All of us have had experiences of bad leadership. This might involve a bad team leader at work, a poor leader in a group project or poor leadership within an organisation. Equally, the vast majority of us have had amazing leaders who we enjoy working with, we develop a positive relationship with and they bring the best out in us. This leads us to question what actually is the difference between a bad leader and a good leader. Emotional intelligence is one explanation. Therefore, in this business psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what is emotional intelligence, how does emotional intelligence make better leaders and how this knowledge can be used by aspiring and qualified psychologists alike. If you enjoy learning about applied psychology, the psychology of leadership and more, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Personality Psychology and Individual Differences. 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 Emotional Intelligence? Applying It to Leadership In the next section, I’ll explain why learning about emotional intelligence as well as leadership is important for aspiring and qualified psychologists, but until then we need to understand the topic first of all. Therefore, emotional intelligence is a term popularised by the author and psychologist Daniel Goleman who described emotional intelligence as our capacity to control, express and be aware of emotions. This is important in leadership because emotional intelligence allows leaders to empathetically handle interpersonal relationships and with good judgement. In other words, emotional intelligence means leaders can actually connect with their employees on an emotional level and this is why emotional intelligence is flat out critical for effective leadership. Since an emotionally intelligent leader can make you feel like you matter, you’re valued and this improves your engagement at work and your productivity. Another important reason why emotional intelligence matters in the workplace is because emotions are everywhere. There isn’t a single job in the world that doesn’t involve effort and burnout, achievement as well as failure, conflict and relationships, uncertainty and change, and interactions with peers. This is even more important in mental health and educational settings, because we are constantly interacting with other professionals, clients with mental health difficulties and concerned parents and carers. If an aspiring or qualified psychologist or mental health professional doesn’t have emotional intelligence, then they will inevitably harm these relationships. Then this has a knock-on effect for treatment engagement and the wider client and organisational social network. In addition, if a leader or a peer, to be honest, lacks emotional intelligence then the psychologists and other mental health professionals aren’t going to feel valued, appreciated or respected. This could decrease their mental health and increase rates of burnout, and decrease effort. Again, this has implications for the wider social network and organisation as a whole. On a personal note, whilst I will go into more depth later in this episode, one of the reasons why I flat out loved working at the University of Kent in their Outreach and Widening Participation department was because of the leadership. The Outreach staff were technically our leaders and bosses, but they were respectful, kind and we could connect with them on an emotional level. Sometimes, within professional boundaries, it felt more like they were our friends than our bosses and that was helpful. It made us feel appreciated and valued so we wanted to keep working, give Outreach our all and we wanted to do our best for the students who were taking part in our events If we apply emotional intelligence specifically to leadership, then we understand that whenever an organisation undergoes a period of massive change or disruption, then leaders need employees more than ever to help them make it through the difficult time. For instance, a rival company might be taking the majority of customers away from an organisation, an organisation might be involved in a scandal or an organisation might have to unfortunately deal with the fallout of someone abruptly leaving or passing away. Whenever an organisation enters a difficult time, they depend on employees to help them. The employees might need to share ideas, step up and take on new responsibilities or take on extra work for a limited time. The reason why this specifically connects to emotional intelligence as well as leadership is because a leader with emotional intelligence helps to engage employees, helps them to feel valued and cared for and the employees are happier in the workplace. This means that employees are happy to step up, share ideas and go the extra mile for the organisation. Whereas disengaged workers who work for a leader without emotional intelligence will not want to help the organisation and the organisation can suffer as a result. Personally, the pandemic is a great example of this, because when COVID-19 forced schools and everyone else to shut down and stay at home, Outreach had to seriously pivot. If we wanted to help students, inspire them and continue to get our funding, then our Outreach work needed to continue. Now, because the Outreach staff were great leaders with really good emotional intelligence, us Ambassadors were more than willing to help out. We were still willing to sign up for work opportunities, give Outreach our all and help them pivot rapidly. This allowed our Outreach work to continue, thrive and it meant we still helped a lot of great students. That is the power of leading with emotional intelligence. How Does Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Apply to Psychologists? The main reason why I want to talk about this on a psychology podcast that is mainly designed for aspiring and qualified psychologists is because leadership is a part of our working life, as well as our external interests. Whether you’re a psychology student, psychology graduate or a qualified psychologist, you will need leadership at some point. For instance, as a psychology student, you will have to undergo the awful task of group projects at some point in your degree. Even though I enjoy teamwork and I can work very effectively with a team or on my own, group projects still fill me with dread. Anyway, when you’re in a group project for your psychology degree, the question becomes simple. How do you want people to remember you? If you want people to remember you at all, then a lot of this comes down to leadership. If you accidentally or on purpose take the lead then you need to consider if you want to be remembered as a great group project leader who people are very happy and eager to work with again. Or do you want to be remembered as someone who was awful and the worst possible leader? Probably not the latter. Learning about emotional intelligence and leadership can help you. In addition, if you’re a good leader at university for a group project, it is very likely that you’re going to make some connections. These connections might give you extra people to turn to when you get stuck on a particular psychology topic, it might make you some new friends and new opportunities. A group of friends might be talking with a lecturer, a new opportunity is mentioned and someone remembers you and your interests because you were a great person (also known as a great leader) when they worked with you. You really never know where an act of kindness might lead you. Building upon this, if you’re an aspiring psychologist, you might be working in an educational setting or a mental health setting to get some experience. You might naturally create a leadership position for yourself within your little team where you become well-liked, people listen to you or you might be included in a project, and again, you might develop a leadership role for yourself. Now, I use this framing because this is what I accidentally do a lot in my work or whenever I’m in a group that I’m passionate about. I use my soft skills and my emotional intelligence to make connections, forge working relationships and before I realise it, I end up having authority within the social group. Wow. I’ve actually only just realised how true that is. Interesting. If you have emotional intelligence and if you’re able to forge those effective working relationships with your team, your group and your clients, then other mental health professionals and management might notice you. This might lead to other opportunities that can help you get ahead on your psychology journey. Penultimately, before I mention how this can help qualified psychologists, I want to add that learning about emotional intelligence and leadership can help you develop the skills needed to get a job. Whether this is a mental health-related job or another job that pays the bills whilst you’re developing the clinical and research experience needed to get onto the Doctorate of Clinical or Educational Psychology. For instance, one of the ways how I’m developing my mental health communication, leadership and advocacy skills (since you need to remember that being a clinical psychologist is way more than a therapist) is being involved in the campaign and policy work of my local political party. Soon, I’ll hopefully be confirmed as the Campaigns Officer and my emotional intelligence is a good explanation as to why I’ve been able to lead a by-election campaign, organise volunteers and other campaigning events. As well as working with people, helping them to feel valued and appreciated amongst other areas of emotional intelligence has helped me develop the relationships that make people want to elect me as Campaigns Officer. In terms of yourself, if you nurture your emotional intelligence and apply it to leadership, then it will help you make those relationships, those opportunities and hopefully it will help you to advance your psychology career as a result. Even if this is a non-traditional way. Finally, if you’re a qualified psychologist, you might be in charge of a team. This team might be a multi-disciplinary team, a group of trainee clinical psychologists or assistant psychologists. Again, there are some questions for you to answer. How do you want your team to remember you? As well as how effective do you want your team to be? If you want your team to praise you, be engaged with the work and work to the best they possibly can, then emotional intelligence is badly needed on your part. As well as emotional intelligence would allow you to bring out the best in your team so they can work better and thrive. Ultimately, this helps you to look even better to senior management. Maybe you’ll get an extra promotion out of it too. What is Emotional Intelligence Made Up Of? Now that we know why emotional intelligence and leadership are helpful to each other and to qualified and aspiring psychologists, we need to understand emotional intelligence in more depth. This will allow us to learn how to nurture and improve our own emotional intelligence so we can become better leaders. Emotional Intelligence and Self-Management As a result, emotional intelligence is made up of four components. Firstly, you