance, a Minister once “discovered” his overdosed wife dead and he told the police that she was a sleepwalker and must have taken the pills by accident in her sleep. Are Females Really More Likely To Poison People? If you watch any crime programme there is always the popular idea that females are more likely to use poisons compared to other means of murder. But this is actually false since at least amongst the offenders caught for poisonings males outnumber females. However, this simply could reflect the biases in the criminal justice system that I talk about in Forensic Psychology, so more research should be done into this area. In addition, medical professionals are overrepresented in this group of offenders (meaning more medical professionals are poisoners than other professionals). This is most probably down to their knowledge of as well as access to drugs and potential poisons. Since we constantly hear over and over how healthcare serial killers have accidentally given their victims the “wrong” medications or administered an overdose. Meaning it is critical we recognise these red flags in those who decide to poison others. What Is The Criminal Psychology of Poisoning: Conclusion To wrap up this podcast episode, I want to point out how Dr Farrel believed that murderous poisonings are underestimated. Due to given how easy it is for investigators and us to simply overlook the evidence, accept other explanations for a death and make investigative missteps and errors, he is probably right in actual fact. Poisons can be all too easy to acquire and the motivations of people to use them are more often all-too-human and compelling to do so. I really hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET. Forensic Psychology Collection. 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. Bettie Private Eye Mysteries Kickstarter includes a gripping private eye mystery about poisonings. Only available until the 28th July 2022. If you’re reading after this, please check out The Federation Protects at all major booksellers. Buy Me A Coffee Criminal Psychology Reference Farrell, M. (2017). Criminology of Homicidal Poisoning. Springer. 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

With the recent launch of my Bettie English Private Eye Kickstarter and the second book in the series investigates a Russian plot to damn the western world, I wanted to have a look into the psychology of espionage and foreign inference in our democratic processes. What I found and what we’re going to be talking about in today’s psychology podcast episode was surprisingly and honestly fascinating. Prepare yourself for a hell of an interesting episode. This biological psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Social Psychology: A Guide To Social and Cultural Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. And Bettie Private Eye Mysteries Kickstarter includes a gripping private eye mystery about poisonings. Only available until the 28th July 2022. How Russian Espionage Links To Evolutionary Psychology? Whilst I will not be going into the background information for this podcast episode in too much depth, like the Muller Report refusing to rule out Russian interference in the US presidential election in 2016 and claims about the Russians hacking emails, trolling social media sites and secretly taking out online ads to get their own message across. For purposes not necessarily to show support for Trump over Clinton in the 2016 election but to destabilise American democracy so freedom-inclined Russians couldn’t hold America as the shining pinnacle for why Russia should be a free democracy too. Also I will note you definitely need to listen to this section about the theory behind it, then in the next section I will explain how this actually works in practice. Instead the neuroscientist and former intelligence officer Eric Haseltine proposes that Russia’s recent efforts are actually a masterful use of evolutionary psychology to weaken their opponent on the world stage. Since evolutionary psychologists propose that there are what’s known as “Darwinian Scripts” operating deep within the brains of the American public with these scripts encouraging tribal conflict. As a result of in a 2012 article in the Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society, psychologist Dr Melissa McDonald and peers argued that our brains have evolved cognitive as well as emotional mechanisms to allow us to form deep bonds with a particular social group so we can reap the important benefits of intra-group cooperation. Such as sharing of scarce resources, collective defence against external threats and group child rearing. At this point I really don’t think there is any reason to doubt or counter this idea too much since social cognition teaches us how our brains have changed to allow us to get involved in social group processes to aid survival. However, whilst there are all these clear benefits of intragroup cooperation, these same mechanisms also heavily promote outgroup aggression and working against other outgroups. As well as according to Dr McDonald, this effect is particularly strong for males, as she proposes that the male reproductive strategy for humans encourages this conflict and aggression towards outgroups. Citing the work of noted evolutionary psychologists Tooby and Cosmides. In addition, whilst I will not cite the work because of its length, the basic gist of the work is in lethal intergroup conflicts, males are more likely to take part in this aggression coalition of the ingroup because their deaths don’t damage the survival chances of the ingroup as much as female deaths. Since if at the end of the conflict there are only ten males but 50 females. Then the males can impregnate 5 females each and the survival chances of the group overall is much higher because of that. As well as if males died during the intergroup conflict then all the reproductive resources would be reallocated among the male survivors, possibly meaning the benefits given to the victorious males could be immense. In other words, males stand to gain a lot more than they would lose by getting involved in intergroup conflict, so it makes sense from a reproductive standpoint to show intergroup aggression and hostility towards outgroups. Hence why intergroup aggression and tribalism thrives to this day. Applying This To The Modern World Of course this doesn’t mean that modern humans who engage in turf wars or aggressive foreign policies in the political world are actually trying to improve their reproductive status. Even though the constant revelations of sexual harassment in politics by some ambitious and successful men could suggest that reproductive status remains a powerful motive. Nevertheless, it does suggest that because our brains haven’t changed too much in the past hundred thousand years, we still retain powerful drives to align with a particular tribe against another tribe. Resulting in the all-important question of: How Does This Deeply Ingrained Tribal Aggression Link To Russian Espionage? With the Russians knowing that these tribalistic Darwinian scripts are running in the brains of westerners, they know they can stimulate these scripts to inflame heated conflicts amongst the various factions and tribes