Search Results

Whilst I have to admit releasing a forensic psychology book about terrorism might seem weird in December but I haven’t thought about it. Yet whenever we see news about a terrorist attack, we always wonder why something would commit such a horrible attack but we wonder what makes a terrorist as well. Is a mental health condition? Is it biological in nature? Are there social or cultural factors at play? And does society make someone a terrorist or not? We need to know the answer. Therefore, in this criminal psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn about the large range of factors that can make someone into a terrorist. If you enjoy learning about the psychology of crime, terrorism and more then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Forensic Psychology Of Terrorism and Hostage-Taking . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What Makes A Terrorist? (Extract from Forensic Psychology of Terrorism and Hostage-Taking by Connor Whiteley. COPYRIGHT 2024) The general consensus is that it takes time to convert a vulnerable person into a terrorist (Luckabaugh et al., 1997) because this is a process and different terrorist recruits have different motivations. For example, a need to belong, the development of a satisfactory personal identity, social alienation and boredom leads to dissidence and protests on a small scale, then over time terrorism, as well as histories of child abuse, trauma, humiliation and social injustice are common in a terrorist’s background as well. Although, Borum (2004) doesn’t feel like this is helpful in explaining terrorism, because these factors are vulnerabilities and they don’t make someone a terrorist on their own. Also, Merari (2007) may be suggesting general vulnerability factors when he suspects susceptibility to indoctrination is key to understanding suicide bombers. Due to most of the suicide bombers Merari studied where young and unattached people which are perfect types for all sorts of violent organisations. As a result, Merari believed suicide terrorism could be understood as consequences of a terrorist system, with people being recruited through interpersonal connections that then supported the recruit all the way through to becoming a suicide bomber. This is important to learn about because highly committed members of an organisation will spend hours talking to recruits, promoting the idea of martyrdom as will of the God and they focus on the illustrious past of Islam. Then the recruits become enmeshed in the group contact that is designed to help the recruit prove their allegiance to the organisation. Afterwards this “formal contract” creates a final personal commitment before a suicide bomber attack. In addition, Merari compared terror groups to suicide bomb production lines using empirical support from Palestinian suicide bombers. The stages of these production lines according to Merari include indoctrination. This is where members of terror groups with high authority constantly indoctrinate potential bombers to maintain their motivation to engage in the terrorist act and to prevent them changing their mind. For Palestinian indoctrination, the themes were nationalism. For instance, Israel’s humiliation of the Palestinian state and religious guarantees, by saying things like the suicide bomber will go to paradise after committing this act. As well as getting the recruit to commit to the group is done too at this stage where any doubts about committing to the attack are dealt with and the motivation for the attack is increased to maximum levels, or “maxed out” to use more urban slang terms. Then the last stage is personal commitment and this can take the form of video recordings were the terrorist describes their intent to do the suicide bombing. This is partly done for their family, but it is also done as a way of getting irreversible commitment. As well as the bomber prepares farewell letters for friends and family too for later giving. Also, at this point in the production line, Merari points out these would-be bombers are called “Living-Martyr”, and this whole approach is sympathetic with Horgan and Taylor (2001)’s view that terrorists don’t actively choose to become terrorists. Instead becoming a terrorist is a gradual process where a potential terrorist is socialised with the recruiters having the ultimate goal of making them preform a terrorist act. Of course, this is a process and not an absolute. People can leave the process at any point and this is to be expected given the high turnover rate in terrorist group membership (Crenshaw, 1986). Moreover, Taylor and Louis (2004) suggested young people find themselves wanting a hopeful future and they engage in meaningful behaviour that helps them get ahead and will be satisfied with their life. Also, these young people’s objective circumstances include no opportunity for a good future or advancement, and whilst they might find some collective identity in religions, living in a poor state and community makes them feel marginalised and lost without a clear group. So it’s easy to think how terror acts are result of group processes with Taylor (2010) asking can terrorism truly be understood as a phenomenon of group behaviour. Since Taylor (2010) distinctives between getting involved in a terror group and actually carrying out attacks. Since group processes could be important as a backdrop in terrorism when cultural, political and social factors have a role to play. But these group processes fail to explain the act or episode of terrorism itself. Taylor suggests there are two main issues with the “terrorism as group processes” argument. There is a lack of a good definition of what is terrorism besides from what terrorists do, and there isn’t a clear idea of what is meant by group processes in relation to terrorism. Since there are times when group processes seem to play no or little role in a terrorist attack. Lone-wolf attacks spring to mind here. Another extreme example is the reclusive Theodore John Kaczynski who’s terrorist campaign lasted for 17 years with 12 bombs and 3 deaths for his environmental agenda that he largely made-up alone without a group behind him. What Are Life Story Studies? I do enjoy qualitative research and I think given how hard terrorism is to research, qualitative research methodologies might be useful. Of course, you will still have a lot of the same problems as the rest of terrorism research as I wrote about in the first chapter but qualitive research can still be useful. Especially as Borum (2004) argued that a terrorist’s life experience includes common themes. He suggests that these common themes aren’t sufficient causes of terrorism, but they might be helpful to researchers to identify people susceptibility to being influenced by terrorist groups. In some ways this argument fits with the narrative studies being done with terrorists because they reveal other factors are needed to understand what turns someone into a terrorist and it helps to show that not all terrorists are made because of their similar circumstances. That notion doesn’t really have research support anymore. In addition, since 1992, terrorism has been a feature of “Israel’s relationship with Palestine” and Soibelman (2004) subscribes to the group processes idea over individual’s psychology like personality. Due to the researcher rejects the idea that suicide bombers are simply young religious fanatics and instead believes less extreme personality characteristics make up bombers. This was based on his research and interviews with 5 suicide bombers that were arrested before they could carry out the attack or the bombs failed to detonate (something that happens in another 40% of suicide bombings). The results of his interviews show there wasn’t a single explanation for why they became terrorists and instead there was a mixture of factors that were responsible but even this mixture was different for different terrorists. Yet it seemed that group solidarity and having a shared ideology were two overriding factors in becoming a terrorist because most of the interviewed suicide bombers had at least some shared ideology and solidarity. Furthermore, political factors were given as reasons for becoming suicide bombers, as well as having bad or secondary experience of dealing with the Israeli defence force. Such as the Israelis shooting one of their friends or beating them. And this is what I find interesting, most of the suicide bombers had been involved in protests or another form of assembly beforehand they were involved in terrorism. That means these people once wanted change through peaceful means and something changed to make them believe terrorism was the only option. To explain this, Soibelman (2004) suggested as the situation escalates, a person’s beliefs get more extreme. As well as given the nature of the sample, these suicide bombers were a part of the secular Fatah movement, so religion wasn’t a factor in them becoming terrorists. And despite this terrorist group don’t tend to have criminal histories, a few of them could have. Another study that offers up a more detailed account of the range of factors impacting someone’s chance of becoming a terrorist can be found in Sarangi and Alison’s (2005) and their study of the left-wing Maoist terrorists in Nepal and India. This terror group believe the state is an instrument of the rich and needs to be violently overthrown. The researchers interviewed 12 terrorists and 3 men and 3 women that were no longer involved with their average age being 26 years old and they generally lacked a formal education. These interviews were validated by checking court and police records. In this study, rapport building was a priority and the researches achieved this by having the terrorists talk about their childhood and matters not directly tied to terrorist activities. Then the researchers suggested common rhetorical structures in the interview. The results of the interviews showed that the terrorists had created a strong sense of “Us” (which included their Self-Image) and they saw themselves as a central character for themselves in their life story as brave, good, simple, logical and so on. Instead of the reality when the terrorist spoke about themselves, their family, friends and other people in their community being poor simple, naive, exploited, short on goods and water and cheated by others. Also, the interviews showed interpersonal figures were important and included rhetoric about outgroups and others. For example, one rhetoric found was about their beliefs surrounding the government being characteristic of rich, powerful, villain, uncaring and inhuman. Overall, this study found that terrorists believe themselves to be heroes and very good people that are fighting against an outgroup that is evil and foul and needs to be defeated. This sense of them being heroes helps them maintain their positive self-image and they see their friends and family and local communities as suffering at the hands of the outgroup. Hence, why the outgroup needs to suffer for this perceived injustice. In conclusion, if these past two chapters have taught you anything, I think we have to conclude that there really is no single factor that causes someone to become a terrorist. It is a mixture of individual, group and political factors that interact together to help make people into a terrorist. So now we understand how terrorists are made, how do terrorist ideologies and mental processes supporting these extreme ideologies develop?     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 Forensic Psychology Of Terrorism and Hostage-Taking . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Criminal Psychology Reference Whiteley, C. (2024) Forensic Psychology of Terrorism And Hostage-Taking . CGD Publishing. England. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

As we reach episode 300 of The Psychology World Podcast, I cannot deny I am so excited to reach this brilliant milestone because we reached episode 200 around April 2023, and typically most podcasts fail before episode 30. That means we have reached ten times the number of episodes before podcasts typically end and that is brilliant. I am still excited for the podcast’s future, I have a lot of ideas for future episodes and I flat out love the learning opportunities that this podcast provides me with. Yet ultimately, I love this psychology podcast because of all of you wonderful listeners, especially when you share and review the podcast and buy me books. I am really grateful for every single one of you so in this psychology podcast episode, I wanted to reflect on the lessons I’ve learnt in the course of doing this podcast. If you enjoy learning about clinical psychology, a psychology student’s life and why psychology is flat out amazing then this is going to be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Psychology Worlds Magazine . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. 5 Lessons Learnt In 300 Episodes Key To Knowledge is Always Be Learning Something that has popped up a lot more for me recently is just how much I learn through this podcast and this includes all the blog posts I have stacked up that I need to turn into episodes in the future. This realisation might be because I was talking with a lot of clinical psychology students that had had the exact same degree as me but I was able to have a lot more insight, perspectives and knowledge about different aspects of clinical psychology as well as our other subdisciplines. Yet these students could only talk in-depth about the topics covered in our lectures. They had no idea how clinical psychology worked behind the scenes, different aspects of mental health conditions amongst other things. This was highlighted even more last night at a university social I attended with my old supervisor and all his current students that he’s supervising. A lot of the students were making some comments about psychology, and especially psychology careers, that were slightly wrong but because I learnt about those areas through the podcast and my interactions with the staff, I was able to carefully help them. I didn’t want to be a know-it-all but still. Ultimately, I know I say this a lot but the main reason why I keep coming back to my audio booth every week thankfully without fail at the moment is for the learning. I want to be a knowledgeable aspiring psychologist so in the future I can become a qualified psychologist and the key to knowledge is learning. If I wasn’t learning about the things that I was interested in and if I didn’t flat out love learning new things about psychology then I wouldn’t be doing this podcast. There would simply be no point whatsoever. Some of my favourite episodes that highlight this extra learning that the majority of other students don’t know includes: ·       What Makes A Trauma-Informed Psychologist? ·       What Are The Advantages and Disadvantages of Clinical Cut-offs? ·       What’s Enhanced Cognitive Behavioural Therapy? Therefore, like me, by listening to this psychology podcast every week, you are learning so much more than you realise. As well as this knowledge could be really useful to you in the future. Be it with conversations with friends or family, in a future job interview or even in your current psychology or non-psychology job. Knowledge is power and the key to knowledge is never stop learning. The Mental Health System Is Broken One useful podcast episode that ties into this section is Why Is The Police Refusing Mental Health Calls A Bad Idea? I admit this might be a slightly odd change of tone but this is a personal thing I have learnt a lot over the course of my psychology journey, past 100 episodes and in 2024. Oddly enough, I’m not actually disheartened, rageful or scared about this issue in the sense that I’ve lost hope. In fact, I am very excited about the future because I have met, listened to and read so many amazing people and future and qualified psychologists who are fighting like hell to transform mental health services for the better. My favourite has to be Lucy Johnstone with her work on formulation and how that is revolutionising the way we work with clients and create interventions and treatments with them. Yet there are other smaller names too that are just as important, when I did my work experience in the learning disability team and the Gender Identity Clinic, I met so many amazing people that were working their socks off to serve their clients. They weren’t all psychology people but every single one of them was amazing. Therefore, as much as I have written in my books and spoken on the podcast about the immense issues in mental health services, I am hopeful for the future. There are a lot of great mental health professionals and students rising through the psychology ranks that have a burning passion to help make the world a better place and to make mental health as important as physical health. Yes, I know in the UK in the past year or two, legally mental health is just as important as physical health treatment but come on, just go into any NHS service and you can see the lingering impact of the biomedical model. Actually, try to access a psychological service within the NHS I dare you. You will be met with a lot of medical doctors, offering you medical solutions and psychological referrals made by experts in physical conditions that put you on waiting