have self-management. This is your ability to control both negative as well as positive impulses and emotions. Also, you’re adaptive and flexible as the situation changes. This is useful for aspiring and qualified psychologists because you need to be able to be flexible and adaptive and control your emotions. Since you might have a plan for a therapy session or a group session and then the client comes in and throws you a curveball. They might reveal that they attempted suicide, there was a death in the family or another factor entirely. When this happens, your reactions are critical and self-management skills can make all the difference in this situation. If you want to learn more about this topic, please check out my book: Healing As A Survivor where I discuss how not to respond to a client’s suicide revelation and what to do instead. An example of my self-management as a leader is that on campaign events, there can be problems or comments or individuals that bug you. Yet I don’t allow myself to show the frustration or my annoyance because that wouldn’t be helpful in that situation. Instead, I allow myself to feel my positive and negative emotions on the inside and on the outside, I focus on finding a solution and I help people. Emotional Intelligence and Self-Awareness Secondly, you have self-awareness. Now, self-awareness is always a concept that makes me smile because when I was at university during my Masters, I lived with an emotional abuser. One of the ways how they repetitively and consistently abused me was saying that I had no self-awareness and I hurt everyone around me, even though that isn’t true in the slightest. Anyway, self-awareness is your ability to know your own strengths, weaknesses, emotions and recognise their impact on your relationships and performance. For psychologists, self-awareness is really important because you need to understand what you know, what you don’t know and what support you might need to develop your clinical skills. If you don’t have self-awareness then it’s going to take you longer to learn what you need and fill your knowledge gaps so you can hopefully get onto the doctorate. Personally, I know that I am great at organisation, being productive and getting stuff done to a deadline. Those are some of my top strengths. Yet I also acknowledge that my stuttering is a barrier and it is a weakness because of how others perceive me as a result. If I’m talking to new people, and these conversations are important, and I stutter, then the person I’m talking to will likely think that I’m less intelligent and they will be less likely to listen to my message. This means even though I know exactly what I want to say, my stuttering puts my work at a disadvantage. Therefore, it can be helpful to acknowledge that other people are way, way better at this than me, and I thank those people for it. They have strengths and weaknesses that I don’t have, and vice versa. Emotional Intelligence and Relationship Management Thirdly, you have relationship management. This is your ability to inspire people through persuasive communication, building bonds, motivation as well as disarming conflict amongst individuals. At first, I think this is a difficult concept to apply for psychologists but if you think about it, aspiring and qualified psychologists are constantly inspiring others through persuasive communication, building bonds and motivating others. We might be trying to subtly motivate a client to change their life for the better, we might be motivating our mental health service to embrace a new approach and you need to develop those professional relationships with other professionals so they can help you when you need it. As much as I love psychology and I think it is the best profession ever, it doesn’t have all the answers. Personally, this is an area that I need to work on to some extent. Since I am really good at building relationships, talking to people and inspiring them so they become motivated. I am good at that, but I am less effective at disarming conflict amongst individuals. This is something that I need to work on. Thankfully, I have a support network around me that is very good at disarming conflict amongst individuals. Emotional Intelligence and Social Awareness Finally, emotional intelligence is made up of social awareness. This means that you have an ability to navigate politically, network proactively and have empathy for others. Social awareness should be the bread-and-butter of aspiring and qualified psychologists because we always need to be approaching clients with empathy, we need to navigate the therapeutic alliance and we need to network with other professionals and our team proactively. This will help us to get noticed, learn more information and hopefully these new bonds and networks will provide us with new opportunities. Opportunities that will help us advance our psychology journey. In terms of my leadership experience, I proactively network with new members because I want to know their interests, what their concerns are and what I might need to do to help them feel more comfortable about engaging in campaigning activities. Also, I respond to these concerns with validation, empathy and compassion because six months ago, I was right where they are. Emotions as Functions in Emotional Intelligence Additionally, it’s important that leaders understand that all emotion serves a function for an individual and ourselves. Since positive emotions broaden ourselves because they allow us to create psychological capital, build new skills, undo negative emotions, improve our thinking and they support our resilience. Whereas negative emotions narrow our behaviour because they call attention to an issue, they’re an indicator of potential threats and negative emotions can help us to learn about threats. We can apply this knowledge because there will be times when negative emotions are evoked in someone because something or someone has pressed a “hot button” for them. These are situations or people that might frustrate or irritate you enough to engage in conflict as well as produce destructive responses. The more irritated a person or situation makes you, the more intense the negative emotions that you will experience automatically. When this happens, it’s important that leaders are able to lead through conflict and this is where emotional intelligence comes in. Instead of allowing the conflict to build and build and negatively impact the engagement of the employees, emotional intelligence allows a leader to effectively deal with the conflict without harming engagement and productivity. Personally, whether you’ve worked in mental health or educational settings, I think we’ve all seen these different situations play out. I remember in different educational settings that I’ve worked in over the years, there were managers and leaders who could effectively disarm conflict in such an artful way that it was almost inspiring. Then I’ve seen plenty of leaders who were so annoying, inconsiderate and frustrating that you became disengaged because you hated the leaders with an utter passion. I will always remember those leaders in a negative way because of their lack of emotional intelligence. Don’t be like them. How Do You Increase Your Emotional Intelligence as a Leader? If you want to become a better leader and use emotional intelligence to improve engagement and productivity amongst your employees (or peers if you’re an aspiring or qualified psychologist), then there are four ways to be more empathetic and more emotionally intelligent. Build Emotional Intelligence by Connecting with Others On a Personal Level Firstly, you need to connect with people on a personal level because when you show people and your employees that you’re willing to help them and you recognise their efforts, then you are leading with emotional intelligence. Also, this helps your employees to understand that you care about them as people, not just workers and a means to an end. It is the very act of caring that helps to build respect and trust between employees and their leaders. This connects to empathy because research shows that successful leaders are able to show caring, kindness and be more “person-focused” because this helps the leader to work with a variety of people from different teams, cultures, countries and departments. As an aspiring or qualified psychologist, you can use this trick very easily. Just talk to your peers from different teams, departments and be interested in them. I know in the United Kingdom when we ask someone “how are you”, we don’t really mean it. It is simply something we say. Instead, let’s mean it, let’s actually show an interest in people’s lives and let’s start working with the people at work so we can start developing these trusting and respectful relationships that allow us to proactively network and disarm conflicts. Personally, one of the ways how I do this in campaigning is if I haven’t seen someone or spoken to them for a while, then I message them. I see how they are, I respond to what they say and I actually show an interest in them, and I talk about my own life too. Just by connecting with people on a personal level, I’m able to develop my relationships and lead with emotional intelligence. Then this helps people to become engaged in our work and they keep showing up to events and branch activities too. Build Emotional Intelligence by Understanding More About Yourself and Others Secondly, to be more emotionally intelligent, you need to understand more about yourself and others. This connects to the self-awareness point that we discussed earlier. Since leading with emotional intelligence means that you need to harness the power of your employees’ diverse range of experiences, as well as consider how your employees’ lived experiences can help the team achieve their full potential. As well as if you show a willingness to listen and consider how their lived experience and background informs their perspective without judging them helps the employee to feel listened to and valued. Of course, there will be times when a given employee doesn’t make it easy to get to know them below the surface, and there are also times when it’s really challenging to see the world as other people do. As well as you also need to be aware of your own emotional triggers. Yet it’s important that you do so in a nonjudgmental way because a leader’s effectiveness can be amplified or reduced by the way they understand themselves, their awareness of how others view them and how they navigate the resulting interaction. On the whole, by increasing your self-awareness, you’re helping yourself to improve your leadership effectiveness and your emotional intelligence. On paper, you might think that this skill of being nonjudgmental and allowing others to talk about their lived experience would be really easy. To a lot of people it might be, but for others it won’t be and that’s okay. You can think of this skill as practice for being a therapist, a clinical psychologist or whatever type of mental health professional you want to be. Believe me, I know some people who have a very shocking way of viewing the world and it will make you have a reaction, but that isn’t always a bad