within a country. Resulting in Russia being able to damage their enemies on the global stage. For example, they might decide to inflame divisions amongst the Republicans and Democrats in the USA or the Conservative and Labour party in the United Kingdom. And what really fascinates me is that Eric Haseltine proposes that Russia wasn’t actually trying to hide that they hacked into DNC emails to leave a trail pointing back at Russia in part to send a message. And in part to create precisely the protracted ugly conflict that persists in the western world about Russian interfering in our elections. In addition, as Eric Haseltine points out, this does sound like a far-fetched idea but in his new book “The Spy In Moscow Station”. Which I will go into depth about in a moment. Personally, I think this part, if it’s true, is extremely clever and concerning. Because it means that Russia knows exactly what biological psychology tricks to tap into to get a response, and what makes it worse, it is for all this to be effective, Russia can do these things in the relatively open. It can get western governments to know that they’re behind all of this, simply knowing that little fact of this “knowing” who’s behind it will simply inflame these debates even more. And damage their enemies in the long term. The Fascinating Evidence For This Idea: Therefore, in his new book, Eric Haseltine describes what the Russians did to penetrate the security of the US embassy in Moscow from 1976 to 1984. Since when one tribe (the NSA) in US intelligence found strong evidence of the Russian penetration in 1978, other national security tribes (The US State Department and the CIA) fought a protracted tribal battle against the NSA in an effort to deny and ultimately discredit their evidence of a leak. Resulting in whilst all these different US security tribes squabbled and played a stupid game of infighting, the Russians collected devastating intelligence for over six years. And if that wasn’t bad enough, this intelligence resulted in the executions of Soviet citizens that were spying for the Americans and it allowed Russia to learn where the American’s positions were on nuclear weapon treatments in advance. It took the NSA “tribe” 6 years to “conquer” their opposing “tribes” to find out what happened and eventually they plugged the leaks, but I highly doubt at that point Russia was too bothered considering the golden intelligence they had gathered for 6 years. And Russia itself admitted the following (check the references below for proof): “if we spy aggressively on the Americans we’ll collect sensational intelligence, and the worst that can happen, if we get caught, is that the Americans will tear themselves apart arguing about it.” Personally, I think this just shows the sheer power our biology can have on our behaviour even to this day. I would love to know what would have happened if the leak was plugged immediately. A lot of Soviet citizens spying for the Americans would still probably be alive and who knows what intelligence they could have provided the west with. So this really does go to show as well that evolutionary biology, espionage and tribalism can cost lives. What Can The West Do? Now that we’re aware of the scary implications of our tribal nature and these “Darwinian Scripts”, I really like to leave this podcast suggesting ways to overcome this and help us move forward in a hopefully more positive way. Therefore, the first step is to acknowledge the great power of our deep tribal urges because these are not going away. If we haven’t gotten rid of these in hundreds of thousands of years, we simply aren’t, as well as we cannot control these urges if we don’t admit that we have them in the first place. Then we do to move away from the primitive arguments of the opposing “tribe” is evil, malicious and selfish and ignorant. To something that is more modern and informed. Basically, we need to ask ourselves how much of our hate and aggression towards the opposing “tribe” is true, and how much of it is simply down to our “Darwinian scripts”? Secondly, we need to recognise that we can only control our tendencies for tribalism, and not eliminate them. Due to any policy or grand idea that seeks to eliminate our nature will only be met with limited success. You only need to read into the history of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to know how that was meant to overcome the tribal conflicts of the US intelligence agencies, but it only intensified them. With the CIA going as far as to point out that “Al Qaeda is our target, but you are our enemy,” Finally, humans will always view someone as an enemy, it is just part of our social psychology and the only viable way to reduce our harmful internal squabbles is to work hard to refine who that someone is. As supported by Eric Haseltine’s experiences of working overseas for the US government when he observed that sharing amongst intelligence agencies is very good in places like Iraq and Afghanistan where all these different officers were geographically very close in their work against ISIS and Al Qaeda. Overall, suggesting that cooperation amongst different “tribes” can be improved and these tribal conflicts reduced, if a much large number of intelligence officers were periodically rotated so they were physically close to their adversaries, where it is a lot more obvious as to do the real “bad guys” are. Personally, I think that idea is very idealistic and it would never ever happen, but it is a good idea at the very least. I just can’t see politicians and the most senior intelligence officers who ultimately have the deciding vote in these inflamed debates going to these geographical locations where the enemy is ever so close. Social Psychology Conclusion: To finish up this rather long but fascinating episode, I want to say that the bottom line is where these tribes are within government, intelligence or business or to be honest, any collection of people trying to work towards a common goal. The best way to make sure you pick the right friends and you avoided distracting debates that hinder your work, is to make sure you pick the right enemies. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 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. Bettie Private Eye Mysteries Kickstarter includes a gripping private eye mystery about a plot to doom the western world. Only available until the 28th July 2022. If you’re reading after this, please check out The Russian Case at all major booksellers. Buy Me A Coffee Biological Psychology and Political Psychology References McDonald, M. M., Navarrete, C. D., & Van Vugt, M. (2012). Evolution and the psychology of intergroup conflict: the male warrior hypothesis. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 367(1589), 670–679. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0301 Tooby J., Cosmides L. 1988. The evolution of war and its cognitive foundations, Technical Report no. 88-1. Institute for Evolutionary Studies, MA, USA https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/reagan-and-gorbachev-agreed-p… https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/long-fuse-big-bang/201904/the-psychology-behind-russian-election-interference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQxzWpy7PKg https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Moscow-Station-Counterspys-Deadly/dp/1250301… 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. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