lists for at least 5 years or more. Whereas as my housemates proved if you go to see medical doctors about a psychological condition, like depression, they will give you a medical solution within 5 minutes without a diagnosis or any psychological support. That is exactly what has happened to a dear friend of mine. Psychological treatment needs to be a major part of psychological conditions. Sorry, I do get carried away on that soapbox at times. In addition, there are major issues with managerialism, understaffing, top-heavy organisation and underfunding within the NHS that greatly restricts mental health services from doing what they need to be able to do to improve lives, decrease psychological distress and give clients more adaptive coping mechanisms for their mental health difficulties. The system is broken because of these issues that plague it, and so many people who desperately need mental health support are being denied it because they aren’t going to kill themselves. Yes, most of the time your mental health has to be that severe for you to access psychological support. I know from personal experience, I’ve been denied anorexia support because I am not severe enough so I need to go private so I don’t get hospitalised. Yet there aren’t that many eating disorder specialists in my area, let alone ones that I can afford, so I’ve found one woman who I need to contact. Yet in this country and all over the world, everyone should be entitled to mental health support if they need it for free. Nonetheless, let me repeat myself here because I have said this before and I will always say this, I never ever want the NHS or other mental health services to be disbanded or gotten rid of. There are immense issues with the NHS and other mental health services all over the world but things can change, things are  changing for the better. This just means as aspiring and qualified psychologists, we must always be fighting for change. It won’t be easy and it will feel impossible 99% of the time because we need such dramatic structural changes to our mental health services, but as long as there are amazing people like you who speak up and fight the good fight then there is hope. There is always hope that we can and we will fix the broken mental health system. Learning Empowers You This is another very personal lesson that I am extremely glad that I’ve learnt in the past 100 episodes. Since the knowledge I have learnt through this podcast has been immensely useful to me as a student, an aspiring psychologist as well as a survivor with my own mental health challenges. Knowledge and my constant learning on this podcast has empowered me with an understanding and a way to explore topics I need to explore for my own future and healing. For example, as a psychology student and aspiring clinical psychologist, I have flat out loved exploring various mental health conditions, types of therapies and techniques. All of this learning has empowered me to have a drive towards wanting to become a qualified psychologist. I have a good idea about what a clinical psychologist does, how they can change lives for the better and I have a foundational understanding of all the things I want to develop during or after my doctorate through Continued Professional Development. I am not an expert but because of the learning I’ve done through this podcast I have a good idea about what and why I want a career in clinical psychology. Without this podcast, I wouldn’t know a fraction of the information I do about clinical psychology and the wider areas of psychology that we cover from time to time. Actually, come to think of it, this reminds me of how I describe The Psychology World Podcast whenever I meet someone new and they ask me what do I cover. I always tell them that the podcast is mainly about clinical psychology and it allows me to explore beyond my lectures and textbooks. And that is completely true because the podcast empowers me to go out and find this information that I wouldn’t be looking at and researching otherwise. All of you wonderful listeners are another reason why I’m empowered to keep learning. Each kind comment, each thank you and each time you reach out makes me want to do this even more. So thank you dear listener. Finally, in the past 100 episodes (to be honest all 300 episodes have proved this to me time and time again), I’ve learnt how this podcast is critical to my own mental health. Not only in terms of the great interactions that I have with you listeners, which can really make me smile on a bad day, but for my own mental health struggles. When I was dealing with my childhood trauma after my breakdown in August 2023, this podcast was a great way for me to research what I was learning in counselling about myself, how my past had impacted me and how it was impacting my relationships right now. I’m grateful that I had this podcast to help me learn and really understand what on earth I was experiencing. In addition, this year after my rape, this podcast has been a lifeline. Sure, me putting out that podcast episode on male rape on 6th May 2024 killed this podcast for months. The audience numbers have only recently started to recover, but I am grateful that I had this psychology podcast. I’ve written a lot of future blog posts that explore different aspects of sexual trauma, how the body responds to trauma and Window of Tolerance is a big concept. I wouldn’t have researched a single one of these topics in any great depth without this podcast and that would have been very damaging to my mental health. I wouldn’t have been able to explore and understand why I was experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, flashbacks, anxiety and all the other negative mental health outcomes associated with sexual violence. There were a lot of healing moments in amongst all the darkness of my mental health because I was able to write podcast episodes. It made me feel a little less insane during the most intense and darkest moments this year. This psychology podcast truly has been a lifeline to me over the past few months, so thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening. Some past podcast episodes that highlight this empowerment through learning includes: ·       Why An Erection Isn’t Consent? ·       What is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? ·       What Are Some Psychological Treatments For Eating Disorders?   The Body Is Critical In Psychological Trauma Work Previously, I’ve mentioned that I wasn’t a massive fan or I didn’t think that much about how our physical body fed into our mental health. Of course, I know that psychoeducation is flat out critical in clinical work with clients. For instance, when working with someone with an anxiety disorder, it’s important to explain to them how the physical sensations of a panic attack and the physical feelings of being anxious is a physical manifestation of psychological states as well as you can help clients to look out for these signs so they know when to use therapeutic techniques amongst other uses of psychoeducation. In addition, I understood that our physical and social environment are critical factors in our mental health. It’s why I really like the systemic approach to mental health because it proposes that if something happens in our social system then it creates a ricochet effect that impacts the rest of the system. This was proved even more important to me last night because of a social factor in my shared university house, it is that factor that is impacting my mental health and my eating disorder. It’s starting to get to the point where I am nervous to use the kitchen or make a mistake because someone has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in the house so they can have a lot of breakdowns. This makes eating and cooking even more stressful for me. Anyway, I suppose I did understand that our physical body and environment has a lot of impacts on our mental health. It’s why I really like the biopsychosocial model that works holistically to address all these different types of factors. However, it was only after my sexual trauma with my Post-Traumatic Stress, panic attacks and more that I realised just how flat out critical our bodies are to our mental health. It was the physical sense of safety that I had lost, the constant physical tension and the constant tension in my body that really damaged my mental health as well as the psychological processes. Therefore, one of the most important lessons I have learnt in the past 100 episodes is that if I get involved with trauma work in the future, I will focus a lot more on the physical body and how it impacts clients. In fact, I will do this with all my clinical work in the future because the mind-body link has several impacts on our mental health. Some episodes that highlight this mind-body link includes: ·       How Does Trauma Affect The Heart? ·       How To Promote a Healthy Brain-Gut Connection? ·       What Is Psychophysics? On the whole, to make this lesson useful and applicable to you, as much as I hate the biomedical model with all my heart, I want to highlight that we must always remember the biopsychosocial model. We must always strive to work holistically with clients so we address the biological, psychological and social factors that made their mental health condition to develop and be maintained. Just because we mainly focus on the world of psychology and social factors, there will be times when biological factors and our physiological responses play an important role too. That is what this podcast allowed me to learn and understand at a much deeper level than my textbooks, lectures and degree. Psychology Is Amazing The final lesson brings together all of the lessons so it will be shorter than some of the other sections. This podcast teaches me how psychology is amazing because it truly has the power to improve lives and save lives and transform lives for the better. Let’s take depression for example, I went through so many depressive episodes earlier in the year and it is awful. You don’t have any energy, motivation and one day it took me 5 hours just to have a 15-minute shower. Also, it makes you feel like everything is bad about the world, it biases your views about the world and it impacts the majority of your social relationships. However, it is psychology that shows us how to effectively treat depression through cognitive behavioural therapy, different techniques and positive psychology can be immensely useful too. The reason why my depression stopped or I haven’t experienced a depressive episode in months is because of my specialist rape counselling helped me to heal, and I’ve learnt a lot of self-soothing, positive psychology and other techniques that help me to maintain my mental health. Medicine hasn’t helped me. No medical doctor would have given me anything and the root of my depression and trauma responses was a physical event not a medical condition. It is psychology that has allowed me to heal and move on. In addition, as an autistic person, certain parts of the medical community tend to see autism and other neurodivergent conditions as something that needs to be cured or fixed. Yet this thinking that there is something deeply and profoundly wrong with me isn’t useful or helpful and it only makes me feel awful. Yet modern clinical psychology has helped to foster a sense of acceptance, support and they want to help neurodivergent people to thrive. It is this positivity that does stretch through a lot of mental health settings, society and different professions, including certain parts of the medical community, that makes me feel great. It is these techniques that have helped me to decrease my psychological distress, improve my life and given me more adaptive coping mechanisms so I can thrive and deal with stressors that come along. Ultimately, without psychology and without this psychology podcast giving me a way and platform to learn about mental health, how to improve my life and others and us having the knowledge I need to debunk a lot of the myths about everything I’m experiencing. I do not believe I would be here. I think I would probably be dead a long time ago but knowing everything I do about mental health, clinical psychology and more helps me to know that it’s okay to reach out for support. It’s okay to have therapy and therapy is far from the scary mystical process that mainstream society treats it as such. Psychology has taught me a lot about what actually happens in therapy and why therapy is effective, so I know this isn’t a random shot in the dark like a lot of my non-psychology friends imply way, way too often. Some podcast episodes that highlight this lesson includes: ·       What Are 3 Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Techniques? ·       How To Survive A Major Depressive Episode? ·       What Should Therapists Tell Clients In A First Therapy Session? Conclusion I think it’s clear at the end of this episode that I have learnt a hell of a lot of things over the past 300 episodes, let alone the past 100. This podcast and all of you great listeners help me learn, support my mental health and you all make me happy. It is our interactions, our conversations about episodes and your thoughts and feelings that really delight me because it shows to me that this podcast is something people enjoy and it is making a positive impact on the world. That is something that really makes me happy. All I want is to have a positive, meaningful impact on the world, and I don’t know where I heard it from, maybe it was a film or something, but someone said something along the lines of when we leave this world, we need to leave it slightly better than we found it. I want to make sure that happens so my books, my podcast and me aspiring to be a clinical psychologist are a part of that goal. In terms of the future, I can already assure you that I have no intention of stopping this podcast. I already about around another 30 blog posts written up that need to be made into podcast episodes at some point and I have even more ideas for more episodes in the future. Each of these episodes allows me to explore something in more depth or something brand-new entirely and that excites me. I look forward to sharing new content with you, I look forward to continuing my YouTube shorts experiments where I release a daily one for the foreseeable future, and I am excited about the future of psychology. That really is something I am passionate about exploring and I hope that you want to come along with me for the journey.     I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Psychology Worlds Magazine . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

In biological psychology, there is one of my favourite topics in psychology. It might not be related to clinical psychology, mental health or even forensic psychology, but I love it anyway. Psychophysics is a fascinating area of psychology that has always grabbed my attention and made me want to understand more about how a physical stimulus leads to a psychological experience. For example, how does physical stimuli of chocolate create a chocolate taste in our minds, and how does chocolate create the psychological experience of pleasure. These are some of the questions that psychophysics aims to answer. In this biological psychology podcast episode, you'll learn what is psychophysics, what does psychophysics cover and what might the future of psychophysics be. If you enjoy learning about physiological psychology, biopsychology and how our physical environment impacts our psychological processes then this will be a brilliant episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Biological Psychology . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What Is Psychophysics? Personally, I flat out loved learning for a single lecture about human perception because of a single area of psychology that focuses on the interception between our physical environment and our psychological experiences. That is what the area of psychophysics aims to study and expand our understanding of human perception. For example, right now at the time of writing, I’m listening to some “coffee shop jazz” livestream on YouTube (this is the physical environment) and it is helping me to concentrate, feel relaxed and feel content. Why do I feel like this because I have physical music playing in the background? Equally, why did I feel happy (a psychological experience) when I listen to I Will Survive  or Carol Of The Bells? Or when I watch Heartstopper  on Netflix? Why do these physical experiences cause me to have a psychological sensation or feeling? This is why psychophysics is so important to understand why the physical world impacts us. Overall, psychophysics is the empirical study of how the physical world and our psychological experiences intertwine. This allows us to expand our knowledge about human perception. What Do Psychophysicists Research?  