thing. It helps you develop your skills a little more, and it can give you a story to laugh about later on. Conspiracy theorists are the best ones. Build Emotional Intelligence by Active Listening The past two points can be boiled down into active listening skills because emotional intelligence requires you to try and see the world as other people do. This means that you really need to listen to and consider what your employees are telling you. This requires you to keep an open mind and create a sense of psychological safety at work and a space of safety too. Moreover, a good leader works to understand the employee’s feelings and they reflect them back to the person so you listen and pay close attention to the emotions as well as values behind the facts. Then you communicate your understanding of the employee’s feelings to make sure their values and feelings are really understood. For aspiring and qualified mental health professionals, you can think about this technique for improving emotional intelligence as something that we do in our profession. We need to ensure that we listen to, support and understand where a client is coming from. Especially when it comes to their maladaptive coping mechanisms. For example, if a client is self-harming, then on the face of it, it’s weird, strange and illogical. We cannot say that to a client because it would drive a wedge between us and it would destroy the therapeutic alliance. Yet if we listen to the client and understand the thoughts and feelings behind the maladaptive behaviour, then we can gently challenge the client using our techniques and tricks. Hopefully helping the client to stop self-harming whilst we maintain the therapeutic alliance at the same time. In other words, we’re already used to listening to and understanding others, so let’s apply this knowledge to our leadership to become more emotionally intelligent. Build Emotional Intelligence by Unlocking Motivation A final way to lead with emotional intelligence is by unlocking your team’s motivation, because we know that company benefits and their wage are not the only factors that matter in employee engagement as well as productivity. Employees need to be motivated too. Therefore, emotional intelligence allows you to connect with your employees so you can understand what motivates them, and when you really listen to their responses then this helps you to tailor your way of working and your messaging so you can tap into these motivations to boost employee engagement. Then this has a knock-on effect in improving staff retention and increasing job satisfaction too. If we apply this concept to aspiring and qualified psychologists, you can build your emotional intelligence and your leadership effectiveness by listening to the motivations of those around you. For example, if you’re a clinical psychologist and you get a new group of trainees to supervise, understanding their motivations for becoming clinical psychologists can help you build your relationship with them, boost their engagement and you can reframe your leadership so it becomes more inspiring and motivational to these trainees. On a personal note, as a campaigning volunteer, a wage isn’t a motivator for me. What drives me is my motivation to improve my local area, help people and make a real difference. Since my local political party focuses on these motivators and this messaging, it spoke to me and motivated me to become more engaged and productive within the local party. Business Psychology Conclusion It might be rare that we look at business psychology topics on The Psychology World Podcast but I always enjoy it when we do. It’s fun, interesting and I enjoy applying this research and these concepts to our profession and my own life. Therefore, the grand benefit of leading with emotional intelligence is that it helps to create a stronger organisational culture that helps to make all conversations, regardless of how difficult they are, more productive, respectful and honest. As well as everyone within the organisation feels a sense of ownership and belonging. As a result, at the end of this podcast episode, it’s important that we all reflect on our strengths, weaknesses and how we can become more emotionally intelligent so we can build more respectful, productive and better relationships with ourselves and others. Hopefully leading to bigger and better things for all of us. I really hope you enjoyed today’s business psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Personality Psychology and Individual Differences. 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. Business Psychology References and Further Reading Coronado-Maldonado, I., & Benítez-Márquez, M. D. (2023). Emotional intelligence, leadership, and work teams: A hybrid literature review. Heliyon, 9(10). Dwivedi, D. (2025). Emotional intelligence and artificial intelligence integration strategies for leadership excellence. Advances in Research, 26(1), 84-94. Gerhardt, K., Bauwens, R., & van Woerkom, M. (2026). Emotional intelligence and leader outcomes: A comprehensive review and roadmap for future inquiry. Human Resource Development Review, 25(1), 29-79. Gómez-Leal, R., Holzer, A. A., Bradley, C., Fernández-Berrocal, P., & Patti, J. (2022). The relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership in school leaders: A systematic review. Cambridge Journal of Education, 52(1), 1-21. https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/emotional-intelligence-and-leadership-effectiveness/ Prummer, K., Human-Vogel, S., Graham, M. A., & Pittich, D. (2024, June). The role of mentoring in developing leaders’ emotional intelligence: exploring mentoring types, emotional intelligence, organizational factors, and gender. In Frontiers in Education (Vol. 9, p. 1393660). Frontiers Media SA. Saha, S., Das, R., Lim, W. M., Kumar, S., Malik, A., & Chillakuri, B. (2023). Emotional intelligence and leadership: insights for leading by feeling in the future of work. International Journal of Manpower, 44(4), 671-701. 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 the constant march forward of artificial intelligence and its continuing impact on our lives, we have to question how it will impact clinical psychology. In this psychology podcast episode, I provide a potential answer because I reflect on an experiment that I took part in during my Masters of Science. If you’re interested in cyberpsychology, the future of mental health training and careers in psychology, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Beyond The Lecture Volume 8: 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. Could AI Avatars Be Used in Clinical Psychology? I mean this as a joke but one of the issues with being very popular amongst the lecturers at my university is that I can be walking round the psychology building whilst working as a Student Ambassador, then I can run into a lecturer and suddenly be recruited for a fun psychology study. Normally, Masters students never have to partake in research studies but this one sounded fun, the Masters students needed clinical people for their sample and I am always happy to help others. In Clinical Psychology Reflections Volume 7, I wrote about my experience with the first part of this study looking at how an artificial intelligence chatbot was pretending to be a client with depression and anxiety. Then I had to interact with the chatbot in a mock psychological assessment situation. In that reflection, I wrote about the strengths and weaknesses of the chatbot and whether I believed it should be used or not in future clinical psychology training. Today I had the second part of the study that used a similar structure in terms of I had to conduct a mock psychological assessment with a man with depression and anxiety. Yet this time, the artificial intelligence was a scarily realistic avatar that looked exactly like a real person. For me, it is just scary how realistic AI is these days and how you can create a real-looking person that I wouldn’t be able to tell was artificial intelligence with the press of only a few buttons. For the next ten minutes, I needed to follow the CBT cross-sectional formulation design to help me gather information for my psychological assessment. I asked him about his home situation, his thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and suicide, alcohol and substance abuse risk. As well as whether there were any situations that triggered his low mood or anxiety the most. Another piece of context for the client is that he was an architecture student from an unknown country, and part of his mental health difficulties is that he is struggling to adapt to student life in the UK because he feels lonely. One of the first issues with the AI avatar is that when I asked him about his home culture he couldn’t answer. He only told me about “back home” and “when I moved here”. I asked in different ways because I understand in the real world, a client might feel ashamed or concerned about revealing their home country. The AI avatar still didn’t answer so I feel like this was a critical part of background information that I was missing. As well as depending on where the client was from, their home culture probably would have impacted my questions and my ideas for future psychological treatment. After the ten minutes were up, the researcher came back into the room and she asked me a bunch of open-ended questions about the ethics, advantages and disadvantages of the AI avatar, how I thought it could be improved and so on. What Are The Positives Of The AI Avatar? It turns out there are advantages to having an AI Avatar help you in clinical training. I found it helpful that the AI Avatar looked scarily realistic and his responses were very similar and genuinely how I believe a person with depression would respond to my questions. I’ve given very similar answers in the past, especially during my counselling assessment for my specialist rape counselling when I was experiencing mild depression. That turned into severe depression a month later. Therefore, it’s useful to have a realistic AI Avatar for trainee clinical psychologists because it allows them to practice clinical skills in a situation similar to the real world. A situation where they would need to carefully word questions, react to what the client was saying and monitor body language. I’ll talk more about body language in the disadvantages section. In addition, having an AI Avatar could be very useful in clinical training because it means you have to think on your feet. Since the AI Avatar is right there in front of you, you need to think about your responses, practice your active listening skills by showing that you understand what they said and you need to follow up on from their response. Yet unlike the AI chatbot, you actually need to do this quickly like you would in the real world otherwise you get into awkward silences. Even though in the real world, silence isn’t always a bad thing. On the whole, an AI Avatar might be useful for helping clinical trainees to develop these interpersonal and response skills. Building upon this advantage, a benefit of the AI Avatar over the chatbot is because I was typing with the chatbot, after a while, I wasn’t thoughtful