When it comes to psychopaths, if you ask anyone about them, their likelihood to succeed in life and more. The general public will always tell you how people in the top positions are almost always psychopaths because psychopaths are naturally inclined to be more successful, popular (because of their manipulative charm) and better leadership candidates. Mainly this belief is all down to a psychopath’s “impressive” ability to manipulate others so perfectly. However, what is the truth? That’s the focus of today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Personality Psychology And Individual Difference 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. Are Psychopaths Really More Likely To Succeed? It turned out that a brand new study from February 2022 (full reference is below) might be able to help us cast some doubt this belief about psychopaths. Since this study has different results that contradict the very widely held belief that in the professional world cold and unsympathetic individuals might be more successful. Due to their data suggests the complete opposite. In addition, I should also note here that this successful belief about psychopaths isn’t just to do with CEO and other business types, because this applies to politicians too. Therefore, the whole belief about psychopaths being more successful does have very large implications and that is why it is critical to look at. In addition, as Hedwig Eisenbarth, a psychologist working at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand explains people often that because psychopaths are so cold-blooded, fearless and have low empathy. This fits the description of most people in positions of power so people characterised and connect the two types of people. Leading them to want to study this in an empirical manner. Eisenbarth et al. (2022) Methodology Therefore, to test this belief, the researchers got data from over 2,300 New Zealand adults and they examined the following three questions areas for the study. Firstly, the researchers measured three aspects of the psychopathic personality from a series of questions supplied in the survey. These aspects were fearless dominance, cold-heartedness and self-centred impulsivity. Secondly, the researchers measured the participants’ opinions regarding their professional success by combining the participants’ answers to these two questions. How secure do you feel in your current job? And How satisfied are you with your current job? Then both of these questions were assessed using a 10 point Likert scale. Finally, the researchers measured a construct known as occupational prestige by calculating the participant’s socioeconomic status and combined it with their employment type. For example, a legal professional and teacher are more prestigious than a food preparation assistant. And I know I certainly missed it at first, but I want to point out that the second measure is about the participant’s own subjective answer and opinion about their own job. But the final measure is a bit more objective and standardised as it’s much easier to be objective talking about socioeconomic status and how prestigious a job generally is compared a participant’s personal thoughts on it. I just wanted to point this out to show that the study isn’t relying too heavily on subjective data. Eisenbarth et al. (2022) Results Thankfully because of the measurements taken the researchers were able to test their core hypothesis about the belief. Yet because psychology is a science they decided to flip the belief on its head slightly, because their core hypothesis was that people with psychopathic personality tendencies would be less likely to achieve high levels of professional success. Again because of the general belief around psychopaths, when I first read this I was a little surprised that they were testing it in this way. As well as I was rather sure that this would be disproven. However, they found this to be the case most of the time. Due to individuals higher on the fearless-dominance aspect reported higher subjective professional success, whilst people higher on the self-centred impulsivity reported lower subjective professional success. As well as for those people higher on the cold-heartedness aspect, they showed lower occupational prestige. Additionally, these results and associations still held true even when the researchers account for other variables that could have influenced their predictions. For example, age, gender, education and duration of job tenure. Conclusion Leading the researchers to conclude that psychopathic personality traits do indeed have a negative effect on a person’s subjective professional success. As well as the fearless-dominance aspect of psychopathy seems to contribute to higher subjective success. However, in terms of the general belief about psychopaths, it seems that this is a lot more fiction than reality. And I want to end today’s episode with an excellent point that Eisenbarth made about all this. He mentioned that if we think that having lower empathy and being less distractable by our emotional reactions could be helpful to us in making hard economic decisions. Then that is somewhat reasonable (that’s what he’s implying anyway), but when this is combined with a psychopath’s impulsivity and anti-sociality. Then this leads to negative effects that probably outweigh these benefits, resulting in the, well, results that he saw in this study. I really hope you enjoyed today’s psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Personality Psychology And Individual Difference 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. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Personality Psychology and Psychopathy References: Eisenbarth, H. (Interview) Do people with psychopathic tendencies achieve more career success? Therapytips.org, December 7, 2021. Eisenbarth, H., Hart, C. M., Zubielevitch, E., Keilor, T., Wilson, M., Bulbulia, J., ... & Sedikides, C. (2022). Aspects of psychopathic personality relate to lower subjective and objective professional success. Personality and Individual Differences, 186, 111340. 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