Like most areas of psychology, there is an infinite number of topics to study even within a subfield of psychology. For example, I conduct mental health research, but within mental health, you can study treatment modules, treatment effectiveness, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, sexual disorders, biased cognitive processes and on and on and on. Psychophysics has a lot of different avenues for researchers to explore as well. For instance, one researcher might want to study how a “just noticeable” (probably the only concept in this topic I remember from second-year undergrad) change in light levels impacts someone’s perception of a stranger. Then again, another researcher might want to investigate how a change in the sugar content of a cake changes the level of happiness we experience if we eat it before an exam. Lastly, a researcher could investigate how temperature impacts and warps our perception of time and how much fun we’re having. There are so many different areas that you can research within psychophysics. Ultimately, psychophysics is all about the fascinating relationship between our sensory experiences and our physical stimuli. In other words, psychophysics aims to decode how our brain makes sense of the world and create psychological experiences for us. Just like why listening to “coffee shop jazz” helps me feel relaxed and focused. What Is Threshold Theory and Signal Detection Theory? When you learn about psychophysics at undergrad level, you get introduced to Threshold Theory as this is a major theory that aims to explain how physical stimuli impact our perceptions. The theory investigates how the minimum amount of a stimulus is needed for a person to detect a psychological sensation. For example, how much sugar is needed in a chocolate bar for it to taste sweet to a person. As you can imagine this changes for everyone so let’s say that 5g of sugar is needed for Isabella to say a chocolate bar is sweet whereas Barbara might only need 1 gram of sugar. This leads us to another theory. Signal Detection Theory builds upon Threshold Theory by adding a decision-making element in perception, because this theory proposes that perception isn’t only about the strength of a stimulus. Instead, it is about the strength as well as our ability to detect the stimulus. I’m actually a good example of this because my spicy tastebuds are nowhere near as sensitive as the rest of my family’s so they can be dying after eating a spicy dish but I will be fine and act like it’s nothing. Therefore, not only is my Threshold of spicy higher, it could be argued that my ability to even detect spicy is lower than theirs. Moreover, Signal Detection Theory has a lot of interesting real-world applications that go beyond the scope of this podcast episode. Such as, this theory can explain how radiologists can spot tumours in X-rays and why people sometimes think they’ve heard their phone buzz when it actually hasn’t. What Are Weber’s Law, Fechner’s Law and Steven’s Power Law? Considering I live with two physics students who are constantly talking about different laws of physics, I feel this is definitive proof that psychology has mixed perfectly with physics to produce this intersecting discipline. Therefore, Weber’s Law proposes that the just-noticeable difference between two stimuli is proportional to the magnitude of the stimuli. In other words, if you have 2 chocolate bars, one with 1 gram and another with 2 grams of sugar. Then another 2 chocolate bars altogether, one with 10 grams and another with 11 grams. It is easier to tell the first two apart because of the first two have greater magnitude.  Building upon this, Fechner’s Law proposes that the perceived intensity of the stimulus is proportional to the logarithm of its physical intensity. For instance, the hotter the physical stimulus of a chilli, the greater the psychological sensation of spiciness. Finally, Steven’s Power Law proposes that in reality, the relationship between the physical magnitude of a stimulus and the perceived intensity of the psychological experience can be described as a power function. This Law has been applied to sensory modalities, like the perceived loudness of sounds as well as brightness perception. On the whole, when it comes to these theories and Laws, these are the key concepts that help to form the foundation of psychophysics and our expanded understanding of how physical stimuli create psychological experiences. Why Does Psychophysics Matter? Using Psychophysics In The Real World Sometimes I think a major problem that all sciences have, including psychology, is that after looking at the theory behind a concept, we end up getting confused about why this is useful to know. As well as I often question how is this psychological concept useful in the real world as I am a firm believer that the entire point of science is to help improve lives and make the world a better place. When it comes to psychophysics, this has real world implications because it helps us to understand our senses like hearing, taste, smell, sight and our feelings. Also, it helps us to understand how our senses adapt in response to the environment. For instance, habituation is the process of us not noticing a physical stimulus after a while once we know it doesn’t pose a danger to us. Like we notice when a fan starts up but after a while we stop noticing the fan’s noise. Moreover, psychophysics really helps decision-making and cognitive psychology research as psychophysics deepens our understanding of how we perceive and process information. As well as it shows us how our complex cognitive processes work. For instance, psychophysics research on how our brains process temporal information is useful for understanding multitasking and eyewitness testimony. Lastly, if we look at clinical psychology, psychophysics allows us to better understand, assess and treat sensory disorders. Such as, we can now create more accurate hearing tests and create therapies for conditions like synaesthesia, where all our senses blend together. This is only possible because of psychophysics. There are more applications but you get the gist. Psychophysics   is very useful to our understanding of human behaviour. What is The Future of Psychophysics Research? In case you’re interested in psychophysics research and you might want to conduct your own in the future, you want to be aware of the trends. For instance, psychophysics research is starting to use a lot more neuroscience and brain imaging technology so researchers want to combine the traditional psychophysics methods with the cutting-edge techniques that neuroscience provides us. These include using fMRIs and EEG techniques to study the intersection of our physical environment and psychological experiences. Especially, these cutting-edge techniques allow us to see what’s happening in the brain as we feel these experiences. I still maintain I would flat out love to be a part of a fMRI study, because it sounds fascinating. Additionally, with the rise of virtual and augmented reality, psychophysics researchers are wanting to incorporate this new technology into their studies. You could create a virtual environment and stimulate or manipulate it to induce certain phenomena and make predictions about human behaviour. For example, if you wanted to understand the psychological sensation of overwhelm then you might want to create a virtual environment of a mosh pit at a concert and put someone in there. I hate the idea of mosh pits because of my autism and they sound like hell on earth. Anyway, that is a potential idea for future research. Ultimately, virtual reality allows you to control every single aspect of someone’s sensory input. Finally, computational modelling could be a future trend in psychophysics research because if you create a large computational model of people’s perceptual processes then you can refine and test theories in ways that weren’t previously possible for researchers. Cognitive Psychology Conclusion Even though I always tell people I flat out love psychophysics as a topic, it has been years since I’ve looked into and I am very glad I’ve returned to the topic. Sure, I had forgotten how many theories and laws are involved, but it is fascinating to understand how physical sensations create psychological sensations in the brain. That is amazing to me. Therefore, as we spoke about Threshold Theory, Signal Detection Theory, Webbs, Stevens and Fechner’s Laws, I want you to know that this might be a complex area. Yet in psychology and when it comes to your interest in this great profession, never let complexity stop you. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode then keep exploring, keep learning and keep developing your interest in psychophysics or any other area of psychology. All you truly need to be successful in science is passion for a topic. It is that passion that will drive your learning, your improvement and you wanting to do the best you possibly can. I am not interested enough in psychophysics to want to study it for my career, but keeps me interested in psychology along with hundreds of other tiny topics. And that is why I love psychology, I love this podcast and I love my life. Passion really is the key to success.   I really hope you enjoyed today’s forensic psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Biological Psychology . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Biological Psychology References and Further Reading Bass, C. DeCusatis, J. Enoch, V. Lakshminarayanan, G. Li, C. MacDonald, V. Mahajan, & E. Van Stryland (Eds.), Handbook of Optics, Volume III: Vision and Vision Optics (3rd ed., pp. 3.1-3.12). New York: McGraw-Hill. Ehrenstein, W. H., & Ehrenstein, A. (1999). Psychophysical methods. In U. Windhorst & H. Johansson (Eds.), Modern Techniques in Neuroscience Research (pp. 1211-1241). Berlin: Springer. Fechner, G. T. (1860). Elemente der Psychophysik. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel. Gescheider, G. A. (2013). Psychophysics: the fundamentals. Psychology Press. Green, D. M., & Swets, J. A. (1966). Signal detection theory and psychophysics. New York: Wiley. Kingdom, F. A. A., & Prins, N. (2016). Psychophysics: A practical introduction (2nd ed.). London: Academic Press. Knoblauch, K., & Maloney, L. T. (2012). Modeling Psychophysical Data in R. New York: Springer. Leonov, Y. P. (1975). Decision theory and the concept of threshold in psychophysics. Soviet Psychology, 13(3), 78-90. Lu, Z. L., & Dosher, B. (2013). Visual psychophysics: From laboratory to theory. MIT Press. Pelli, D. G., & Farell, B. (2010). Psychophysical methods. In M. Prins, N. (2016). Psychophysics: a practical introduction. Academic Press. Stevens, S. S. (1957). On the psychophysical law. Psychological Review, 64(3), 153-181. Stevens, S. S. (1960). The psychophysics of sensory function. American scientist, 48(2), 226-253. Wichmann, F. A., & Jäkel, F. (2018). Methods in psychophysics. In J. T. Wixted (Ed.), Stevens’ Handbook of Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience (pp. 1-42). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

As an aspiring clinical psychologist that is hardcore into the idea that it is critical to our clinical work that we learn different techniques from different therapies, I want to focus on different therapeutic techniques. I think this is critical because in order to help our clients to the best of our abilities, we need to give ourselves as many tools as possible so we can share them with our clients. All to help them decrease their psychological distress, improve their lives and give back control of their lives to them. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what is guided imagery, Socratic questioning, and cognitive reframing. As well as what these techniques do, their advantages, disadvantages and more. If you enjoy learning about what mental health, therapy and practical techniques then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by CBT For Depression: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Depression.  Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Note: as always nothing on this podcast is ever any sort of official advice. What Is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy? In case there is anyone new to psychology or cognitive behavioural therapy reading or listening to this podcast episode, I wanted to take a moment to tell you about what CBT actually is. I laughed to myself in the creation of this episode because considering how much CBT-based content I’ve created over the years, including three books, I have never created a small definition of the therapy. I seriously need to change that. Thankfully, I have a nice paragraph in an assignment that explains this therapy from a few years ago. “Nevertheless, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is a highly effective psychotherapy for MDD (Lepping et al., 2017; Lopez-Lopez et al., 2019; NICE, 2018; Whiston et al., 2019) this essay will critically review in the rest of this paper. CBT is recommended as a gold standard treatment for MDD by the NICE guidelines (2022) involving a directive, time-limited, structured approach emphasising a collaborative therapeutic relationship between the psychotherapist and client (Fenn and Byrne, 2013) assuming maladaptive behaviours are learnt so they can be unlearned (Apolinário-Hagen et al., 2020). Therefore, therapist and client work to understand the client’s experiences and how to overcome overwhelming problems by breaking them down into smaller components (Davey et al., 2015). Clients learn how to identify unhelpful and unrealistic thinking processes and patterns maintaining their MDD (Davey et al., 2015) as well, so they can use the techniques they are taught in therapy to challenge these negative thoughts and change their habits in everyday life (Davey et al., 2015). Ultimately, CBT works by helping a client become more aware of the interrelationships between their thoughts, feelings and behaviours (Davey et al., 2015), including their negative cognitive styles, a cause of MDD identified by Alloy et al. (1999), and the Cognitive Triad as identified by Beck et al. (1985).” What Are Three Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Techniques? What Is Guided Imagery? This therapy technique was introduced by the Father of CBT himself, Aaron Beck, in the 1970s, and it gets clients to use mental imagery to relax and help clients to deal with their anxiety and stress. For instance, a therapist could guide a client to imagine a peaceful, lustrous forest and help the client to focus on the forest’s sounds, smells, sights and sensations. As well as Guided Imagery can be useful for clients with stress, anxiety or trauma with it taking between 10-30 minutes. Moreover, the advantage of Guided Imagery is that it helps to promote relaxation and reframes negative thoughts within clients. Yet some clients might struggle with the visualization part of this technique, so it isn’t right for everyone. What Is Socratic Questioning? This is a therapy technique that I’ve heard a lot about but no one has ever actually taken the time to explain what it is to me, and I have never looked it up. Until now. As a result, Socratic Questioning was typically introduced in the 1920s based on the Greek Philosopher Socrates then Aaron Beck adapted this type of questioning for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Socratic Questioning was designed to take 10-20 minutes for clients with distorted thinking patterns and it involves asking guided questions to help clients challenge their irrational beliefs. For instance, you might ask a client “What evidence do you have that you’ll fail this subject at school?” then as a client can’t find any evidence to support their thoughts, this helps to challenge this negative belief. One advantage of Socratic Questioning is that it encourages a client to critically think about their negative beliefs but it can be confrontational. This next comment I say extremely unofficially because nothing on this podcast is ever any sort of official advice. Yet this can be effective when talking with friends who are struggling with their mental health and have several irrational beliefs. What is Cognitive Reframing? Out of all the different therapy techniques used within Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, this might be the most famous or at least it’s one of the ones I’ve heard most about. Since cognitive reframing was introduced in the 1960s by Albert Ellis. As well as cognitive reframing is designed to take about 5-15 minutes and it helps a client to view situations from a different, typically more positive perspective.  One example of this reframing could be helping a client to reframe “I failed my driving test” into “Now, I know what I need to practise for next time”. Furthermore, one advantage of cognitive reframing is that encourages clients to look at situations from a new, more positive perspective so this reduces distress. Although, this reframing might not work for deeply held beliefs. Clinical Psychology Conclusion At the end of this first podcast episode in our little mini-series focusing on different therapeutic techniques, I want to conclude by saying that I’m really excited for the upcoming episodes. Since whether you love or hate Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or any of the other psychotherapies we’re going to be looking at in the upcoming episodes, each therapy has something fascinating to offer us as aspiring or qualified psychologists. And when you listen to the podcast, read one of my books or just learn about psychology, I want you to focus on that sense of curiosity. Since there are a good few areas of psychology that I have no interest in whatsoever, yet I still learn about those areas. Due to one day with one client with one particular mental health difficulty, it might be useful. That simple piece of knowledge might be the difference between helping or not helping a client to improve their life. That is why learning, developing and expanding our psychological knowledge base is always flat out critical. Thankfully, it’s a lot of fun too. Especially, when it comes to therapy techniques.     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 CBT For Depression: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Depression.  Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading ​Nakao, M., Shirotsuki, K., & Sugaya, N. (2021). Cognitive–behavioral therapy for management of mental health and stress-related disorders: Recent advances in techniques and technologies. BioPsychoSocial medicine, 15(1), 16. Bieling, P. J., McCabe, R. E., & Antony, M. M. (2022). Cognitive-behavioral therapy in groups. Guilford publications. Fitzsimmons-Craft, E. E., Taylor, C. B., Graham, A. K., Sadeh-Sharvit, S., Balantekin, K. N., Eichen, D. M., ... & Wilfley, D. E. (2020). Effectiveness of a digital cognitive behavior therapy–guided self-help intervention for eating disorders in college women: A cluster randomized clinical trial. JAMA network Open, 3(8), e2015633-e2015633. Gautam, M., Tripathi, A., Deshmukh, D., & Gaur, M. (2020). Cognitive behavioral therapy for depression. Indian journal of psychiatry, 62(Suppl 2), S223-S229. Marciniak, M. A., Shanahan, L., Rohde, J., Schulz, A., Wackerhagen, C., Kobylińska, D., ... & Kleim, B. (2020). Standalone smartphone cognitive behavioral therapy–based ecological momentary interventions to increase mental health: Narrative review. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 8(11), e19836. Sigurvinsdóttir, A. L., Jensínudóttir, K. B., Baldvinsdóttir, K. D., Smárason, O., & Skarphedinsson, G. (2020). Effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for child and adolescent anxiety disorders across different CBT modalities and comparisons: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 74(3), 168-180. Urits, I., Callan, J., Moore, W. C., Fuller, M. C., Renschler, J. S., Fisher, P., ... & Viswanath, O. (2020). Cognitive behavioral therapy for the treatment of chronic pelvic pain. Best Practice & Research Clinical Anaesthesiology, 34(3), 409-426. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