about what I asked and I just asked it. I didn’t care about my wording or my phrasing because typing just isn’t realistic, it’s boring and it was taking a long time to type a response to what the client had just said and my next question. Nonetheless, when it came to the AI Avatar, I was finding myself being a lot more thoughtful about what I asked because the “client” was right in front of me, blinking and smiling at me. I had to act as if this was a very real client and I was speaking so it was easier to practise those active listening skills and phrasing my questions in a kind and compassionate way. Granted, I will be the first to admit that I need to improve this skill. I am not great at knowing how to phrase my questions in certain ways. Leading me onto my last point, by using the AI Avatar, I was able to identify some areas for improvement. For example, I need to practice wording my questions and responses in a careful and considered manner so I don’t offend future clients and risk damaging the therapeutic alliance. On the whole, I think there are several advantages of an AI Avatar being used in clinical training. For example, AI Avatars can be useful because they look and give realistic responses that can help trainee psychologists get in more practice outside of their placements. This will allow them to improve their clinical skills even more. In addition, AI Avatars can help trainee psychologists to identify areas for improvement, think more carefully about their responses amongst other benefits. What Are The Negatives of The AI Avatar? I’ve already mentioned how I didn’t like that the “client” didn’t know where they were from and some of the background information was missing. Yet there were other issues too. For example, I felt that a major issue of the AI avatar was that he looked real, his words were similar to those of a depressed person, but his body language was completely wrong for a depressed or anxious person. Of course, you could argue that the client with depression was feeling good that day, that he was putting on a brave face and he was trying to trick me as a clinical psychologist that he was doing better than he was. This is possible in the real-world, especially if a client doesn’t want to be there and doesn’t want psychological support. This AI Avatar wasn’t doing that. If he was trying to fake his reactions then I ask you the following questions: · Why was he giving me responses about his presenting problems and other factors that reflect depression in the real-world? · Why was he encouraging us to solve certain difficulties in therapy sessions? · Why didn’t he mention he was here at someone else’s request? Therefore, I really didn’t like how the AI avatar didn’t act or show body language similar to that of someone with depression. They didn’t look sad, they didn’t look nervous and they didn’t show that every movement or action was taking a lot of effort. If the AI avatar had severe depression like it was trying to convince me then he would have showed these behaviours. Moreover, this is important to note because in a real-life psychological assessment, a psychologist would be reading and making notes of the client’s body language. At the moment, I’m doing an essay assignment where I need to create a psychological treatment programme based on a letter with the results of this client’s psychological assessment. The very first section of this letter is about the client’s body language during the assessment. If the AI Avatar does not use body language, how am I meant to improve my ability to read and understand client body language? I can’t. In addition, when I compare the AI Avatar to the AI chatbot I mentioned in the first part of the study, at least the chatbot mentioned what the client was doing when I asked questions. The chatbot mentioned how the client was picking at a loose piece of their hoodie sleeve, they were biting their lower lip and they were showing other signs of body language. Surely it is easier for an AI Avatar to show body language, so why didn’t it? (besides it not being programmed too). Another minor issue along the same lines is the tone of voice was slightly wrong, and the small smile the AI Avatar always had was very off-putting. It seemed wrong that the AI Avatar was always smiling even when he was telling me about his depression, how low he felt and how he had considered suicide a few times. It wasn’t realistic in that regard and it was really, really off-putting. Therefore, I would highly recommend that if AI Avatars are going to be used in future clinical psychology training then they need to, at the very least, sound like they have depression, sound like they have low mood and they need to not smile as much. When I was severely depressed in the latter half of 2024, I was not smiling too much, you could hear the depression in my voice and I was not always even remotely happy. These AI Avatars are, and it just doesn’t match up with what the AI Avatar is saying. Finally, besides from being a little repetitive because sometimes regardless of the question I asked, he gave me very similar answers to previous questions so I wasn’t always able to get the information I needed for my psychology assessment. One issue I didn’t have with the AI Avatar was that he was meant to be experiencing depression and anxiety, he got the depression, he didn’t get the anxiety. He didn’t tell me about having sweaty hands, feeling panicked and overwhelmed and he didn’t tell me about any situations that he felt anxious in. As a result, this leads me to one of the disadvantages I mentioned to the researcher, I do not think that AI Avatars will be useful in training clinical psychologists to support those with more “complex” mental health conditions. For example, psychosis, those with personality disorders, trauma responses and those with hallucinations and delusions. If an AI Avatar that is meant to show depression and anxiety can only show one condition that we know a lot about, then I am concerned how an AI Avatar will manage to accurately represent a more complex condition. Since if we take obsessive-compulsive disorder for example, it is not only handwashing and being clean. OCD can encompass a lot more. Here is a small extract from an episode of The Psychology World Podcast focusing on OCD: “DSM-5 includes other information in the diagnostic criteria. For example, the obsessions or compulsions take up more than one hour a day, cause impairment for the person and/ or they cause clinically significant levels of distress. Then there is the typical DSM-5 caveat that Obsessive Compulsive Disorder needs to be the best explanation for what the client is experiencing and their symptoms cannot be better explained by another mental health or medical condition or a substance. When it comes to the obsessions themselves, the specific details of them can vary wildly between different people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. They can include thoughts round contamination, a desire for order or they can be taboo thoughts around harm to themselves or others, sex and/ or religion.” As you can see, there is a lot of variation in OCD so I think it would be very difficult to accurately programme an AI Avatar to show this range of behaviours. Then I think it is “dangerous” or “unhelpful” to our future clients if we train trainee psychologists with an Avatar that reinforces and only shows stereotypes. Just a thought. Would I Recommend The AI Avatar For Clinical Training? Personally, with the rise of artificial intelligence and how it is impacting more aspects of our lives. I strongly believe that at some point artificial intelligence will be a part of clinical psychology whether we like it or not. I already talked about artificial intelligence and chatbots to some extent in clinical psychology because of mental health apps in my book Could Apps Improve Our Mental Health? However, when it comes to whether I would recommend AI Avatars in clinical training. I would say not at this current moment in time but in the future, I think there is definitely a place for AI Avatars. I can see AI Avatars being very useful in the beginning of clinical training because it will help trainees develop and extra practise in those core competencies that they will be using every single day with clients. They’ll be able to practise their active listening, communication and relationship-building skills with the AI Avatars. Also, AI Avatars will be useful because instead of trainees only being able to practise these skills with real-world clients during business hours. Trainees will be able to practise whenever they want. However, these AI Avatars are not perfect and they have limited uses at the moment. Before I highly recommend these avatars for clinical training, they need to be more realistic in the terms of body language and voice tone so trainees can develop their body language monitoring skills too. In addition, the AI Avatars need more background information, especially if they are meant to be someone who has recently moved to the region or country because their culture of origin could be critical to understanding the social factors underpinning their mental health condition. Then there are other disadvantages too that I mentioned earlier in the chapter. I think there is a place for AI Avatars and there is great potential for this technology in training so our trainees can become even better at helping our amazing clients. I just don’t think we’re there yet. What do you think? I hope you enjoyed today’s cognitive psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Beyond The Lecture Volume 8: 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. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology Reference and Further Reading Whiteley, C. (2026) Beyond The Lecture Volume 8: Thoughts on Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy. England. CGD Publishing. 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.