As much as no one wants to look at the disgusting act of child sexual abuse, it is a massive area of concern around the world. As well as since this is a criminal act it firmly falls under the remit of forensic psychology and the podcast, and it’s important to try to combat dangerous myths that only hurt children and enable the abuse to continue. So if you’re interested in sexual abuse and forensic psychology, you need to keep reading! This criminal psychology episode has been sponsored by Forensic Psychology. Available from all major eBook and audiobook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. 5 Harmful Myths About Child Sexual Abuse I have spoken briefly about some myths in my Forensic Psychology book, but in this episode we’re going to explore some more myths, and most importantly, why are they harmful to children? Myth: Sex Offender Registries Prevent Sexual Abuse This is actually a myth that I fell for because I just presumed that this was a measure that worked to prevent sex crimes. But it turns out that sex offender registries show no effect on re-offending positive or negative. As a result of a meta-analysis by Zgoba and Mitchell (2021) found that over the past 25 years, which was when sex offender registries were first introduced. There has been no effect on reoffending. Meaning there was no decrease in reoffending for these people on the registry. In addition, Sanler, Freeman and Socia (2008) found that only 5% of sex crimes were committed by people on the sex offender registry. In other words 95% of all sex crimes are committed by people not on these registries. Therefore, it really does beg the question, why do people think they work? Personally, I think it comes down to people just not looking into it and believing what politicians and the police tell them about how effective they are. But that’s why I love these sorts of myth busting podcast episodes because we get to learn different truths about the world. Myth: Child Sexual Abuse Is A Spontaneous Crime I can’t specifically say I’ve ever believed this one but it makes perfect sense why people believe this myth. Since if you watch any crime drama on TV or film they always show you a sex offender grabbing a random kid off the street without any planning or thought behind the act. However, the truth is many sex offences made against children involve sexual grooming behaviour where the act is planned for days or weeks or even years before the disgusting act happens. And in this time frame the offender is grooming the child, their community and their family (this ties into another myth we’ll talk about in a moment). In addition, sexual grooming refers to when an offender exercises a process of deceit where they select a victim, gain access to them and isolates the child. They do this by developing a bond of trust with them and the other adults in their life and the would-be offender desensitises the minor to sexual content and physical contact. Subsequently, after the sexual act (abuse) has happened then the offender could engage in maintenance strategies to facilitate future abuse and/or to prevent the minor telling others about the abuse. In terms of the sexual grooming literature, there’s evidence (see the references below) from two 2016 studies that show whilst the main literature believed only sexual abuse against children used grooming tactics. These two studies show that sexual abuse against adults and teenagers may use grooming tactics as well. Additionally, it was commonly believed that only around half of all sexual abuse offences involved grooming tactics but Winters and Jeglic (2021) found 99% of all self-reported sexual offences against children used grooming tactics. Overall, child sexual abuse is hardly a spontaneous crime. Myth: Only Strangers Commit Sex Offenses Whilst I mentioned this in my forensic psychology book, it is very much worth mentioning this myth again. Due to not only is it extremely dangerous as it could cause children not to be believed if they report sexual abuse against them by a family member. But it ties into the myth above. As a result, only 7% of child sexual abuse and 19.5% of adult sexual abuse is committed by a stranger. Furthermore, another reason why this is so dangerous is because this is the myth that drives most sexual abuse prevention strategies. So even our prevention strategies are highly flawed and don’t work because of this single myth. The truth is 34% of children are sexually abused by family members and 59% of them are abused by acquaintances. Then for adults, 39% are sexually abused by an acquaintance and 33% are abused by a former or current partner. Myth: Only Adult Men Commit Sex Offenses I should probably combine this myth slightly with the silly idea that only gay people commit sexual offences against children. Both are flat out wrong. Because it turns out that up to 12% of sex offenders are women and 25% to 35% are under 18s. Now the reason why this is a dangerous myth is because when it comes to teaching sexual violence prevention, we tend to without a shadow of a doubt identify the perpetrators of sexual offenses are men. And whilst it is completely true that the vast majority of sex offenses are carried out by men a meta-analysis by Cortoni, Babchishin and Rat (2016) found in 12% of sexual abuse cases the offender was female. As well as in 40% of sexual abuse against men the offender was a woman compared to only 4% in those committed against a woman. Finally, 33% of people who abuse children and 25% of people who abuse adults are minors and under 18s themselves. Therefore, none of these are small percentages and by failing to teach people about the risk of female and minors committing sexual abuse. It can only harm innocent people in the long term as it may negatively affect prevention reporting and detection. Myth: There Is Only A Specific Type Or Profile Of A Person Who Commits Sexual Abuse At the time of writing this post in early-Mid June 2022, I’ve started researching terrorism and the criminal psychology behind it. And personally I do not understand people’s obsession with finding a specific set of traits, personalities or something to give them a specific profile of a criminal. You just have to read or listen to my Criminal Profiling book to know how stupid that idea is and how much it doesn’t work. Anyway off my little soapbox, the truth is there is absolutely not one profile of a typical sex offender. If you watch any TV then there is a set profile of a sexual offender that makes it easy to identify based on their behaviours and characteristics, but in the real world it doesn’t work like that. The people who commit sexual offenses come from all walks of life with different looks, sizes and backgrounds. Some sex offenses come from respectable members of the community like Priests, Teachers and doctors. Other offenders come from less respectable sections of the community (which I think is just harsh to put it like that). Conclusion: However, what we do know is that teaching our children and young people about healthy sexuality, relationship skills and affirmative consent can go a very, very long way to preventing future sexual violence. And understanding the myths and the realities of sexual offending is just flat out critical for preventing it, so we know who to target. But the thing I want to leave you with today is the true damage of myths and misconceptions in all areas of life. Due to with our laws and prevention strategies being based on these myths and misconceptions, we are not only failing to protect ourselves but we could be putting ourselves at an increased risk too. I really hope you have enjoyed today’s forensic and clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Forensic 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. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Forensic Psychology References: Cortoni, F., Babchishin, K. M., & Rat, C. (2017). The proportion of sexual offenders who are female is higher than thought: A meta-analysis. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 44(2), 145-162. Jeglic, E.L., & Calkins, C (2018). Protecting your Child from Sexual Abuse: What You Need to Know to Keep your Kids Safe. Skyhorse, New York Sandler, J. C., Freeman, N. J., & Socia, K. M. (2008). Does a watched pot boil? A time-series analysis of New York State's sex offender registration and notification law. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 14(4), 284. Winters, G. M., & Jeglic, E. L. (2021). The Sexual Grooming Scale–Victim Version: The Development and Pilot Testing of a Measure to Assess the Nature and Extent of Child Sexual Grooming. Victims & Offenders, 1-22. Winters, G., & Jeglic, E.L (2016). Stages of sexual grooming: Recognizing potentially predatory behaviors of child molesters. Deviant Behavior, 1-10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2016.1197656 Winters, G., & Jeglic, E.L. (2016). I knew it all along: The sexual grooming behaviors of child molesters and the hindsight bias. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 25(1). 20-36. doi: 10.1080/10538712.2015.1108945 Zgoba, K. M., & Mitchell, M. M. (2021). The effectiveness of Sex Offender Registration and Notification: A meta-analysis of 25 years of findings. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 1-26. 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

Like everyone else, psychology students and psychology professionals can have damaging myths about marriages that can cause us pain and decrease our mental health for periods of time or much longer term. So in this social psychology episode, I want to break some of these myths so in case you do get married these myths might not damage your relationship. This episode has been sponsored by Psychology of Relationships: The Social Psychology of Romantic Relationships, Friendships, Prosocial Behaviour and More Third Edition. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback, large print and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Myths About Marriages: Whilst nothing on this podcast is ever official advice even relationship advice, I still wanted to do today’s episode to help us face up to some of these both in the present in the future. We Should Have The Same Interests: I’ve always had two thoughts about this myth because on the one hand it’s nice to have things in common so you and your partner can do enjoyable things together. On the flip side, if you both have the exact same interests and don’t have anything that’s “yours” so to speak then you could have its own negative effects on the relationships because you could feel smothered. Whatever you believe, it’s important that you both connect and have things to bond over. These same interests don’t have to be big things. It can be as simple as going out for a walk at night and both being interested in books and talking about them. As long as you connect that’s fine and often the simplest things are the best because you can both do them at any time. We Shouldn’t Fight Seriously? I’ve spoken about my own thoughts around conflict in relationships and their occasional benefits on the podcast before. But another way to imagine it, is it would be an extremely boring marriage if you married a clone of yourself that didn’t disagree once with you. It’s good to meet people with different opinions and attitudes and it allows you to get outside of an echo chamber. We Have To Agree On Politics and Religion This is exactly the same as the point above, not only are you both different people, but it might help you develop and deepen your own understanding on these issues if you hear them from a different viewpoint. Therefore, it doesn’t make you messed up or a couple with serious problems with you disagree on these massive issues. It makes you normal. If Things Get Bad We’re Doomed Personally I had to really think about this one because I couldn’t believe people believed it strongly but it turned out I was coming at the myth from a different angle. It turns out that when things have been bad for a while, couples tend to believe they’re stuck and this is how things will be forever. Their partner won’t change their behaviour and their marriage is doomed to fail because of their problems won’t fix themselves. Granted nothing ever fixes itself, but the reason why this is a myth is because this requires communication. I know I’ve done podcast episodes on communication before and its importance so you might want to check the backlist. But it’s important for the couple to talk about their problems AND actively seek out a solution. For example, some people recommend couples therapy, reading a martial self-help book and more. Even if you both agree to spend half an hour together each night with each other and no technology around. Even if that’s not enough, it shows you’re both trying and the marriage might not be doomed. It Shouldn’t Be Hard To Feel Close So I left this myth until last because I really do understand it and it makes perfect sense. Since you believe you should always feel close to your partner even after years of living together. Well, the truth is humans are creatures of behavioural habits and comfort. Meaning when you and your partner are living together and/or married together, you’re going to get into a routine and form your own behavioural habits. Therefore, whilst you both might be there physically together, you might not feel too close because you’re just doing what you always do. There’s nothing special about it. Consequently, marriage will require a bit of extra effort sometimes so you both feel close to each other. Overall, I hope you enjoyed today’s social psychology episode and I hope this helps you, your friends or clients with their relationships in the future. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Psychology of Relationships: The Social Psychology of Romantic Relationships, Friendships, Prosocial Behaviour and More Third Edition. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback, large print and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee I truly hope that you’re 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal. Social Psychology Reference https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/having-sex-wanting-intimacy/202106/10-dangerous-myths-about-marriage

If you talk to any clinical psychologists or mental health professional, they will tell you the many flaws of the current diagnostic model like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Edition 5 (DSM-5 to you and me). This model proposes that mental conditions exist in a case where you either have it or you don’t. Clinical psychology has known for ages that this isn’t how mental health conditions work as they exist on a continuum so a new model is needed. Thankfully there is a lot of hope for a new psychology model called the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) and that’s the focus of this fascinating clinical psychology podcast episode. This episode has been sponsored by Formulation In Psychotherapy. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. What Is The HiTOP Approach? I’m not going into to go too much into depth about the problems with the existing “All-Or-Nothing” model of diagnosis that always misses out too much important information and it misses the important something-in-between action. Because I’ve mentioned it before on the podcast, in books and it’s very well documented. Therefore, over the past 20 years, there has been a call within psychology to replace the old DSM system, and this call has been gaining strength and momentum ever since. Resulting in these efforts causing and coalescing into what’s known as the “Quantitative Classification Movement”. This is a group of scientists with the goal to get rid of the traditional reliance on a priori (non-tested) assumptions about mental health conditions, like the idea that they’re categorical when they aren’t, and replace the system with a new dimensional model based on the findings about the actual organisation of psychopathology. For example, the system will provide a more useful guide for patients, clinicians and researchers as well as enabling psychologists to study and treat characteristics that are common to a range of conditions. In addition, the HiTOP approach uses statistical procedures, like factor analyses, to identify constellations of co-occurring signs, maladaptive traits and symptoms. Then the approach organises them into a hierarchy based on patterns of association. Resulting in this model, certain mental health constructs, like externalising behaviours, are measured and regarded on a continuum (or sliding scale if you will) in the exact same way how medical doctors think of blood pressure or viral loads. Leading to the different levels of the construct being empirically associated with different common outcomes and treatment being assigned based on these risks. Personally, I think this approach so far sounds very promising like Formulation In Psychotherapy, it is about moving mental health into the future and advancing it. Moving away from outdated models that don’t work as effectively as they did due to new research casting doubt them. As well as it is important to keep moving forward because as I mentioned in my Clinical Psychology Reflection book, the unofficial mandate of clinical psychologists is to absolutely help people improve their lives and decrease their psychological distress. And if this HiTOP approach is something that can help us to do, then we must consider it and advancing the field of mental health forward. Research On The HiTOP Approach: It turns out that the HiTOP approach is actually the result of research into the new dimensional approach of mental health. With HiTOP itself looking to empirically identify psychopathology structures in a person by, according to the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University: “combining individual signs and symptoms into homogeneous components or traits, assembling them into empirically-derived syndromes, and finally grouping them into psychopathology spectra" In much easier terms to understand this, the HiTOP approach seeks to match a person’s difficulties and their behaviours with fundamental dimensions of maladaptive behaviours. For example, matching a person’s depressed mood and negative cognitive style with some dimensions giving you depression. That is the easiest way to explain it at the moment. What Are Spectras In HiTOP? In the HiTOP approach, you have 6 different spectras so far and each one includes both the psychopathology symptoms and maladaptive traits which are parallel to each other on different time scales. As well as each of these traits capture relatively stable and typical (chronic) personality tendencies, all whilst symptoms tend to reflect the current acute picture of a person’s mental health. With these six spectras being: · A Thought Disorder Dimension This dimension ranges from normal reality testing to maladaptive traits of psychoticism to hallucinations and delusions as well as encompasses symptoms and traits commonly seen in bipolar and psychotic disorders. · “Internalising” Dimension The second spectra focuses and accounts for the comorbidity (having two or more conditions at the same time) that can be found in conditions. Like anxiety, depression, PTSD and eating disorders, as well as OCD and sexual dysfunctions. · Detachment Dimension Rather similar to personality traits to some extent, this dimension ranges from introversion to maladaptive detachment, to blunted affect and a-violation. As well as the easiest way to think about this dimension is it covers symptoms that are commonly seen in avoidant personalities, so if you cast your mind back to learning about Bowlby and avoidance attachment types. This is what this dimension focuses on more or less. · Antagonistic Externalising Then on the flip side this dimension doesn’t focus on avoidant personalities but instead accounts for the comorbid symptoms in other personality conditions. Like those seen in borderline personality disorder and paranoid personalities. Something that I must cover on the podcast at some point. · Somatoform Dimension The penultimate dimension focuses on psychosomatic symptoms with it focusing on conversion disorders and other representations of psychological symptoms in physiological ways. For instance in conversion disorder people have symptoms that are common with neurological disorders but there is no physiological explanation for the symptoms. Or another example is people who cannot walk despite there not being a medical reason why not. However, this dimension is only has been added into the HiTOP approach provisionally as the current evidence for the dimension is ambiguous about whether or not this dimension is actually unique from the internalising dimension. · Disinhibited Externalising The final dimension of the approach accounts for comorbidities amongst conditions like conduct disorder, antisocial behaviour, substance abuse and Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity disorder. Bringing It More Together So in an effort to bring everything more together because believe me, I know this is a lot of information and knowledge to take in. but research is continuing in the model with the focus being refining our understanding of the dimensions. As well as evidence like Kotov et al. (2020) suggests that those 6 spectras might be able to be combined into a super-spectra. For example, “emotional dysfunctions” combine the characteristics of internalising and somatoform spectra. And I must add that would really help to solve the ambiguous problems with those two dimensions. In addition, the “psychosis” super-spectra might be able to combine the thought disorder and detachment spectras. However, what is most important for us psychology students and professionals learning about this for the first time (well I am anyway) is that above all these complex words like spectras could sit a general psychopathology dimension containing features common to all mental conditions. Again we don’t have that sort of overarching understanding with the current DSM model. We aren’t able to look at all mental conditions and see if there are any links between them because in the DSM model everything is organised in concrete categorical with minimal overlap allowed. As well as you might have thought about it when I was explaining the 6 dimensions but there is ongoing research onto refining the different dimensions themselves because in their current state they do cover a lot of ground that could make it difficult to narrow down different conditions potentially. That’s why