As we saw in How Can Therapists and Parents Support Transgender Teenagers?   There are high rates of suicide, self-harm and depression in transgender youth. One of the ways to decrease these awful mental health outcomes is medical transitioning, where transgender youth transition from the gender they were assigned at birth to their affirmed gender by developing the characterised physical features of their affirmed gender. An effective way of medical transitioning is by Hormone Replacement Therapy because masculine hormones can make fat move away from the hips and thighs and deepen the voice. Whereas feminine hormones can make body fat move towards the hips and thighs and lead to the development of breasts. However, Hormone Replacement Therapy focuses on physical benefits for transgender youth, and yet this is a psychology podcast and I am a firm believer in the biopsychosocial model. Therefore, in this biological psychology podcast episode, we’re going to be investigating the psychological benefits of Hormone Replacement Therapy on transgender youth. This is going to be a lot of fun. If you enjoy learning about how hormones affect our behaviour, mental health and self-image, then you’ll love today’s episode. Today’s podcast episode has been sponsored by Biological Psychology . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley   How Hormone Replacement Therapy Improves Physical and Social Wellbeing? The main piece of research we’ll be using for this podcast episode comes from Doyle et al. (2023) because they did a large meta-analysis that got data from 46 journal articles. These articles were based on interviews with people who had taken hormones and people that hadn’t, as well as analyses of people taking hormones over longer periods of time. The research clearly shows that gender-affirming hormone therapy reduces depressive symptoms as well as psychological distress in transgender people. Also, what I find really interesting is that the research shows that hormone therapy helps transgender people improve in key areas of psychosocial functioning. Mainly in trust and self-control. Furthermore, the researchers noted that hormone therapy mostly leads to a decrease in distress in transgender people and doesn’t necessarily lead to an increase in positive emotion states. In other words, hormone replacement therapy leads to a decrease in depression, isolation and sadness and doesn’t really promote feelings of positivity. Which I think is an idea finding because I don’t think hormone replacement therapy needs to promote positive feelings as that will be a byproduct anyway of the process. For example, if you have depression, sadness and you’re isolated and hormone replacement therapy reduces those symptoms then you’re going to feel better anyway. And I’ve talked to my trans friend a lot and they always tell me how much better they feel after starting hormone therapy. In addition, Doyle et al. (2023) doesn’t provide a clear explanation of why these benefits happen. We aren’t sure if this has something to do with chemical changes in the brain or from improved body image or a mixture of the two. Personally, from everyone I’ve heard from trans people, it mainly comes from their improved body image and they feel a lot more comfortable in their own skin. But of course, there are going to be other factors as well at play. When it comes to improvements in quality of life, there is some evidence of this but these results are complicated by the emotional changes that occur during hormone therapy. For instance, in a lot of studies where participants are taking masculinising hormones, these hormones tend to decrease emotions whereas feminising hormones tend to increase emotions in participants. Since participants on feminising hormones report emotional imbalances, increased emotional expressions and mood swings. Moreover, there is no clear way to tell how existing gender stereotypes affect people taking gender-affirming hormone therapy. Yet researchers do know that these factors do impact the participant’s report on their overall quality of life. Finally, whilst Doyle et al. (2023) has some strong conclusions about the benefits of gender-affirming hormone therapy, there are gaps in the literature too. Since it is difficult to get control groups of a good size for randomised, controlled studies as well as study sizes tend to be small. Yet I personally think that is mainly because the transgender community is so, so tiny compared to the rest of the population. Also, the data could be skewed by the studies using a volunteer sample of transgender people, instead of other more representative or stratified samples. Biological Psychology Conclusion At the end of this biological psychology podcast episode, the takeaway message is very clear. Hormone therapy for transgender people decreases psychological distress, depression and it improves lives. As well as this is even more important when we consider depression plays a major role in self-harm and suicide behaviour that is scarily common in the transgender community. And thanks to Doyle et al. (2023), we now understand that hormone therapy helps transgender people a lot and it might very well save their lives. Therefore, whilst there are gaps in the literature, and let me just say there are gaps in all academic literature, it is research that proves and supports the importance of this life-saving and life-affirming therapy for transgender people. I know in the USA in particular there are a lot of laws going through at the moment in the year of writing this episode in 2023, that aim to restrict gender-affirming medical practice. I’ve seen some funny reasons given including how banning gender-affirming medical practices will help people and improve lives. That is a lie and Doyle et al. (2023) proves that. Banning transgender medical care will not help anyone, but it will lead to increased rates of depression, isolation and sadness. And then that will have a knock-on effect on increased rates of self-harm and suicide so let’s not allow life-saving medical care to be banned because this episode shows us, physical healthcare can have massive benefits for our physical and mental health.   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. Also, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley   Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References Doyle, D. M., Lewis, T. O., & Barreto, M. (2023). A systematic review of psychosocial functioning changes after gender-affirming hormone therapy among transgender people. Nature Human Behaviour, 1-12. Eisenberg, M. E., Gower, A. L., McMorris, B. J., Rider, G. N., Shea, G., & Coleman, E. (2017). Risk and protective factors in the lives of transgender/gender nonconforming adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Health, 61(4), 521-526. Eisenberg, M. E., Gower, A. L., McMorris, B. J., Rider, G. N., Shea, G., & Coleman, E. (2017). Risk and protective factors in the lives of transgender/gender nonconforming adolescents. Journal of adolescent health, 61(4), 521-526. http://transpulseproject.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Impacts-of-Strong-Parental-Support-for-Trans-Youth-vFINAL.pdf Iverson, Jo. (2020). Once A Girl, Always A Boy. Berkeley, CA: She Writes Press Perez-Brumer, A., Day, J. K., Russell, S. T., & Hatzenbuehler, M. L. (2017). Prevalence and correlates of suicidal ideation among transgender youth in California: findings from a representative, population-based sample of high school students. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 56(9), 739-746. SANSFAÇON, A. P., GELLY, M. A., FADDOUL, M., & LEE, E. O. J. (2020). Parental support and non-support of trans youth: towards a nuanced understanding of forms of support and trans youth's expectations. Enfances, Familles, Generations, (36). Seibel, B. L., de Brito Silva, B., Fontanari, A. M., Catelan, R. F., Bercht, A. M., Stucky, J. L., ... & Costa, A. B. (2018). The impact of the parental support on risk factors in the process of gender affirmation of transgender and gender diverse people. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 399. Veale, J. F., Watson, R. J., Peter, T., & Saewyc, E. M. (2017). Mental Health Disparities Among Canadian Transgender Youth. The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine, 60(1), 44–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2016.09.014 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.

During October 2023, I spent three days working in a Gender Identity Clinic up in Newcastle, England and I got to experience a little bit of what it’s like to work in the service. I learnt a lot about how Gender services run, what is involved and how brilliant the people there that work there. Yet most importantly, I learn how great transgender people are as well. which I already knew because I have a lot of transgender friends and I’m trans non-binary myself, but this work experience cemented my positive regard for these critical, life-saving services even more. Therefore, in this podcast episode, we’ll be looking at what happens at a Gender Identity Clinic, what I learnt from them and why I fully support these services. If you enjoy learning about transgender healthcare, mental health and clinical psychology then you’ll love today’s episode. This podcast episode has been sponsored by Clinical Psychology and Transgender Clients: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley   What Is A Gender Identity Clinic? And A First Lesson Simply put and I actually think Bing defines a Gender Identity Clinic rather well, “A gender identity clinic is a medical facility that provides support and treatment to individuals who experience gender dysphoria. It accepts referrals from all over the UK for adults with issues related to gender. The clinic is a multi-disciplinary administrative and clinical team, including psychologists, psychiatrists, endocrinologists, speech and language therapists, and nurses. They work together in order to provide holistic gender care, focusing on the biological/medical, psychological and social aspects of gender.” Source: https://gic.nhs.uk/about-us/ In addition, this is actually one of my first reasons why I really like Gender Identity Clinics as a psychology person, because they’re very holistic. Which, as I’ve mentioned on the podcast before, is flat out critical to delivering the best possible care for our clients. This is even more for Gender Dysphoria because there is a psychological dimension too it, but then there are social and biological aspects which interact. It is only by interacting and looking at these three types of factors we can possibly hope to help our clients to the best of our abilities. Be it through Hormone Replacement Therapy so trans people can have the physical body they want, or the psychological dimension so they can increase their confidence and feel okay in their own body, or the social aspects by wearing gender-affirming clothing. Addressing all these dimensions of a client’s experience is flat out critical and I’m really glad that this approach is baked into Gender Identity Clinics. An Overview Of What I Did In Those Three Days Before I start talking about some of the specific lessons I learnt during these three days, I wanted to give you an overview of what I did. Also, I should mention that in my experience, Gender Identity Clinics are made up of psychology, speech and language therapists, General Practitioners (for our international audience this what the UK calls its doctors) and nurses. I think that’s all of them but as you can see, it is very much a multi-disciplinary approach which is brilliant. Therefore, like most work experience situations, you’re given to one of the disciplines and you spend the day with them. On the Monday, I spent it with a brilliant nurse that I got on well with and I learnt a lot from her. When I first met her she was looking over some blood test results for a woman that had just started her Hormone Replacement Therapy so I got to learn all about that, the different levels they look for and the importance of liver function testing. Afterwards, the nurse had a video appointment with a woman to see how she was getting on. Since it tends to be about every six months, a client gets a “check-in” appointment so the Clinic can make sure everything is okay, the client is happy and to see if anything has changed. This is when I learnt that after a few years of being on Hormone Replacement Therapy, the effects and changes start to level off. Meaning for the first year or two, the client might notice a lot of changes because of the hormones and this makes them really help. Yet then the effects start to level off. In addition, I learnt during this call what the term “Pathway” means in Gender Identity Clinics. This is basically their route through the Clinic starting off with their assessment and diagnosis, all the way to whatever their desired end is. For example, if a client only wanted to be diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria then the pathway would be short(ish) for them because they would get the diagnosis and be discharged from the clinic. Yet if someone wanted a diagnosis and then a gender-affirming surgery that had a long waiting time on the NHS then their pathway would be longer. This was a great video call that taught me a lot about transgender people, how kind and helpful they are and there was one thing in particular that the client said that still sticks in my mind. For historical context, my work experience was around the time the UK’s governing political party had their party conference and broadcasted tons of evil, foul lies about transgender people to the nation. This was a depressing time to be transgender. However, the client on the video call mentioned how whilst the political atmosphere was upsetting, the vast majority of people in their experience couldn’t care less that they’re trans. And that was very affirming for me because that is largely true I think, because this topic is so politicised, sometimes it’s hard to remember that the vast majority of people are okay and support transgender people. I’ll always be grateful for that reminder because I think that helped me a lot as well. Then in the afternoon, I was mainly sitting with a former placement student and going through a lot of their research. Something I’ll talk about more later on because that is critical to understand. What Happened On Tuesday? As a future clinical psychologist, I really did enjoy Tuesday because I’ve been checking out NHS Assistant Psychologist job descriptions lately and every single one of them requires you to have what’s known as MDT experience. This means jobs want you to have experience in Multi-Disciplinary Meetings, so on Tuesday I went to one. It was brilliant in a very nerdy sort of way. Since we all went into this big conference room and sat around a table and everyone was there more or less. You can the Clinical Leads, the head of the service who was a brilliant clinical psychologist, you had speech and language, psychiatrists, nurses and