Episode 400 of The Psychology World Podcast is finally here. I couldn't have done it without you wonderful listeners and readers, and I'm immensely grateful to all of you. I'm really proud that we've made it to this moment. Granted, I have to admit that coming up with the idea for episode 400 was really tough because I didn't want to do another lessons learnt episode from 400 episodes and I didn't want to comment on my psychology journey as I've done that already throughout the past one hundred episodes. Therefore, I decided to focus on a guilty pleasure and a psychology topic that would make me really happy, and I wouldn't think about viewer numbers. As a result in this cognitive psychology podcast, you'll learn about the psychology of music. Including how music impacts our thoughts, feelings and behaviour and so much more. If you've ever wondered about the psychological processes behind our enjoyment of music, then this will be a great episode for you. Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Biological Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What is Music Psychology? Originally, I first heard of music psychology back in 2018 when I was looking for universities to apply to because at the University of Kent, there was a psychology of music module available for you to take in your final year. By the time I got to my final year, the module was no longer available and I likely wouldn't have taken it anyway. Yet I remember at the time, thinking how fascinating it was that we could study music and understand how it impacts our behaviour. As a result, music psychology is the empirical study of how music impacts human behaviour, cognition as well as our emotions. Music psychology isn't only about understanding why we like music and our music tastes, but it's about understanding everything that goes into the musical experience too. For example, how the auditory system transforms sound into something we can psychologically experience, how this leads to an emotional response and how music can transport us across time to different memories and places. For myself and everyone else, there are some songs that will always transport us to the past or they represent a certain moment in our past. For instance, the song "I Will Survive" will always remind me of my teenage years and how I just needed to survive no matter what. Equally, the song reminds me of a certain karaoke situation on an international camping trip. Another example is the Abba song "The Winner Takes it All," reminds me of my mental breakdown in 2023 because of some lyrics and the emotions it evokes in me. Music psychology helps us to understand why these happen in the first place. And personally, I am very happy that music psychology doesn't primarily focus on why we like music because I don't think it's possible to explain my "varied" music tastes. For instance, as part of my handful of signs of ADHD (because I don't meet the criteria for a diagnosis) I hate silence and when I'm working I always have to have some background noise. The songs I listen to include a lot of Japanese songs from the intros of animes, a lot of instrumentals and epic-themed songs, even more English covers of these intros from animes but I also like Abba and other English songs. Teddy Swims is also good. I would like to see an explanation of why I like such a range of songs, but largely the reason why I love the songs from the boys' love anime Given is because of the emotional lyrics. Anyway, the field of music psychology is a lot older than people think because it can actually be traced back to Ancient Greece. Ancient Greek philosophers wrote about how music impacts a person's moral reasoning as well as character. If we jump forward to 1863, then Hermann von Helmholtz published his landmark academic work on the acoustics of music perception. Then by the middle of the 20th century, cognitive psychologists started to study how people encoded and retrieved songs. Nowadays, music psychology expands across a wide range of psychological and other disciplines. For example, developmental psychology, neuroscience, clinical psychology and anthropology. Personally, another reason why I'm really interested in music psychology is because when I was at university, I worked a lot with a PhD student who looked at music as a treatment for depression, or ways to incorporate music into psychological treatment. I've read some of his research and the wider literature and it was promising from time to time. This leads me to my next point because as an aspiring clinical psychologist, and as someone who firmly believes that research should always have real-world implications that improve lives, we need to understand why music psychology matters. Music psychology is a great discipline because music is at the heart of, or it intersects with, a lot of psychological processes and things that make us human. For example, music impacts our memory, our mood, our social connection, mental health and social identity. This means that music psychology isn't only about explaining why a certain song causes us to cry but another one doesn't, it helps us to explain how the brain constructs emotions, how our culture shapes perception and what makes us social creatures. Music helps us to explain a lot. How Does Music Affect Our Emotions? All of us have certain songs that we flat out love and make us feel really good. For example, when I'm feeling a little low or my mental health isn't the best, something that I remember doing during the worst of my rape trauma is listening to the Nezuko theme song from Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. It's a lovely song and tune, and it just helped to improve my mood. This is something that is unique to all of us, because you will have songs that impact you in a profound way but they won't do anything for me, and vice versa. Let's explore why music impacts our emotions. As a result, unlike our behaviours and psychological concepts, when we listen to music, our entire cortex lights up and becomes activated because music requires a lot of neurological processes as well as systems. For example, our limbic system processes the emotional significance of the music whereas our auditory cortex processes the raw acoustics of the music. From the timbre, the pitch and the rhythm, our auditory cortex handles a lot. Also, our nucleus accumbens releases dopamine in response to the music because it is the brain's reward hub, as well as our cerebellum governs the timing and movement. A final brain region involved in music is the prefrontal cortex because it tracks our expectations and the structure of the music. As you can see, whenever we listen to music, there is a lot going on in our brains. I have to admit that writing a podcast episode on the psychology of music is a little distracting because I always listen to certain types of music depending on whether I'm working on fiction or nonfiction, and because I'm focusing on music, I'm not really allowing my music to drown into the background like normal. For those of you that are curious, at the moment, my YouTube watch later list has just started 30 minutes of the Super Smash Bros Ultimate menu music. I would never listen to it for pleasure but it's a nice background noise for writing nonfiction. Anyway, we know that our brain releases the neurotransmitter dopamine when we listen to music and this makes us feel good and makes listening to music feel rewarding. Much the same as sex, food and addictive drugs because they all use the same neurochemical system in the brain. Yet research shows that our brain releases dopamine twice when we're listening to music. The first time is in the anticipation of the climax and the second time is when the climax actually arrives. This is important for us to be aware of because it shows us that the brain doesn't just passively take in music and think "well that's nice,". Instead our brains are learning, predicting and rewarding itself for being right, and this helps us to understand the neurochemical basis of musical emotional responses and why music feels like more than simple entertainment. Personally, if I really think about it then I can see this in different ways in my own musical tastes. Especially in English covers of anime introduction songs or instrumentals, there tends to be certain parts (or the climax) that I flat out love and I look forward to hearing them in particular. This could be self-reported evidence of how this works in real life because my brain releases dopamine because I am looking forward and I am happy because of the anticipation of the climax, and then I continue to feel good when the climax actually arrives. Just an observation. Are there any songs that you love to listen to because of the climax? This is further supported by measurable physiological responses, because listening to music can help to reduce your body's stress hormone, cortisol, it can decrease subjective anxiety and heart rate. Although, your heart rate can increase through intense sections of a song or music. Interestingly, some research suggests that self-selected music can reduce cortisol levels more effectively than a standard anti-anxiety condition in a clinical stress test. Moreover, there are other psychological mechanisms that explain how music evokes emotion in us. For example, the learnt associations that tie music to personal events and memories, the reflexes of the brain stem that are triggered by sudden sounds, as well as the emotional contagion that people might experience so they unconsciously mirror the mood of a given performer. This helps us to understand why the emotional impacts of songs and music differ for different people. Even more, it is possible for a song to move two people for different reasons using entirely different neural routes. Building upon this, if we look at why certain songs give us chills or goosebumps because about 55% to 86% of people report this experience when they listen to music, then the answer can be traced back to our physiological response to music. Since researchers understand that the reason why we experience chills when listening to certain songs is because we undergo an intense emotional response that's linked to the dopamine system. This is caused by unexpected harmonic shifts. For example, a sudden change in dynamics, like a voice entering alone without music in the background after a long instrumental passage in a song. This creates chills and goosebumps because in a way, this confuses our brain. Our brain is all about predicting what comes next in a musical sequence, because if we know what's going to happen then there's safety in it. Our need for certainty and stable predictions is something that we've evolved. Therefore, a sudden change in dynamics and an unexpected harmonic shift causes our brain to react in a surprising-but-fitting turn with a small autonomic jolt. It is this jolt that causes us to experience a shiver because we're feeling our prediction system being surprised in a positive way. On the flip side, and this is something that I love about psychology, some people don't experience shivers or goosebumps when listening to music and this is important information, because it helps us to understand this process better. Sometimes this lack of shivers is caused by a condition called musical anhedonia and this is where a person essentially feels nothing when they listen to music despite having normal hearing and no other emotional deficits. Other times, it can be caused by personality factors because people who score higher on the personality trait of openness to experience and/ or empathy tend to report significantly more chills than people lower in these traits. Personally, this is an aspect of psychology that I do enjoy. I would never research it but I do enjoy looking at research from time to time into people who don't experience certain things that a lot of other people take for granted. Since if we can understand what's lacking or the differences in people who don't experience certain things then it helps us to better understand the process and mechanisms behind the concept or phenomenon in other people who do have it. For instance, understanding sight in people with colourblindness helps us to understand how colour perception works in people who can see colour. It is that expansion of knowledge that I love. Typically, this is also where you can find clinical implications. How Does High-Energy Music and Electronic Disco Music Impact the Brain? Personally, if