they’re examining the sub-factors of each dimension. Such as for the internalising dimension, it has been found to have two very distinct subgroups. The distress factor that is evident in PTSD, generalised anxiety disorder and depression. As well as the fear factor that is present in OCD and panic disorders. Bringing It All Together And Conclusion: So I know in this podcast episode I have introduced you to a lot of brand new information and I won’t lie, it did get complex at times. But now we all have the information, let’s bring it all together. The HiTOP model is a very new model that has thankfully generated a very needed date about the concerns different people have about its practical and theoretical limitations. Doe example, one critic points out the HiTOP model provides very little specific guidance on how HiTOP will help create a classification system for mental conditions that are based on causes and mechanisms. However, the entire point of this new approach is that it still might be very early days for it in the long term. Yet the research on the model has been promising, like Waszczuk et al. (2021) and the different HiTOP dimensions seem to account for different psychopathological impairments better than the DSM diagnoses. Additionally, these dimensions have been shown to predict future onset of conditions and symptom timing better than either current or past DSM diagnoses. Also Ruggero et al. (2019) showed that because of the DSM’s problems, community clinicians often don’t select treatments according to the DSM diagnosis. Since they’re already focusing on symptoms and the person’s signs and experiences. Overall, clinicians are already aligning their thinking with the HiTOP approach rather than traditional diagnoses. So why not make this approach official? Personally, that is something I don’t understand. Because under the current system we just give clients a label based on an unempirical category, but if the HiTOP approach is successful. Then we will instead give our clients results from scientific tests from good solid psychopathology and personality dimensions to generate a psychological profile. These profiles will replace these labels and the cut-off scores will replace categories. As well as these clients’ profile scores (along with their scores on the different dimensions) will correspond scientifically to certain genetic vulnerabilities, functional impairments, neurobiological factors, environmental risk factors and psychological abnormalities. Then it is all this data that will be used to guide treatment instead of some categorical thing that the research doesn’t support. So to wrap up this rather longer than expected podcast episode, as clinical psychology students and professionals, it isn’t a secret how not ideal the DSM system is and that it needs to change. And in an effort to advance mental health and meet the unofficial clinical psychology mandate, it is absolutely imperative that we advance the system we use to diagnose mental health conditions. And hopefully, just hopefully the HiTOP approach might be the way to go. I really hope you have enjoyed today’s forensic and clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Formulation In Psychotherapy. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Clinical Psychology References: Kotov, R., Jonas, K. G., Carpenter, W. T., Dretsch, M. N., Eaton, N. R., Forbes, M. K., ... & HiTOP Utility Workgroup. (2020). Validity and utility of hierarchical taxonomy of psychopathology (HiTOP): I. Psychosis superspectrum. World Psychiatry, 19(2), 151-172. Waszczuk, M. A., Hopwood, C. J., Luft, B. J., Morey, L. C., Perlman, G., Ruggero, C. J., ... & Kotov, R. (2021). The Prognostic Utility of Personality Traits Versus Past Psychiatric Diagnoses: Predicting Future Mental Health and Functioning. Clinical Psychological Science, 21677026211056596. Ruggero, C. J., Kotov, R., Hopwood, C. J., First, M., Clark, L. A., Skodol, A. E., ... & Zimmermann, J. (2019). Integrating the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) into clinical practice. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 87(12), 1069. https://renaissance.stonybrookmedicine.edu/HITOP/AboutHiTOP 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

If you’re been listening to the podcast for a while then you know I absolutely love forensic and criminal psychology. But what is forensic psychopathology? As well as maybe the better question might be how does it differ to forensic psychology, so that’s the focus of this great podcast episode as we look at this new, exciting area. If you enjoy forensic psychology, you don’t want to miss it! This episode has been sponsored by Forensic Psychology Collection. 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. What is Forensic Psychopathology? Generally speaking, as supported by Ray (2018), psychopathology is used in clinical psychology to talk about mental health conditions. As well as it is the scientific study of them through investigations and specialised treatments where experts determine the causes of the conditions and how to treat them. Then there is a subfield within this subfield that investigates how mental conditions influence our behaviours and thoughts. Therefore, forensic psychopathology is something a lot more nuanced and challenging in my opinion. Since this field takes the study of psychopathology and combines it with the legal system. Resulting in a discipline that focuses on psychopathological theories and practices and how they apply within the criminal justice system. And I must confess them reading some of the literature in this field is just headshaking, because as you know my background is mainly in clinical psychology and the field is turning towards more neutral and less blaming and damaging language. So with most of this research uses words like mental disorder, mental problems and more. It is very headshaking. The Difference Between Forensic Psychology and Forensic Psychopathology Now if you’re like me then you probably don’t see the immediate difference between forensic psychopathology and your everyday forensic psychology. Nevertheless, forensic psychology has a wider focus than mental conditions, and even when forensic psychology focuses on mental health and conditions. It tends to focus on mental conditions in the legal arena (the courtroom and mechanisms like insanity pleas) and practising clinical psychology in a forensic setting. Like prisons (Ward, 2013). In addition, forensic psychology experts conduct their psychology assessments on people who are involved in the legal system. For example, victims, criminals and other people. With these experts being highly skilled individuals in clinical methods and they have experience with the law as well. This is absolutely critical when we bear in mind that forensic psychologists have both a law and ethical responsibility for the cases like insanity and competency hearings, child abuse and custody cases, psychological evaluations, victims of crimes, counselling services, offender programmes as well as diagnosis and treatment plans. Furthermore, as we’ve mentioned on the podcast before, forensic psychologists are highly trained with them having to learn a PhD, be licenced and be board certified by a professional body