so on. And my personal favourite bit about all of this was there were free homemade biscuits being passed round because it was close to Halloween. Therefore, for the next 90 minutes, everyone spoke about their cases, they wanted to bounce ideas off each other and there were some good discussions. Granted a lot of the cases, which I would just double-check, like the professional would tell everyone their thoughts and because everyone is really good at their jobs, there was nothing to point out or problems with their thinking. Towards the end of the meeting, a nurse joined us online and she was going through her caseload and there were some more complex cases and it was really interesting to listen to. Personally, I was surprised how long this MDT meeting went on for because that was only because I had never been to an MDT meeting before. Yet I was talking to a nurse later on and some of MDTs go on for three hours, I think that was the record at that particular service. As a result, I really enjoyed this experience because it did give me critical experience that will hopefully benefit my future career as a clinical psychologist. Then the rest of Tuesday was sitting in on appointments like Monday and checking sure that clients were okay, which was great. As well as I was sitting with a placement student and we were talking for hours about different aspects of the service and client experiences. Including some interesting research the service was doing. What Happened On Wednesday At The Gender Identity Clinic? Before this work experience, I had no idea that there were small versions of MDT meetings because at this service, there are things called Huddles. These particularly happen on a Wednesday and these are meant for less complex cases that people take along so they can still talk about them and get ideas, but they need the level of insight that a large-scale MDT meeting provides. Also, these Huddles require the presence of at least three different professions. In our Huddle, we had psychology, nursing and psychiatry, and I think speech and language might have made an appearance too. Again, this is another good piece of experience for me because it shows how the NHS works, how dedicated everyone is to multi-disciplinary and holistic approaches to transgenderism. And it also shows me that you can adapt and come up with new ideas to solve problems within problems. For example, if every single case had to go through MDT then I imagine (and this isn’t fact) that those meetings would be rather time-consuming, so coming up with the Huddle idea means everyone can use their idea more effectively. Finally, besides from sitting in on some more appointments, I had maybe one of the most important conversations I have ever had as a future clinical psychologist. I was talking to this wonderful female GP and she used to be a Commissioning Officer for NHS England and we were talking about Gender Identity Services, how they’re set up and whatnot. I’ll talk more about that in the research section, but she was talking about how on paper the Services might “cost” a lot of money but in reality, these Gender Identity Clinics are very affordable and cheap for the NHS. Since we know from the research and I’ve mentioned this on previous podcast episodes, gender-affirming practices save lives, decrease suicide rates and improve the mental health of transgender people. Therefore, these Gender Identity Clinics perform these affirming practices and treatments, and if we talk in cold calculations that all policymakers seem to love, these services mean transgender clients are far, far, far less likely to commit suicide. Meaning they can work, pay tax and contribute to the economy. Something policymakers are always interested in. Therefore, if you compare the money spent on Gender Identity Clinics and the money transgender people pay in tax and other economic activities through working. Then Gender Identity Clinics become very cost-effective for the NHS. Furthermore, possibly one of the most sobering reminders of why this area is so important is because transgender children are committing suicide a lot more now. Since the GP was telling me that ever since the UK government decided to shut down the Gender Development Service, which is the UK’s under-18 Gender Dysphoria service, the children on the waiting list for treatment have reached double-digit suicide rates for the first time. When the service was open the suicide rates for children were in the single figures. As a result, I will never let this go but the fact is clear. When transgender healthcare is restricted, this kills people and in this case, transgender healthcare being restricted to children increases the chance of them dying. Personally, even as I was trying that section, I was getting a little upset because I never wanted to have that conversation. It isn’t natural to have to talk about child suicide but because of the foul and awful decisions of policymakers and politicians and other people that know less, we have to talk about child suicide rates. And as much as it upsets me, it also gives me more determination to do sometimes, to help people and help improve lives. Lessons Learnt From Working In A Gender Identity Clinic In addition to the lessons I’ve already mentioned above, I want to talk about some specific lessons that I’ve learnt during these three days and why they’re important to current or future clinical psychologists. The People Who Work In Mental Health I think one of the most important things to recognise is just how amazing and brilliant people are who work in mental health settings. I’ve worked in NHS settings before and everyone in the NHS is extremely kind, compassionate and they truly want to do what’s best for their service users. This was exactly what I had expected and I didn’t really think too much of it, because this is exactly how people who work in mental health settings should be. However, this could be my upbringing, where I live in the world and the mainstream media, but I was really pleased with how supportive, passionate and dedicated the workers at the Gender Identity Clinic were. I know this shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, but professional who work at Gender Identity Clinics are some of the nicest, most passionate and hardworking people I have had had the pleasure of working with. Therefore, I think this is important to realise as current or future clinical psychologists, because I think sometimes we sometimes don’t understand there are other people who are just as passionate about psychology as ourselves in the world. For example, I’m currently doing my clinical psychology Masters and I am very passionate about the topic (hence the podcast and books) but my passion comes through in different ways compared to other students. So sometimes I do feel a minor disconnect between myself and other psychology students, so it was nice going into the Clinic and meeting other professionals that are just as passionate about this area as me. Understanding Comorbidity If you study clinical psychology then you might have come across the disconnect in clinical psychology between the academic research and the real-world implications.  For example, academic research empirically focuses on a single mental health condition and excludes participants from research that have two or more mental health conditions. This is great for research purposes because it allows us to focus on the effects and treatment outcomes for one single condition. Yet in reality, humans are rarely that clean cut because of comorbidities, where someone has two or more conditions. And this was something I found really interesting about the MDT meeting on the Tuesday because I got to hear about this in an applied setting. As well as I am having to be a little vague because this is a sensitive topic for a lot of clients so I will not be sharing too much publicly. Yet once you start working in mental health settings, you’ll start to see, appreciate and understand that sometimes it is “rare” to see someone with a single mental health condition because humans are not that simple. Therefore, as much as I want to elaborate on this section, I really need to refrain from doing so because I was told this podcast episode will probably attract a lot of haters that might try to misquote me in an effort to hurt the amazing clients that myself and the service are trying to help. Need For Research Something I found really interesting about Gender Identity Clinics is because they are so politicised, they are so judged by the government and all the transphobes are looking for any excuse to shut down all these life-saving services. There is a massive focus on research within Gender Identity Clinics. Now I’ve seen NHS services focus on research before because research is a critical part of healthcare, but Gender Identity Clinics thankfully take this focus to the next level. Additionally, when I asked about there was such a focus on research, I was told the following, but I need to reword it for our international listeners. A few years ago in the UK, there was a legal case brought forward by a transgender client who basically accused the Tavistock Clinic of trying to push the client through transitioning and a bunch of other stuff. The Tavistock Trust lost the case unfortunately because the Trust couldn’t provide evidence for the effectiveness and life-saving nature of gender-affirming practices. As well as because this was a court case against a Gender Identity Clinic, the mainstream media focused a lot of attention on it and they did a very thorough job reporting on it. Further, adding to the false public narratives that turns public opinion against these critically important services. Overall, this was a landmark court case in the UK because this was the legal case that was instrumental in bringing down the Gender Identity Development service for under 18s. Remember earlier when I mentioned those increasing rates of child suicide, this court case was a major factor behind it. As a result, in an effort to prevent another court case being so easily lost, there is a massive focus on research being done by these services. Because without this research that supports the gender-affirming work these clinics do and the lives they save, then there will be more court cases, more losses and more clinics will be shut down. Resulting in more trans people being denied the medical, social and psychological services they desperately need to prevent the worse mental health outcomes. Like suicide. And I do find this particular section upsetting because I know as a trans non-binary person as much trans healthcare in the UK is on a knife’s edge and I know the consequences of what happens if these clinics go away. People die. It is as simple as that and that I find distressing, but it also hardens my resolve about why I want to support trans people and trans healthcare as much as I possibly can. Overall, there is always a massive need for research in clinical settings, but even more so in Gender Identity Clinics. And one thing I have learnt from this work experience is the importance of research and how research has the power to save services and all the good they do in the world, so I will never ever take conducting research for granted again. Know And Learn More Than You Think Finally, I’ve written about this before in a few different places, but there will be times when you realise you know a lot more than you think. For example, there’s a tiny extract from Clinical Psychology Reflections Volume 4 (coming out in March 2024) that introduces this topic well. “The idea for this reflection actually came from a Prospectus Evening that I attended with some friends after a long day of testing on participants, and as much as the university wanted us to believe otherwise, this entire event was the university just marketing itself and wanting to keep us on. They had a forensic psychologist, social psychologists, cognitive people and a bunch of clinical psychologists there, and after helping myself to the free pizza and catching up with my Final Year Project supervisor socially, I went back over to my friends to see they were talking to a lecturer of mine, a clinical psychologist. And what really struck me were the questions they were asking. They weren’t dumb questions, they weren’t ignorant questions (well that ignorant) and they weren’t questions that made me question why the hell they wanted to go into clinical psychology (well slightly). They were simply basic questions that they would have known the answers to if they had taken clinical psychology modules.” My point here is that if we’re listening, trying to learn and we actively engage in learning or any sort of work experience, then you naturally pick up stuff that you didn’t realise you had learnt. The example above contains a lot of stuff about what I had learnt in clinical psychology that I considered basics but in reality, it was specialised knowledge I was surprised other people with an apparent interest in clinical psychology didn’t know. I was reminded about this again during this work experience, because on the Wednesday after I returned to Kent I went the trans social group I go to, and there were a few conversations. I was surprised I was able to follow the conversations perfectly and I could actually add the conversations in quite a lot of depth. And it just struck me how much I had actually learnt in those three days. As a result, my point is that whenever you do psychology work experience, you may think you didn’t learn anything but in reality, you probably learnt a lot more than you ever thought possible.   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 Working With Children and Young People: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy.  Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley   Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

Throughout my clinical psychology education, there have been multiple times when a lecturer, an academic resource or a paper has mentioned that clinical cutoffs aren’t the best and they are problematic. Yet they have never gone into any great detail about the advantages and disadvantages of clinical cutoffs and why they are not good for our clients. I wanted to change this, not only for my own education but so I can educate others have the pros and cons of the cutoffs. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn about the advantages and disadvantages of clinical cutoffs and why they might disservice our clients instead of helping them. If you enjoy learning about mental health, psychotherapy and diagnosis then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Clinical Psychology Reflections Volume 5: Thoughts On Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. As always the references for today’s podcast episode are at the bottom of the page. What Are Clinical Cutoffs? Within clinical psychology, we use clinical cutoffs as thresholds for mental health conditions so we can see if someone’s symptoms and mental health difficulties meet the criteria for a specific diagnosis. There are some pros and cons of clinical cutoffs and that’s what we’re going to be focusing on in today’s episode. In addition, as a small example that is related to clinical cutoffs, a lot of psychometric tests use clinical cutoffs to measure if someone has a mental health condition and what the severity is. For instance, in my research, I like using the Mental Health Inventory-5 because it’s easy and validated and it uses the following clinical cutoffs. This study used the Youden Index to determine the MHI-5 cutoff point because it is the least dependent on population prevalence, giving a cutoff point of 76 (Kelly et al., 2008). Whereas the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 uses the following: Depression, Anxiety and Stress scores from each subscale were calculated by adding up the item scores with the severity of depression reflecting 0-9=Normal depressive symptoms, 10-13= mild depressive symptoms, 14-20= moderate depressive symptoms, 21-27= severe depressive symptoms and 28+= extremely severe depressive symptoms. Anxiety severity was reflected in scores of 0-7= normal anxiety symptoms, 8-9= mild anxiety symptoms, 10-14= moderate anxiety symptoms, 15-19 severe anxiety symptoms and 20+ extremely severe anxiety symptoms. Stress severity was reflected in scores of 0-14= normal stress symptoms, 15-18= mild stress symptoms, 19-25= moderate stress symptoms, 26-33= severe stress symptoms and 34+= extreme severe stress symptoms (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995). As a result, you can see how different psychometric scales have different clinical cutoffs to help them determine if a mental health condition is present and the severity of the condition. What Are The Advantages Of Clinical Cutoffs? Let’s start off by focusing on the positive aspects of clinical cutoffs, because they can be very useful at times. Firstly, clinical cutoffs allow us to diagnose mental health conditions in a standardised way so we can ensure consistency across different mental health settings as well as professionals. For instance, if you’re using the Mental Health Inventory-5 in your diagnosis, it doesn’t matter if you’re assessing people in Manchester and they get a score of 80 or people down in Dover and they get a score of 80. Both of those numbers should mean