there's one genre or type of music that I don't like, it is electronic disco or High-Energy Music. It's one of the reasons why I don't enjoy clubs and for my personal taste, this music is way too energetic for me. If I wanted music to energise me and cause my heart rate to spike, I would go to the gym. Not listen to music. The reason why I'm putting this section here is because in the last section, I mentioned that different music can use different neurological routes and systems to cause you to have an experience. High-Energy Music is a good example of this difference. As a result of electronic disco music is a very clever genre that actively makes use of our brain systems and it basically hacks our psychological processes. Since electronic disco music operates through the arousal and motor systems in the brain, because the 4/4 kick drum at 128 to 140 beats per minute synchronises with our heart rate and then it slightly increases it. This means that we physically feel these bass frequencies and the build-and-drop structure of this genre is engineered to exploit our anticipatory dopamine spike and the extended build-ups followed by the drop delivers the intense dopamine release. In other words, electronic dance music uses music psychology to exploit our brain's reward system so it makes us feel good. How Does Music Trigger Autobiographical Memories? If you listen to people for any length of time, they will typically mention how different songs and music remind them of different moments of their life. For example, a married couple might be sitting in a bar or pub and they hear a song that reminds them of their first date or their meet-cute. Some childhood friends might be listening to a song that reminds them of a funny moment. Or someone might be listening to music and remember the moment they first listened to it years before. Some people can even experience such vivid memories because of music that they can remember the smells, textures and faces of other people around them. This is because our brains encode music in our memory along with the context that we first heard the song in and this involves different neural systems. For instance, we use the auditory cortex as the anchor, the amygdala for emotional tagging and the hippocampus for episodic memory. This results in a song or a piece of music being able to recall memories for us because the song becomes a retrieval cue for the contextual and emotional details stored in our memories. As well as according to neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, music can hijack the autobiographical memory system because of this integration. In terms of when this effect is most powerful, there's a reason why we tend to remember songs and music from our adolescence the best. This is when the effect is at its most powerful and it reflects the research finding of the "reminiscence bump". This is the finding that demonstrates people feel the strongest emotional connection to songs that they first heard between the ages of 12 and 25, and going back to the importance of music in identity, this aligns with the developmental period where identity formation is occurring. What Else Can Auditory Perception Teach Us About Broader Mental Processes? To finish up our look at the cognitive psychology aspects of music psychology, the way how our brain perceives music can teach us some other facts about our mental processes as well, because our brain relies on other neurological systems too besides the auditory system. For example, by understanding how the brain predicts musical meter and the musical beat of a song, this helps us to better understand how the brain uses its predictive processing system in physical coordination, language as well as social interactions. Also, understanding and researching how our brain predicts music helps us to understand how the brain creates prediction models based on incoming sensory data and how it adjusts our motor system in real time. This is this prediction model that helps us to get in a "groove" so to speak and this demonstrates how our auditory perception links to our mental processes much deeper than simply hearing sounds. Additionally, because music engages the language centres of the brain as well as our memory networks, emotional systems and motor circuits at the same time, this feeds into the cultural importance of music. Something we'll build upon in a later section of the episode, because the simultaneous use of these brain systems demonstrates the deep integration of these systems and it could even suggest why we created music in the first place before it became something to find pleasure in. I think this makes perfect sense because thousands of years ago, before we developed modern comforts, we were safe inside our homes and our communities and before we eliminated the main predators in our countries. Like wolves and bears in the United Kingdom. We were only focused on survival and how best to communicate the dangers, the strategies and the survival stories from our friends, family members and other important people in our tribe. Music. Music might have been a great answer because it engages our attention, our language centres and it makes us feel things so we can remember the information when we need it most. It's just an idea and theory, but it is a good one. How Can Music Be Used Clinically? In addition, the use of music for memory purposes does have some interesting clinical implications because music-based interventions are frequently used in Alzheimer's treatment because even though, other forms of autobiographical memory aren't accessible, getting a person with the disease to listen to music from their youth can help to retrieve fragments of their identity that seemed lost. Due to the neural pathways that encode musical memory are typically preserved for longer than other memory systems. Can Music Therapy Improve Your Mental Health? Moving on to the more applied aspects of the psychology of music, this is what I am really interested in. Can music actually improve our mental health? There are three main reasons why I'm curious about exploring the clinical psychology implications of music. Firstly, I know from personal experience from my rape trauma that music can be very self-soothing and when I was struggling with my psychological distress, music helped me to self-regulate. Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, I spent a lot of my time at university in orbit of a PhD student who focused on the mental health implications of music. I always got the sense from him that the results were very mixed and whether or not music could improve a person's mental health depended on a lot of factors. The answer wasn't clear-cut. Thirdly, as an aspiring clinical psychologist, I always want to learn more about mental health. As a result, music therapy uses clinical research findings, trained practitioners and defined protocols to improve the mental health of individuals with conditions like depression, anxiety, trauma as well as neurodevelopmental disorders. The results of the research can be described as rather lacklustre or rather inspiring depending on the study looked at. Personally, this reminds me of my research into the gamification of autism that I conducted during my placement year of my undergraduate degree. There were a lot of problems with the research and some of the results were impressive, others were laughable and all of it was concerning. Anyway, the impact of music therapy on people with Parkinson's disease is rather impressive and clear-cut because research shows that rhythmic auditory stimulation, a steady musical beat, can be used to entrain the motor system. This is useful because people with the condition struggle to initiate movement but when walking to a calibrated rhythm, they can often walk more smoothly and with a better stride length compared to without this beat. Due to the motor cortex synchronises with this external rhythmic cue, so in essence, the brain borrows the temporal structure of the beat to make up for the deficits in the basal ganglia's internal timing system. On the other hand, the research into music therapy's impact on anxiety and depression is a lot more variable, but people still argue that it's useful. Especially since meta-analyses show that adding music therapy to standard psychological therapy reduces depressive symptoms more than treatment alone. This is even stronger when the interventions involve active music-making instead of passive listening. Then for anxiety, stress-response data shows that controlled exposure to preferred music lowers cortisol levels as well as leads to reductions in subjective anxiety. Personally, largely based on my own experience, this doesn't surprise me because when I was really distressed and anxious after my rape, music could be very soothing for me. I suspect one of the explanations for the depression finding is that if an individual is making music and this is an activity that they enjoy then it helps to break that negative cycle, it gets them moving and doing a pleasurable or social activity and this is a type of behavioural activation. Interestingly, genre isn't very important when it comes to music therapy and this is something that tends to surprise people but I understand it. I remember giving a talk at a college when I was at university working as a student ambassador about revision tips and we were talking about music. The majority of my fellow ambassadors listened to classical or calming music when studying. I listened to epic battle music or Demon Slayer music because it helped me to focus. Yet my fellow ambassadors and the students couldn't understand this, because the genre was wrong for them. It's similar in a clinical sense. What makes music therapy effective is not the genre, the music needs to be personally meaningful to the listener and that's why I liked to listen to Demon Slayer music when I was studying. It's meaningful to me and helped me to focus. The key factor in the success of music therapy is emotional engagement, and this isn't limited to a certain genre. It all boils down to listening to the type of music that relaxes you the most. What Happens to the Brain When Learning Music? I'm always slightly jealous of people who can play music and create amazing songs, but I understand that people feel the same about me and my books. I can write books, short stories and transport people to other worlds. Therefore, this leads us to question what actually happens to the brain when someone's learning to play music and what might the neurological differences be between musicians and nonmusicians. One of the first-ever psychology topics I learnt over ten years ago was neuroplasticity, so how the brain changes itself in response to environmental demands. It makes me wonder how music changes the brain. It turns out that professional musicians have different brain structures to non-musicians. For instance, the motor as well as auditory cortices are thicker and the corpus callosum, the bundle of fibres that connect the brain's left and right hemispheres, is larger. Also, the cerebellum, the brain area that coordinates our timing, shows structural differences too. The professional musicians weren't