in order to do their jobs. As well as they absolutely must have experience with the law as their job actually requires them to consult, advise and provide professional expertise within the courtroom. More On Forensic Psychopathology Now we all have a better understanding of how forensic psychology is different in this case. Let’s refocus on what psychopathology actually involves. Therefore, whilst forensic psychopathology has elements and strongly draws on clinical and psychological applications within the legal system, the entire aim of this subfield is different to forensic psychology. Since the main aim of forensic psychopathology is focused on the accurate diagnosis of mental health conditions so they can accurately assess, diagnose and create the best treatment plans before interpreting the information and handing over their report to the courts. One such example of their work could be that experts are required from time to time to investigate abnormal mental processes (like thinking and reasoning) that might influence a person’s judgement for committing a crime. This information could be used to determine if the accused can be held responsible for the crime, convicted or whether their condition should be a significant factor when the court makes its decision. Consequently, it is absolutely critical that psychopathologists study mental conditions to determine how the condition will affect a person’s behaviour and thought, especially when it comes to committing crimes. Forensic Psychopathology Analysis and Culpability When it comes to understanding psychopathology a person’s ability to make decisions based on their judgement, insight, morality and reasoning are critical. However, their capacity to do such things can be impaired because of psychological reasons. Like neurological, mental and physiological conditions as well as drugs (both illegal and legal). As a result, a forensic psychopathologist has to evaluate a person’s criminal responsibility due to these factors and they are liable for reviewing these cases that can affect the court’s decision making. For example, Dettermeyer et al. (2013) discussed and concluded that criminal responsibility should be thought about and examined carefully and independently to ensure that statutory provisions that regulate age requirements are met. As age is another critical factor when it comes to criminal responsibility in addition to competency and psychopathology. The Challenges In Forensic Psychopathology Nonetheless, this field of psychology is far from without difficulties or challenges (like most fields) as it is very difficult to find a definitive diagnosis for condition. This is even more true for people who don’t meet the minimum criteria for mental conditions or a type of psychological impairment, and I suppose in courts of law subsyndrome conditions don’t carry as much weight. Also maladaptive characteristics do exist which can provoke differential or provisional diagnosis but diagnosable conditions cannot be provided if the minimum criteria aren’t met, or they don’t meet the additional specifications listed in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th Edition) nor they a diagnosis be given if the symptoms are inconsistent with the DSM. Another massive downside in forensic psychopathology is that there is limited empirical and evidence-based research as well as the theoretical frameworks that can advance the field. Therefore, without progression happening in clinical assessments and psychological testing to determine if a person has a mental condition or not, forensic psychopathologists cannot effectively examine the critical diagnostic systems to establish the best treatment practices that is critically needed in legal cases. As well as insufficient research and applications of theories can comprise the effectiveness of clinical programs, recidivism (reoffending) studies and criminal prevention strategies. The reason why this is a problem is because the lack of progression and insufficient research can make the advice and consultation of forensic psychopathologists not 100% reliable at no fault of their own. As this field of psychology focuses particularly on criminal offences, sanity, mental conditions, contemporary and other factors that are widely considered in legal cases. And everyone have the right to due process and fairness within the criminal justice system. But here’s the key. In order to have all that you need to have effective, reliable and valid testing and assessment practices, and they need to be proficient too. So that’s why this is a problem for the field and why more research does need to be done to try and help fill in some of the gaps in the literature. Future And Conclusion: With most of the podcast’s audience being clinical psychology students and professionals, we all know the impact that mental conditions can have on people’s lives and the effects it can have on their friends, family and society as a whole. But forensic psychopathology takes a more nuanced look at how it impacts the legal system and whilst it is fascinating and an important field there are some stark problems. Which is why it is absolutely critical that there is more awareness and education about this field of psychology so it can become more expansive as well as legitimate in both the legal and forensic psychology communities. Also whilst there are a lot of overlaps between forensic psychology and psychopathology, we do need as a community and profession to help establish the difference between the two. As both fields have different objectives of clinical expertise and services in a legal context in different ways. Then finally research. More research and making sure it continues is just critical for the future of the field to improve policy and decision making processes within the criminal justice system. Overall, I really hope you enjoyed learning about this fascinating subfield of forensic psychology. Before this episode I never knew about this subfield so I definitely learnt a lot and I hope we’re all more aware now of the problems facing forensic psychopathology. And maybe, just maybe you wonderful listener could be the one to change it. You never know. I really hope you have enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Forensic Psychology Collection. 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. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Forensic Psychology References: Department of Justice. (n.d.). Federal Juvenile Delinquency Code. https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-117-federa… Dettmeyer, R. B., Verhoff, M. A., & Schutz, H. F. (2013). Forensic psychopathology. Forensic Medicine, 451-458. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3642-38818-7_27 National Conference of State Legislatures. (2020). Juvenile age of jurisdiction and transfer to adult court laws. https://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/juvenile-age-o… Ray, W. J. (2018). Abnormal psychology. 2nd ed. Sage Publications. Ward, J. T. (2013). What is forensic psychology? American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/psn/2013/09/forensic-psychology 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. 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