the exact same thing in terms of the severity and presence of a mental health condition so that allows country-wide standardisation of diagnosis. Even though, I will add I’ve spoken a lot on the podcast before about the inconsistency of diagnosis amongst mental health professionals and there is a lot of literature on the topic. Hence, you could argue clinical cutoffs help to get rid of some inconsistency but it certainly doesn’t solve the problem of inconsistency like it claims to. This is why the DSM-5 isn’t that great. Secondly, one of the aspects that I like about clinical cutoffs is that it provides clients with a way to access treatment. Personally, in an ideal world, I am a firm believer that everyone should get access to mental health support when they need it most before they get so severe that their life is in danger. For example, I cannot get mental health support for my eating disorder until I am dangerously underweight so I’m going to keep getting more severe without any support. Anyway, the reason why clinical cutoffs allow people to access treatment is because they can make individuals eligible for specific treatments, insurance coverage and support services. This is why in the UK, you cannot get access to eating disorder support until you meet the clinical cutoffs for your Body Mass Index and you have to be dangerously below your normal weight. Which is silly because the BMI is a useless and outdated concept which I covered on a past episode. Although, to put a positive spin on this advantage, I want to mention that from a public services perspective, I understand why clinical cutoffs are needed. Since there will never be enough staff, money or support available for every single person who needs it and there definitely isn’t enough staff or money for preventive mental health support. Therefore, clinical cutoffs help public services to target their support to the people who need it most so they can focus on these individuals. Finally, from a clinical research perspective, clinical cutoffs are very useful because standardised cutoffs give researchers a clear criteria for inclusion in their study. This can help them create more valid and credible studies that can improve our understanding as well as treatment of mental health conditions. In my opinion, this is a big advantage of clinical cutoffs because it is a way of knowing that your research participants do have the mental health condition to clinically significant levels, so this allows you to design and set up more valid experimental and control groups. This is an issue I have with mental health research done at university by Masters, undergraduates and even some PhD students, because university students are easier to get to. They make up the majority of the research samples even when they’re studying depression, and believe me, I know and I understand that depression, anxiety and other conditions are prevalent amongst university students. Yet from an empirical standpoint for better or for worse, part of me would like researchers to engage with clinical populations that have reached the clinical cutoff of the mental health condition that they’re investigating. It isn’t a perfect idea but it is the world we live in. What Are The Disadvantages of Clinical Cutoffs? As you can tell already, I am a little critical of clinical cutoffs because I’ve already mentioned some extra disadvantages in the previous section. Yet we still need to investigate some more disadvantages. Firstly, a disadvantage of clinical cutoffs is that they oversimplify mental health conditions by boiling them down into a set of numbers. They completely dismiss the complexity of mental health and they overlook the nuances of someone’s experience. The issue with oversimplifying mental health is that it can lead to misdiagnosis and it does lead to overlooking the people that need mental health support. For example, if we look at my eating disorder, I told the medical doctor (yes I have massive issues I was seen by a medical doctor for a psychological condition) that I’ve been losing a kilogram a week for about 2 months, I’ve made myself physically sick twice in the past few months through malnutrition, this is linked to my rape and I am barely eating a thousand calories most days because I am terrified to eat. Still because my Body Mass Index was okay, he said I was fine and let me go. It is ridiculous. I need the support and I was courageous enough to ask for the support as much as I didn’t want to, and then the medical doctors just turned me away. Secondly, our next disadvantage builds off the last one because clinical cutoffs are very inflexible. Clinical cutoffs are very rigid so these fail to account for social, individual and cultural differences in how someone’s symptoms and difficulties manifest. Again, this means that people might not receive a diagnosis or the mental health support they really need. One example that shows the individual differences is when someone has anorexia nervosa and Atypical Anorexia. Both of these people have anorexia but one person has the extreme weight loss amongst all the other diagnostic criteria, but the person with Atypical Anorexia doesn’t have the extreme weight loss and still has all the other diagnostic criteria. Therefore, these are essentially the exact same condition, both are very deadly, but Atypical Anorexia doesn’t meet the clinical cutoff for mental health support at times. It makes no sense when two people have the same deadly condition, but only one type of person gets mental health support from what I’ve seen. Finally, the last major disadvantage of clinical cutoffs is that they tend to focus on deficits as well as pathology (what is wrong with someone) instead of their resilience and their strengths. You can tell that clinical cutoffs arose from the biomedical model that sees mental health conditions as evil disorders that needs to be cured at all costs instead of seeing them as conditions that a person lives with and needs to develop adaptive coping mechanisms to help them thrive in their everyday life. Just because a person has a mental health condition doesn’t make them flawed, evil or messed up. It just means they need a little more support to decrease their psychological distress, improve their lives and take back control of their lives so they can live their ideal life. Clinical cutoffs dismiss that approach to mental health care completely. They imply that someone has a mental disorder that needs to be cured and fixed because there is something wrong with a person. I completely reject that notion like the majority of modern clinical psychology. Clinical Psychology Conclusion At the end of this mental health podcast episode, I want to say that I was rather surprised at how I was a little more critical of clinical cutoffs than I thought I was going to be. I won’t deny there are advantages, like clinical cutoffs mean we can diagnose mental health conditions in a standardised way, they allow clients to access treatment and they’re useful for designing standardised research samples in clinical research. Even though there are disadvantages within each of those advantages. Additionally, the disadvantages of clinical cutoffs include oversimplifying mental health, they’re inflexible and they pathologise a person’s mental health difficulties. Ultimately, whilst there will not be an end to clinical cutoffs for a good long while because we don’t have anything to replace them with, probably until we come up with a valid and widely accepted alternative for the DSM, we need to be weary about them and not accept clinical cutoffs are perfect. As aspiring or qualified psychologists, it is our job to balance the use of clinical cutoffs with a holistic approach to mental health care so we can understand, appreciate and value the unique context and experience of every single client that we see. Never ever reduce your client to a mere set of numbers as impossible as that might seem at times when we have the pressure of waiting lists, bosses and policy breathing down our necks. And that’s before we think of our ever-increasing caseload. Clinical cutoffs are a tool for our jobs, and not a perfect tool at that.     I really hope you enjoyed today’s forensic psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Clinical Psychology Reflections Volume 5: Thoughts On Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References Pros and Cons of the DSM in Mental Health Diagnosis - Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/dsm-friend-or-foe-2671930. Summary of Representative Clinical Depression Screening Tools. https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/ESRDQIP/Downloads/Summary-of-Representative-Clinical-Depression-Screening-Tools.pdf. The Pros and Cons of Mental Health Diagnosis - MHM Group. https://mhmgroup.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-mental-health-diagnosis/. What if Some Mental Disorders Weren't Disorders at All?. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shouldstorm/202008/what-if-some-mental-disorders-werent-disorders-at-all. Whiteley, C. (2024) Clinical Psychology Reflections Volume 5: Thoughts On Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy . CGD Publishing. England. Will a Diagnosis Do More Harm Than Good? The Pros and Cons of .... https://www.millennialtherapy.com/anxiety-therapy-blog/pros-and-cons-of-diagnostic-labeling. 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.

When it comes to clinical psychology, it is a very white, female, middle-class professional and I’ve spoken and written about the various reasons why this is the case and why this needs to change urgently. Diversity will always be critical within clinical psychology and related mental health professions, but a major reason why clinical psychology isn’t that diverse is because of barriers to the profession. For different groups of people, even including white men, there are different barriers that can limit access to the clinical psychology profession, but this doesn’t mean that all barriers are the same height. Therefore, in this psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what these barriers are, why they aren’t always the same height and what we can do as profession to help flatten and hopefully outright eliminate some of these barriers. If you enjoy learning about careers in psychology, mental health professions and more then this is a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Clinical Psychology Reflections Volume 5: Thoughts On Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Are All Barriers In Clinical Psychology The Same Height? (Extract From Clinical Psychology Reflections Volume 5) When I was flicking through the December 2022 edition of The Psychologist Magazine, there was this article from a man talking about him feeling out of place and almost like an imposter on the UK’s NHS “Aspiring Clinical Psychologist” scheme. It's a scheme designed to help people who cannot undertake a Masters nor undertake unpaid work experience to get work experience and a partial education towards becoming a fully qualified psychologist. In the article, the man was talking about how much of a fraud he felt because he was white, wasn’t from an ethnic minority and he didn’t have any other characteristics that would disadvantage him. The only reason he was on the scheme was because he was from a poor background so he couldn’t undertake unpaid work experience or do a Masters degree. And then the article went on to talk about how he realise he did belong on the scheme but it still made him think about his own privileges and that not all the barriers in clinical psychology are the same height. The barriers to the profession were a lot lower for him compared to a black person from a poor background. Personally, this got me thinking about my own privileges and disadvantages, but firstly I want to mention that this man might have been white and he didn’t have any other disadvantages besides the fact that he was from a poor background. He still 100% deserved to be on this scheme because he met the criteria, he needed the help and it benefited all the future clients he was going to see. He was suffering from self-doubt and imposter syndrome, which is understandable, but he shouldn’t have felt that way about himself. Furthermore, I think the reason why this really got me thinking is because of my own appearance, status and disadvantages. Since I am a white male from a middle class family in a poor area. Those are my advantages and those have been very useful to me in my life. Also, I am gay but you would never know from looking at me so I can hide that part of myself very well if needed. As well as I am part of the trans community as a non-binary person but again, you would never be able to tell. Then finally, I have suffered really bad mental health and I had tons of lived experience of mental health difficulties behind me. You would think that would certainly be an advantage in clinical psychology and it very much can be, but people are still weary. And there are still unconscious biases at play during the recruitment process, even within clinical psychology. Yet again, you would never know I have had horrific mental health in the past, because I hide it very well. Therefore, what got me thinking about this article was that I definitely know how this man feels. Since there have been times I have wanted to apply for minority-focused bursaries, opportunities and more but I have stopped myself because I don’t feel disadvantaged at times. Of course, I am perfectly aware that I am disadvantaged and there have been times when people in positions of power have made that perfectly clear to me in very non-subtle ways. However, I keep telling myself the same lie over and over again about how I don’t need these things. Even though it would have helped me, my future and my career if I had applied for these things a few years ago. It’s interesting that I try to convince myself that I am perfectly okay even now, but I am not because I am disadvantaged and I shouldn’t be scared to recognise it. On the whole, when it comes to myself, in the future if there is an opportunity that comes up for minorities. Then I need to be more open and honest with myself about looking into it and allowing myself to apply if I think I meet the criteria. For everyone else reading this, if there is an opportunity that you meet the criteria for, whether it’s aimed at minorities or not, you should go for it. Getting a job in psychology is hard enough for all of us, but it is even harder for other people that face more barriers than most. Look for opportunities, exploit them and help yourself to build a Resume or the career that you want. Don’t let self-doubt, imposter syndrome or anything else hold you back.   I really hope you enjoyed today’s forensic psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Clinical Psychology Reflections Volume 5: Thoughts On Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology Reference Whiteley, C. (2024) Clinical Psychology Reflections Volume 5: Thoughts On Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy . CGD Publishing. England. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