born with these neurological differences. They were the result of practice because the brain needs to change itself in response to the demands we place on it. Also, whilst the earlier the musical training begins, the more pronounced the structural changes are. The brain actually remains very responsive to musical training well into adulthood and even short-term keyboard training can produce detectable changes in the auditory and motor cortices in non-musicians within weeks. On a personal note, whilst I am pretty sure my dad is well past the age that his brain is responsive to musical training "well into adulthood", he might be happy to know if he ever did want to learn the drums or guitar, there is a little bit of hope for him on a neurological level. However, what I am really interested in as an aspiring educational psychologist is the fact that the relationship between cognitive development and musical training has important implications for all of a child's education. As a result of students who receive a sustained music education show advantages over other students in terms of their executive function, working memory and phonological awareness. These are critical life skills and serve as the foundation for the rest of their education and learning. When I was a student, I flat out hated music with an utter passion, I just couldn't do it and I didn't have the motivation after a while. I dropped music as soon as I could in secondary school and I'm happy for it. Yet it is interesting to think about the benefits of giving children a real or sustained music education, even if they don't want to become musicians in the future. How are Music Preferences Related to Personality Traits? I won't lie so I will admit that I am slightly concerned about this next section of the episode because I really hope that I don't learn anything too bad about myself, my music preferences and my personality. Yet that is part of the fun of psychology. As a result, there are reasons why different people prefer different types of music and one of the reasons comes back to our personality. Since research shows that people high in the personality trait of openness to experience tend to prefer unconventional and complex music like folk, classical or jazz. Whereas individuals higher in neuroticism show more of a wider-ranging preference in music because they tend to use music for regulation purposes instead of purely for enjoyment. Equally, people higher in agreeableness tend to prefer music with emotional accessibility and warmth whereas extroverts tend to prefer upbeat and energetic music. A rather fun activity that you might want to try after this episode is to come back to some of these sections and think about how this information applies to your own life. For example, I know I don't score highly on extroversion and if I think about the music I enjoy, I wouldn't exactly call it upbeat and energetic. I was thinking about this yesterday and one of my favourite climaxes of an anime intro is characterised by the main character killing a king to save thousands more, but it's about showing that no one is 100% good and no one is 100% evil. Everyone is a mixture. I wouldn't call that climax upbeat even if it is amazing. How Does Music Influence Social Interactions? Typically, music in social groups is one of the first ways how we start to recognise that music can impact behaviour and it's of interest to psychology. For example, the massive crowds and massive social groups that form around a particular artist and their music. You only need to think about the insane numbers that Taylor Swift drew all around the world for her Eras tour. Music brought all those people together and Taylor Swift is a great example, because her fans identify as Swifties. This means that her music plays a large role in their social identity. In a broader context, this is important because it shows us that music is important to our culture and every single known culture has music. This suggests that the pleasures and purpose of music isn't just focused on the individual. Instead music can bring pleasure to communities, cultures and social groups. For example, research shows that synchronised movement to a shared rhythm, like people clapping or moving in unison, increases feelings of cooperation and social bonding. In addition, research shows that when people move together to the same beat, they show more prosocial behaviour afterwards, even towards strangers. This suggests that music does impact our behaviour during social interactions through the psychological mechanism of synchrony. Building upon this, live concerts add another psychological layer to social interactions and music, because compared to listening to music at home, a live concert amplifies a person's emotional response and this is partly because you can see and experience the emotion of other people around you. In turn, this creates an emotional feedback loop. In other words, because you can see everyone else getting excited around you listening to the same music, your own feelings of excitement are increased and that increases the excitement in other people around you and so on. Finally, for this section, if we apply a bit of business psychology, then music is very common in retail spaces. I always remember walking into shops from September onwards and having to listen to Christmas songs even though September is way too early for Christmas in my opinion. I always feel really sorry for retail workers because they have to listen to Christmas songs for eight hours a day, so many days a week for four months straight. That must be hell on earth as I've covered in a previous psychology news section before. Anyway, retail spaces make very effective use of the volume, tempo and genre of background music because it can directly affect how long people stay, what products they choose and how much they buy. Research shows that classical music in a wine shop shifts purchases towards more expensive bottles whereas slower tempos extend browsing times in shops. This is important for business psychologists to understand because this is how you can shape consumer behaviour and have a real impact in commercial settings. Cognitive Psychology Conclusion Considering how much trouble I had coming up with a topic for Episode 400 of The Psychology World Podcast, I have to admit that I am really happy that I allowed myself to explore music psychology. It was a lot of fun, it was really thought-provoking and we certainly learnt a lot about our brain and how music impacts our mental processes, as well as our behaviour. And as we wrap up this landmark episode, like always, I want to give you a thank you from the bottom of my heart dear listener. Without you, the Psychology World Podcast wouldn’t be a thing, I wouldn’t get to do what I love and I wouldn’t get to learn and share all this great information with you. So, thank you so much for listening and being a part of The Psychology World Podcast. It means more to me than you could ever know. I hope you enjoyed today’s cognitive 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. Cognitive Psychology References and Further Reading Hodges, D. A., & McPherson, G. E. (2025). Music in the human experience: An introduction to music psychology. Taylor & Francis. https://neurolaunch.com/psychology-of-music/ Juslin, P. N., & Västfjäll, D. (2008). Emotional responses to music: The need to consider underlying mechanisms. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(5), 559–575. Koelsch, S. (2014). Brain correlates of music-evoked emotions. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15(3), 170–180. Levitin, D. J. (2006). This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. Dutton/Penguin Books (New York). Más-Herrero, E., Zatorre, R. J., Rodriguez-Fornells, A., & Marco-Pallarés, J. (2014). Dissociation between musical and monetary reward responses in specific musical anhedonia. Current Biology, 24(6), 699–704. Olsen, K. N., Terry, J., & Thompson, W. F. (2023). Psychosocial risks and benefits of exposure to heavy metal music with aggressive themes: Current theory and evidence. Current Psychology, 42(24), 21133-21150. Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2003). The do re mi’s of everyday life: The structure and personality correlates of music preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(6), 1236–1256. Salimpoor, V. N., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A., & Zatorre, R. J. (2011). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nature Neuroscience, 14(2), 257–262. Shuter-Dyson, R., & Gabriel, C. (2026). The psychology of musical ability. Taylor & Francis. Singh, M., & Mehr, S. A. (2023). Universality, domain-specificity and development of psychological responses to music. Nature reviews psychology, 2(6), 333-346. Sun, J. (2022). Exploring the impact of music education on the psychological and academic outcomes of students: mediating role of self-efficacy and self-esteem. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 841204. Tan, S. L., Pfordresher, P., & Harré, R. (2025). Psychology of music: From sound to significance. Taylor & Francis. Thaut, M. H., McIntosh, G. C., & Hoemberg, V. (2015). Neurobiological foundations of neurologic music therapy: Rhythmic entrainment and the motor system. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1185. Thoma, M. V., La Marca, R., Brönnimann, R., Finkel, L., Ehlert, U., & Nater, U. M. (2013). The effect of music on the human stress response. PLOS ONE, 8(8), e70156. Thompson, W. F., Bullot, N. J., & Margulis, E. H. (2023). The psychological basis of music appreciation: Structure, self, source. Psychological Review, 130(1), 260. Zentner, M., Grandjean, D., & Scherer, K. R. (2008). Emotions evoked by the sound of music: Characterization, classification, and measurement. Emotion, 8(4), 494–521. Zhao, J., & Yoshii, K. (2023, October). Multimodal multifaceted music emotion recognition based on self-attentive fusion of psychology-inspired symbolic and acoustic features. In 2023 Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA ASC) (pp. 1641-1645). IEEE. 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.