With Halloween only being a few days away, I wanted to take this opportunity to understand the psychology behind this massive holiday. Of course, you could argue that there's no social psychology behind Halloween but actually there is research and quite a few arguments explaining that Halloween has a massive social function in modern, western society. Therefore, in this social psychology podcast episode, you'll learn why is Halloween important, what are the social functions of Halloween and more. If you enjoy learning about applied psychology, social psychology and more then this is a brilliant episode for you. Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Social Psychology: A Guide To Social and Cultural Psychology . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What Is The Social Function Of Halloween? When we consider that the modern, western holiday of Halloween is a billion-dollar industry that often lasts two months based on an ancient Celtic holiday, we need to ask ourselves why. Why do people love Halloween so much so that I see Halloween decorations in supermarkets in late August and early September right up until Halloween? At that point in the calendar year, there is a very creepy mix of Halloween and Christmas decorations up in the supermarkets and that is just creepy. So why do stores dedicate two months to this very popular holiday? How do they know they can make an insane amount of money from Halloween? In addition, considering that the Celtic holiday that modern Halloween is based on is ancient and it was designed to ward off evil spirits and celebrate the dead, why has it endured? Some academics have proposed that Halloween has a social function that is deeply rooted in our biology. Since the fear emotion that is caused by humans believing something is dangerous or threatening makes adrenaline as well as other hormones get released into our bloodstream. Ultimately, preparing the body for our fight or flight response. Logically, this would make sense if fear was something that humans avoided because surely being scared is horrible. It is, but the fact that fear is horrible doesn’t stop people from chasing it. As a result of if we make threatening scenarios within a safe environment, for example seeing a gory horror film in the safety of a cinema, then this terror and fear becomes socially sanctioned. This helps to contain our fear too. Therefore, this connects to Halloween because the costumes we use, enjoy and go out in allow people to experience some made-up fear. Especially, as Halloween is essentially an imaginative form of play for both adults and children. I know a lot of university students and my friends are looking forward to going to Halloween parties next week at the time of writing. My new friend is going to go to one with the Rock and Metal Society, and I think me and my housemates are going to do some pumpkin carvings. Whilst the Halloween party is scarier, both situations involve us creating a scary scenario in a safe, controlled environment. In terms of the literature itself, American sociologist Amitai Etzioni argued that Halloween is popular in modern society because it acts as a tension-management ritual that allows us to play out and express our collective fantasies, anxieties and fears. He wrote that in a 2000 article in Sociological Theory and I think it’s largely true because we never get to play or dress up as witches, vampires, monsters and warlocks amongst other creatures. We are all scared of these monsters and it’s interesting that for one night of the year, we get to not be afraid of these monsters. We get to express our fears and perhaps conquer them or at least understand that they aren’t as scary as imagine. In addition, Dr Jason Parker, a psychology lecturer at Old Dominion University, supports this argument. Since in 2002, he spoke about how Halloween allows us to get a physical response because of us facing and being exposed to the physical expression of our fears, and this allows us to experience the feeling of accomplishment as well. All because Halloween plays with our emotions and allows us to feel like we overcame our fears. In other words, if you have a fear of witches and their magic, Halloween allows you to see, interact and experience witches in the real world. Then you experience the physical reaction of fear and the associated emotions and by the end of the night because you are alright, you are safe and nothing bad happened, you can feel accomplished as you overcame your fear. A final academic argument comes from a 2008 article by Cindy Dell Clark who proposed that Halloween is a complex process where the inversion of meaning is very common and important. Since according to her research, Halloween is popular because children gain “ascendance” through costumed trick-or-treating as well as us, adults, support the anti-normative themes of the holiday. Another way of putting her argument is that Halloween is the one day of the year when the social world can stop making sense and that’s okay. In other words, it is perfectly fine and socially sanctioned for adults not to be socially normal (like grown-ups dressing up and partying like kids) and for kids to get candy from strangers wearing fun costumes. It gives everyone a break from the social norms of the year. Furthermore, Professor Tamar Kushnir from Duke University, discussed in 2019 why we turn our fears into Trick-or-Treating. We do this because the scary and fear-inducing situations presented to us don’t present a true danger, so this stimulated fear is a good way to practise the experience of being afraid whilst there not being a true danger. As well as most people enjoy the process of being a little scared too, so people find joy in the process too.   Finally, death is our greatest fear and Halloween represents this fear in many different ways. For example, death as ghosts, zombies, demons and skeletons. Halloween represents all manners and forms of death so Halloween allows humanity to capture how we feel about death and one day no longer being here. As well as Robert Langs writes in his book Death Anxiety and Clinical Practice about how Halloween allows us to celebrate life with a great awareness of the inevitability of death. Subsequently, if we link this idea back to the evolutionary and biological argument, Langs is effectively pointing out how our awareness that life eventually ends in life is fundamental to human evolution. This results in humans being anxious about death and these anxieties lurk and ruminate inside our minds, but they are never addressed in psychotherapy for a range of reasons. Probably because death is still too taboo within Western societies to discuss openly. As well as our psychological defence mechanisms of denial and repression play an active role in this lack of address too. Nonetheless, it is Halloween that allows us to acknowledge and celebrate that death will come for us all and that’s okay. It is a part of life and that is why living and having a joyful and meaningful life is so important. And let’s face it, Halloween is a much more fun way of dealing with death anxiety than talking about it in therapy, right? Social Psychology Conclusion Whilst it’s very rare that I remember to actually do holiday-themed podcast episodes because I’m normally too busy to remember this would be a good idea until after the holiday, I really did enjoy today’s episode. Since now we all understand why Halloween endures, why people spend hundreds, thousands and sometimes even tens of thousands of dollars on Halloween decorations and how a pagan ritual survived 2,000 years and is bigger than ever. We understand that all now. Halloween allows us to enjoy being scared and it evokes our fear response. Halloween teaches us that being scared is okay and we can feel accomplished in the fact that we face our fears and survive. Since we know we can face our fears, fantasies and nightmares, like witches and vampires, and know we will still survive. As well as Halloween allows us to confront our fears and anxieties around Death as a single united society. Ultimately, Halloween is a wonderfully unique holiday. Sure, there are monsters, people dressed up in costumes and fear-inducing situations abound. Yet it is truly the only night of the year when every single person in the Western world is united in their fearful scenario in a safe, controlled environment. And there is magic in that. There is magic and a wonderful social function in knowing that everyone is the same for a single night, a single holiday, a single fearful situation where everyone is scared and hopefully having a lot of joy. Isn’t that just strangely wonderful?     I really hope you enjoyed today’s social psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Social Psychology: A Guide To Social and Cultural Psychology . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Social Psychology References and Further Reading Alhabash, S., Kanver, D., Lou, C., Smith, S. W., & Tan, P. N. (2021). Trick or drink: Offline and social media hierarchical normative influences on Halloween celebration drinking. Health communication, 36(14), 1942-1948. Howington, A. Unmasking Halloween. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/psychology-yesterday/202310/the-psychology-of-halloween Rogers, N. (2002). Halloween: From pagan ritual to party night. Oxford University Press. 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.

Something I flat out love about talking with fellow psychology students is that you get talking about different mental health conditions. As well as because a lot of university students, especially in psychology seem to have different mental health conditions and difficulties, or at least the ones I talk and become friends with, I often get thinking about new conditions that I haven't focused on before. For example, I was talking with a new friend the other week about how they next sad and depressed at this time of year. So I started wondering if they had Seasonal Affective Disorder, and when I asked them a few nights ago about it, they weren't sure but it was possible. Of course, I'm not going to say anything more about SAD to my friend because it isn't my business, but I wanted to learn more for my own knowledge and entertainment. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you'll learn what is Seasonal Affective Disorder, what is the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria of Seasonal Affective and what are some treatment options for Seasonal Affective Disorder. If you enjoy learning about mood disorders, mental health and more then this will be a great episode for you. Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by CBT For Depression: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Depression.  Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Note: as always nothing on this podcast is ever any sort of official advice. What Is Seasonal Affective Disorder? Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a depressive episode that happens in the autumn and/or winter months and it resolves itself in the summer months when there is more light and the seasons become “happier” and less “depressing”. Although, in the third quarter of 2024, I did cover on the Psychology News Section of the podcast (or maybe I saw an article on it. I forget) that it is possible to get Seasonal Affective Disorder in the summer months and it resolves itself in the winter months. That’s a fascinating idea and I look forward to seeing more research on that aspect of the condition in the coming years. In addition, in the United States of America roughly 5% of the adult population experiences Seasonal Affective Disorder. As well as Sad is believed to be caused by the disruption to a person’s circadian rhythm that is caused by the decreased sunlight exposure that everyone experiences as the days get shorter and the nights get longer. Now I am saying this for information purposes but I do believe in this reason because serotonin and a biological basis for depression has been debunked over the years. Especially by Read and Moncrieff (2022). However, it is apparently believed that this decreased sunlight exposure leads to a decrease in the neurotransmitter serotonin that is important for regulating and stabilising our mood. Moreover, according to Melrose (2015), women are 4 times more likely to experience Seasonal Affective Disorder than men, as well as it tends to first manifest itself in early adulthood, so somewhere between 18 and 30 years old. And at first I thought this finding was strange but in reality it isn’t. Since it turns out that the further you live away from the equator (that have the longest amounts of sunlight), the more prevalent Seasonal Affective Disorder is. For example, according to an article by Horowitz (2008), only 1% of Floridians have Seasonal Affective Disorder but 9% of Alaskans do. In addition, besides from depressed mood, some symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder can include, difficulty in concentrating or thinking, loss of interest in activities, sleeping for long hours (also known as hypersomnia), changes in appetite and lack of energy or feelings of malaise or fatigue. What is The DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria For Seasonal Affective Disorder? From time to time I really like to look at the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for different mental health conditions because it's interesting, insightful and good to be aware of. Not because the DSM is good or even a fine system and it certainly has flaws. Yet it is interesting to think about.  Therefore, when it comes to Seasonal Affective Disorder, the DSM-5 focuses on the lifetime pattern of mood episodes. These mood episodes can be depressive, hypomanic or manic, so feeling extremely good instead of having a depressed mood. As well as when a client has Seasonal manic episodes as part of their Seasonal Affective Disorder, their depression may not regularly occur during a specific time of year. In other words, there might not be anything Seasonal about it.  Also, the DSM makes use of different Criterions that have to be met in order for a diagnosis to be given. For example, Criterion A requires a client to have a regular temporal relationship between the onset of a major depressive, hypomanic or manic episode and a particular time of year, like the autumn or winter, in bipolar disorder type 1 and 2 cases. As well as these don't include cases where there are clear effects of seasonally related psychosocial stressors. For instance, if you aren't employed every winter for some reason.  When it comes to Criterion B, Seasonal Affective Disorder requires a full remission or a change from major depression to hypomania or mania or vice versa at a characteristic time of year. For example, the depression disappears in the summer months. Penultimately, Criterion C requires a client in the past 2 years to show that their manic, hypomanic, or major depressive episodes have a temporal seasonal relationship, as well as no non-seasonal episodes of that polarity have occurred during that 2-year period. In other words, a client needs to show that in the past 2 years, they have experienced a depressive, hypomanic or manic episode that starts in the winter months and goes in the summer months. Finally, Criterion D requires that the number of depressive, hypomanic or manic episodes that happen seasonally outnumber any nonseasonal manic, hypomanic, or depressive episodes that might have happened over their lifetime. That’s it for the Criterions then in terms of signs and symptoms, the DSM-5 requires the major depressive episodes that happen in a seasonal pattern to be often characterised by prominent energy, hypersomnia, weight gain, overeating as well as a craving for carbohydrates. Also, this specifier can be applied to the pattern of major depressive episodes in bipolar I disorder, bipolar II disorder, or major depressive disorder, recurrent. Moreover, the onset and remission of the major depressive episodes that happen as part of Seasonal Affective Disorder happen at characteristic times of the year. This feature we spoke about earlier. What Are Some Treatment Options For SAD Clients? As a result of Seasonal Affective Disorder being related to a lack of sunlight, the condition is typically treated by getting clients to be exposed to more sunlight. Therefore, some clients push themselves to spend time outdoors or move closer to a window facing the sun. Whereas for other clients, SAD is treated using Bright Light Therapy because this gives the client more exposure to “sunlight”. In this situation,  clients are exposed to a full-spectrum fluorescent light box that emits brightness similar to real sunlight. Thankfully, Bright Light Therapy is now recognised as a first-line treatment for Seasonal Affective Disorder   and clients might start to feel an improvement in their symptoms after using the lightbox for only 20 or 60 minutes a day. As well as research shows that lightboxes are most effective when they’re used early in the morning. Another treatment for Seasonal Affective Disorder can be using Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors because this is shown to improve depressive symptoms. Yet again, the issues with this treatment still remain. Especially, because when you combine the published and unpublished data, anti-depressants, SSRIs and more biological treatments for depression are next to useless. Finally, another treatment option for Seasonal Affective Disorder (and this is something else that my friend mentioned too) is that SAD could be caused by a Vitamin D deficiency. Since as humans our vitamin D levels naturally falcate throughout the year depending on the amount of sunlight available to us. Therefore, we normally have to make up for this deficiency through our dietary intake as we cannot produce vitamin D as effectively in the winter as there is less sunlight available to us. As a result, when it comes to treating Seasonal Affective Disorder, good eating habits and/ or Vitamin D supplements are important so clients can make sure to maintain their Vitamin D levels. And ultimately fight against seasonal depression. Clinical Psychology Conclusion Often we focus so much on depression that we tend to forget that other mood disorders exist. That's why I really enjoyed this podcast episode because we got to see that Seasonal Affective Disorder is characterised by depressive, manic or hypomanic episodes starting in the winter months and ending or changing in the summer months for at least the past 2 years.  Also, we got to see that Bright Light Therapy is an effective treatment for SAD. Which to me is oddly hopeful because it just goes to show that interventions for certain conditions don't need to be scary, expensive and time-consuming. SAD can be treated with an affordable Light Therapy lamp and as long as the client does this early in the morning for at least 15 minutes a day then hopefully they should start to see an improvement. And considering most of the interventions we learn about on the podcast take on psychotherapy that takes 3 months at least according to NICE guidelines. Light therapy is a pretty fascinating treatment option and that's why different mental health conditions are great to learn about, because you never know what's going to excite you. For me it was light therapy, for you it might have been completely different.  That's one of the many joys of learning about the fascinating world of mental health.  Don't you agree?   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 CBT For Depression: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Depression.  Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References And Further Reading Bertrand, L., d'Ortho, M. P., Reynaud, E., Lejoyeux, M., Bourgin, P., & Geoffroy, P. A. (2021). Polysomnography in seasonal affective disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, 292, 405-415. Cotterell, D. (2010). Pathogenesis and management of seasonal affective disorder. Progress in Neurology and Psychiatry, 14(5), 18-25. Do, A., Li, V. W., Huang, S., Michalak, E. E., Tam, E. M., Chakrabarty, T., ... & Lam, R. W. (2022). Blue-light therapy for seasonal and non-seasonal depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 67(10), 745-754. Galima, S. V., Vogel, S. R., & Kowalski, A. W. (2020). Seasonal affective disorder: common questions and answers. American family physician, 102(11), 668-672. Horowitz, S. (2008). Shedding light on seasonal affective disorder. Alternative and Complementary Therapies, 14(6), 282-287. Melrose S. (2015). Seasonal Affective Disorder: An Overview of Assessment and Treatment Approaches. Depression research and treatment, 2015, 178564. https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/178564 National Institute of Mental Health. Seasonal Affective Disorder. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/seasonal-affective-disorder Roecklein, K. A., & Wong, P. M. (2020). Seasonal affective disorder. Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine, 1964-1966. Thalén, B. E., Kjellman, B., & Wetterberg, L. (2020). Phototherapy and melatonin in relation to seasonal affective disorder and depression. In Melatonin (pp. 495-511). CRC Press. UGA Today. (2015, January 20.) Vitamin D deficiency, depression linked in study. https://news.uga.edu/vitamin-d-deficiency-depression-linked-in-study/ I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

Whenever a crime happens, a victim has to gather up the courage to go to a police station or dial 999 or 911 and they have to report the crime by making an allegation that a crime has occurred in the first place. Sometimes these allegations are true, other times they are not. When these allegations are not true then this can be deemed as a false allegations, even if the crime did actually happen. Therefore, in this forensic psychology episode, we’ll be exploring what is a false allegation drawing on different research because by knowing what a false allegation actually is. Psychologists can start to understand why people make false allegations as well as why the police and other people deem real allegations to be false. If you enjoy learning what about crime, the criminal justice and criminal psychology then this is a brilliant episode for you. This psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Forensic Psychology Of False Allegations: A Forensic And Criminal Psychology Guide To False Allegations of Rape, Sexual Abuse and More . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Important Note: I just wanted to add that this podcast episode and the associated book that this is an extract from is definitely not to implying that all allegations involving these crimes (like rape, sexual abuse amongst others) are false. This is NOT the message of the book at all and time after time in this book, we are reminded about the true number of how many allegations are real. It is extremely rare for someone to lie about rape and other horrific crimes. What Are False Allegations? (Extract From Forensic Psychology Of False Allegations COPYRIGHT 2024 Connor Whiteley) Kicking off the book and the forensic psychology of false allegations, we need to understand what these actually are before we can explore the psychology behind them. This is even more important when we consider that false allegations aren’t really anything to do with psychology, so why are forensic psychologists still interested? That’s what we’ll explore in this first chapter. Therefore, false allegations are all about miscarriages of justice. Since if a false allegation is made then this does have the potential to lead to a criminal investigation, court and maybe even a conviction based on a false allegation. As you’ll see throughout the book it is rarely that simple but it can happen. As a result, a miscarriage of justice is rather difficult to define, because the easiest definition we’ll be using for this book is when an innocent person gets convicted for a crime they didn’t commit. On the surface that sounds like a perfect definition, and in theory it certainly is, but if we want to apply that definition to the real world then we experience one problem after another. Since whilst a miscarriage of justice is when a court of appeal overturns a conviction (Naugton, 2005). This is important to know because miscarriages of justice are the results of false allegations. But an overturned conviction doesn’t always mean the person was believed to be innocent. A conviction could be overturned due to police mishandling the evidence, a witnessed lied or another of a whole range of factors. Therefore, as you can start to notice, this is more of a legal question than a psychological question but I promise you the link between psychology and miscarriages of justice is coming up soon. On the whole, it is very, very difficult to get a true rate of fake allegations as that depends on the definition being used. For example, a researcher or another person couldn’t use all non-guilty verdicts to imply that a false allegation against the accused has happened. When in reality all a non-guilty verdict means is that it was beyond reasonable doubt that the accused did not commit the crime. Another example that makes the true rate hard to know about is “unfounded claims” were no supporting evidence is found. These are different to false allegations because in false allegations no crime actually happened, but in unfounded claims, an offense could have happened but there is no evidence of it ever happening. This is certainly a reason why I like legal stuff because it is so complex but extremely interesting at the same time. In addition, recanted accusations aren’t evidence that no offense occurred because different people recant their statements for different reasons. Including the reconciliation between partners. As well as this is before we consider the clear difference between false allegations and false convictions. It is these differences that make a true rate of false allegations next to impossible to know. So are false allegations a problem and why should we care? Why We Need To Care About False Allegations? Of all the different types of false allegations, child sexual abuse is one of the most important areas and this is the area where the most false allegations are made. As well as this will be the focus of the book because it is such a heart-breaking, important and unfortunate area of human behaviour. For example, Poole and Lindsay (1998) found that false allegations make up 5%-8% of all child sexual abuse cases and this only includes those cases that involved intentional false allegations. Therefore, because this is only focusing on malicious motives behind the false allegation, this covers up a much, much greater number of child sexual abuse cases. Whereas other studies propose that false allegations make up between 23%-35% of all cases (Howitt, 1992). And I have to admit that yes, at first this might sound very high but if we convert these percentages into real numbers, the numbers get scary. If a police force had, let’s say, 1,000 sexual abuse cases. According to these numbers 230- 350 of these cases would be false, allegations. That would mean a hell of a lot of time, police resources and emotional distress would be wasted. Just because someone decided to make a false allegation. And then my personal pet hate is that those 350 fake cases would cast doubt on the millions of real ones. In addition, it is important to remember that in this book, we will talk about a lot of numbers. But it is critical that we remember that behind each of these numbers there is a ton of trauma, distress and more negative experiences for the child and family. This is even more important when we consider that the consequences of false allegations include a child being removed from home, the father being made to live away from home and imprisoned and even well-intentioned false allegations can take a toll on family life (Howitt, 1992). As well as false denials by victims of abuse can equally as damaging. (Lyon, 1995). Overall, this is why it is of immense interest to psychologists, because someone making a false allegation, that is a human behaviour. Also, the consequences, the emotional trauma and the pain that the child and family experience, they are all human behaviours and considering psychologists are experts on the matter. That is why we are so critical to understanding why this awful facet of human behaviour happens in the first place. But let’s explore more about why are false allegations so problematic for psychologists?   I really hope you enjoyed today’s forensic psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Forensic Psychology Of False Allegations: A Forensic And Criminal Psychology Guide To False Allegations of Rape, Sexual Abuse and More . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Forensic Psychology Reference and Further Reading Whiteley, C. (2024) Forensic Psychology Of False Allegations: A Forensic And Criminal Psychology Guide To False Allegations of Rape, Sexual Abuse and More . CGD Publishing. England. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

By the time this podcast episode goes out a lot of psychology students would be choosing their projects for their dissertation so they can graduate with Honours at the end of their degree, last than a year away. The vast majority of students might have no idea or not simply care what project they pick, but if you can find a project that you’re going to enjoy then it can seriously improve your final year. Therefore, in this episode, you’ll learn how choosing a dissertation project worked at my university, why it’s flat out critical that you pick one you’re going to enjoy and why choosing the right academic to work with is critical as well. If you enjoy learning about university, student life and what it’s like to be a university psychology student then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Third Year Survival Guide: A Psychology Student’s Guide To The Final Year Of Their Undergraduate Degree. CGD Publishing . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Why Is Choosing The Right Psychology Dissertation Project Critical? (Extract From Third Year Survival Guide COPYRIGHT 2024 CONNOR WHITELEY) Ask any university psychology student and they will tell you that the Final Year Project or dissertation, as it is called by some universities, is the most important part of your Final year at university. And as much as I want to say that it flat out isn’t, I can’t. Your Final Year Project might not be as do-or-die as everyone makes out but it is critical and it will form a lot of your final grade for your Final Year. Therefore, deciding on what Final Year Project you want to do is critical because your degree, your happiness and your ability to enjoy the next academic year basically depends on this single decision. In addition, my Final Year Project was a cognitive psychology project (even though I hate cognitive psychology) studying transfer learning in retrieval-based learning tasks using EEG equipment so we could see the neuro-evidence involved in this type of learning for the first time. How Do Students Go About Choosing A Final Year Project? As a result in my experience, the way how choosing a Final Year Project works is that in May or June of your second year at university, you’re emailed a list of projects that you can sign up for. This list includes all the projects that the psychology academics at your university are offering. You can look at this list and find out the project title, description, name and how many people can apply for the topic. This is where my first insider tip comes from. If you have a particular academic in mind that you want to work with, definitely email them before this list is published and they might hold a space for you until you can officially apply through the list. As whenever a person signs up through this list, the student’s information gets passed onto the academic so they can sort through the applications. This is why you normally have to email the academic as well so they can hear why you’re interested in the project and want to work with them. Yes, at times choosing a Final Year Project really is like a job application. Anyway, after you’ve looked at this list, you need to decide what project you want to apply for. You might want to apply for a couple in case one of them gets oversubscribed but just follow your own university’s advice about this part of the process. However, when choosing your Final Year Project I cannot stress these factors enough when making your decision. Why Is Choosing The Right Academic Important? Every single year without fail I hear horror stories about students having a nightmare with their academic supervisor because of how busy and useless they are. The entire point of an academic supervisor is to help you, be there to answer questions and have meetings with you so you can do your best. That all depends on the supervisor themselves. This year I know a ton of students that were struggling with their Final Year Project because they couldn’t get a meeting with their supervisor, their supervisor was rubbish at answering questions and students just had one problem after another with their supervisor. How do you solve this? Obviously by choosing a good supervisor, but if you’re in your second year at university and you happen to run into some psychology third-years, definitely ask them about their supervisor and any horror stories they’ve heard. You need this information so you can make an informed decision about what to do and who to pick as your supervisor. Also, I want to mention that even the most boring-sounding project can be made brilliant by a great supervisor. For example, I have no interest at all in cognitive psychology and yet, I loved my Final Year Project because of the supervisor and his PhD student. Your supervisor really can be the difference between a terrible Final Year Project and a great one. At least in terms of how much you enjoy it. Finally, I should just say from what I’ve heard about supervisors from my friends this year. Avoid Heads of School because they always tend to be extremely busy and don’t have time for Final Year Project students and the questions they want to ask. Even though they would call me a liar, my friends would agree with me. Why The Project Itself Is So Important? I really doubt this would be a major surprise to you but choosing the right Final Year Project itself is so critical. Let me just explain why in a very scary sentence. You will be spending the next academic year of your life researching this topic. Do you really want to be researching something you hate for the next year? Of course not. You would hate that, your happiness would die and you would just hate your life. I don’t want that for you. Therefore, you either need to choose a project that you naturally love, or you need to choose a project with a brilliant supervisor. That will make the next year so much better for you. Personally, I decided on the latter because for my Final Year Project, I naturally would have loved a forensic or clinical psychology topic since these are the areas I love in psychology. Yet I don’t like change, I wanted to be more social and I knew my supervisor from my placement year was brilliant and he did socials. That’s important for something I’ll talk about later on. Therefore, I decided to ado a Final Year Project with my placement supervisor because I knew how great he was, there would be socials and I knew I would have a lot of fun. Also, I really wanted to experiment with EEG equipment so I choose that Final Year Project so I could use a certain type of equipment. Overall, whenever it comes to choosing a Final Year Project, only you know what will make you happy, make you passionate and make you look forward to the year ahead. That is what a Final Year Project is all about. You will be researching your Project for the next year and if you choose a project without thinking about it and what would make you happy then you might regret it. I’ve heard a lot of stories this year about students that have hated their Final Year Projects. I don’t want you to be one of them. Therefore, please just think about your Final Year Project, consider what would make you happy and consider who you want your supervisor to be. All those factors are critical and might very well be the difference between a great Final Year and one that you hate.   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 Third Year Survival Guide: A Psychology Student’s Guide To The Final Year Of Their Undergraduate Degree. CGD Publishing . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. University Student Life Reference Whiteley. C. (2024) Third Year Survival Guide: A Psychology Student’s Guide To The Final Year Of Their Undergraduate Degree. CGD Publishing . England. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.