What is Alcohol Use Disorder? A Clinical Psychology Podcast Episode. A lot of people think that they understand what alcoholism or alcohol use disorder is, but they don't. I often hear people joking that their friends and family members are alcoholics because they like to drink. Yet alcohol use disorder is a little more complex than that, and it can ruin lives, destroy relationships and lead to severe physical and mental health consequences. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you'll learn what is alcoholism or alcohol use disorder, what are the causes and symptoms and how is alcohol use disorder treated. If you enjoy learning about addiction, mental health and alcoholism, then this will be a great episode for you. Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Biological Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What is Alcohol Use Disorder? Alcoholism or Alcohol Use Disorder is a problematic pattern of alcohol use that leads to significant disorder or impairment. As well as it's the significant amount that we need to focus on because the majority of people use alcohol as a way to celebrate, socialise and relax at home or out with friends and family. For example, in a few days’ time, we're having a large BBQ for my dad's 60th birthday with our friends and family members. I don't drink but I know other people will and that's okay because alcohol is a great way to relax and socialize with friends. However, alcohol becomes problematic when someone drinks in excess or they drink as a way to avoid problems or stressors in their life despite the physiological as well as psychological risks that excess alcohol poses. I'm reminding us of this point because someone drinking "a lot" doesn't mean they're an alcoholic or they have alcohol use disorder. In my life, I've heard a lot of people use the term "alcoholic" without fully understanding what it means. And I'm not innocent of this mistake. When I was younger and before I better understood the devastating impact of alcoholism, I also made jokes about people being alcoholics. As a result, the amount of alcohol consumed isn't a good indicator of whether someone has alcohol use disorder or not, because alcohol use does vary greatly between people. Instead, it can be a lot more useful to identify general patterns of behaviour to see if the alcohol use is reducing their ability to function and if it's creating difficulties for the person. For example, alcohol use can be problematic if it creates interpersonal difficulties between friends and family members, or it leads to a person reducing their social activities. Like someone might be too drunk and hungover to go out with their friends, or they no longer want to spend time with their family members at a specific event that they used to go to, because it doesn't serve alcohol. As well as a sign of problematic alcohol use is when drinking interferes with their school, work or home life. For instance, when considering someone's relationship with alcohol, it's important to bear in mind their family history, age and how often or how much they drink. Such as, if someone drinks a lot of alcohol regularly then that could be a sign of alcoholism, but if someone drinks a lot once a year, then that probably isn't a sign of problematic alcohol use. In addition, alcohol abuse isn't limited to a certain age, race or gender. Since in the United States, nearly 14 million people have a problematic relationship with alcohol use with men being more likely than women to have an alcohol problem. Also, difficulties with alcohol tend to be highest in young adults aged between 18 and 29 and lowest in people aged 65 and over. As well as one of the biggest problems with assessing and diagnosing alcohol use disorder is that when working with young adults, their lifestyle that often includes excessive drinking, can make it difficult to see when someone truly has a disorder and not. In my opinion, this reminds me of a very short podcast episode I listened to this morning about alcohol use and being reflective or mindful about your relationship. For example, as a young adult, I decided that I didn't want to drink because it used to be cheaper (even though everything is so expensive now I doubt it makes much difference), I wanted to protect my health and I don't like what alcohol does to people. Also, I value my productivity and doing things too much so I don't want to have to deal with the negative consequences of alcohol consumption the next day when I could be doing something else. I'm not writing down my thoughts and feelings on alcohol to convince others to give up alcohol because if you want to drink then more power to you. It's a personal choice, but as a young adult, I am generally thought of as weird or boring because I don't drink. It is such a normal part of youth culture to drink, to club and to get so drunk that deviating from that expectation comes with social risks and social judgment. Finally, according to the United States' Department of Health and Human Services as well as their Department of Agriculture Dietary Guidelines, they determine that moderate drinking is up to one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men. Why is Alcohol Use Disorder Serious? The main reason why alcohol use disorder is so serious is because it can lead to some horrific health consequences. For example, people with alcohol use disorder are more likely to get cancer, even more so liver, colon, larynx and oesophagus cancer. A person with alcoholism is also more likely to experience erectile dysfunction, high blood pressure and nutritional deficiencies. In addition, people with alcohol use disorder are more likely to have acute or chronic pancreatitis, this is an inflammatory disease of the pancreas, cirrhosis of the liver is also common and this is the fibrotic changes in the liver, as well as alcohol-related dementia. Some other health consequences of alcohol use disorder are alcoholic neuropathy. These are degenerative changes in the nervous system that affect the nerves responsible for movement as well as sensations. Also, alcoholic cardiomyopathy, Fetal alcohol syndrome in the children of women who drink during pregnancy, and Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome or Wernicke’s encephalopathy are some other consequences of alcoholism. This is a syndrome of the central nervous system that results in a person experiencing loss of vision, loss of balance and confusion. All of that sounds horrific. It’s these horrific health consequences of alcohol use disorder that make it so important that we research it, understand it and treat it. By learning about the causes and treatment options for the condition, we can hopefully prevent some of this happening as well as we can prevent alcohol use disorder taking root in an individual before they experience these awful health consequences. That’s the hope at least. What is Alcohol Withdrawal? On the flip side, you have alcohol withdrawal. This is a serious condition that can become life-threatening if it isn’t treated. Since when a person who’s been drinking heavily suddenly reduces or stops their alcohol intake, this leads to a wide range of symptoms, because the body is so used to being dependent on alcohol to function. When you cut off alcohol, the body doesn’t know how to function. The symptoms of alcohol withdrawal include anxiety, depression, seizures, hallucinations, irritability, fatigue, sweating, insomnia, hand tremors and rapid heart rate. These symptoms tend to develop within several hours or a few hours after a person dramatically reduces their alcohol intake. This is one of the reasons why a person with alcohol use disorder should consult a medical professional and collaborate on a course of action, so reducing their alcohol intake can be done safely. What Causes Alcohol Use Disorder? This is the main reason why I'm interested in learning more about this type of disorder, because if we understand what causes alcohol use disorder, or at least the factors that increase someone's risk of developing the condition, then we can actually target the root causes in society. This is something that I'm interested in thinking about because I'm a part of a local political party and we're interested in creating policies that will reduce gambling, drug and alcohol addiction in our local authority. We can't create these policies though unless we understand the actual causes, so let's explore the topic now. Therefore, like a lot of mental health conditions, the exact cause of alcohol use disorder isn’t fully understood or known, but we do understand the factors that can contribute to the development as well as maintenance of the condition. For example, alcohol abuse tends to run in families because alcohol use disorder is three to four times higher in close relatives of alcoholics, and the closer a person’s genetics are to the alcoholic’s the more likely they are to develop alcohol use disorder themselves. Another potential cause is that alcohol is an addictive substance in its own right so it is very good at hijacking the brain’s reward system so even though, it is a depressant, it creates a buzz that people perceive as pleasurable. Also, there are individual differences because drinking alcohol impacts a person’s mental and physical health differently so some people can drink alcohol without developing alcohol use disorder, but others do. As well as excessive alcohol usage leads to changes in the chemical makeup of the brain and this can contribute to someone becoming addicted to alcohol. Penultimately, some environmental factors that can increase the likelihood of someone developing alcohol use disorder is the availability of alcohol, substance abuse in peers and cultural attitudes towards drinking. Finally, a person’s risk of developing alcohol use disorder increases if the person uses alcohol to numb themselves to problems in their lives or as a maladaptive way to cope with mood, fears or anxiety difficulties. Impulsivity is linked to alcohol abuse as well. The last risk factor is of particular interest to me because this stresses the importance of developing good mental health support. Since if an area, like a deprived area, doesn’t have good access to mental health support, if people cannot figure out ways to cope and improve their situation and if their mental health gets more severe, then they might turn to alcohol as a coping mechanism. In my experience, humans are wired to survive however they can, and alcohol is a method. It is not a good method, but to the individual, it is better than nothing. Therefore, this is one reason why investing in mental health and ensuring that deprived areas have access to mental health support is so important. It can help to reduce the rates of alcohol use disorder as people don’t need to turn to alcohol to cope with life’s stressors. A final aspect for this section that I want to comment on is the availability of alcohol. All the research shows that alcohol is the world’s most damaging drug because it is so common, it wrecks our physical and mental health and yet it isn’t classed as dangerous. People die because of drunk driving, people get injured because they get into drunken fights and so on. This places immense stress on public health services, but it isn’t classed as a dangerous drug. You can get alcohol anywhere in the United Kingdom and most of the Western world. You can get it from family members, supermarkets, corner shops and restaurants. It’s very hard to escape alcohol despite the damage that it does to us. Whilst I don’t really have a point, I just wanted to mention that it is a little weird that research consistently highlights the sheer damage that alcohol does to society, our relationships and our physical and mental health and yet it is perfectly legal. It doesn’t make sense. What are the Symptoms of Alcohol Use Disorder? Moving on to our next section, the interesting thing about the symptoms of alcohol use disorder is that the majority of the symptoms are identical to the symptoms of any other addictive disorder. It is just that alcohol is the specific addictive substance in this case. Therefore, for someone to be diagnosed with alcohol use disorder then according to the DSM-5, a person’s drinking behaviour needs to result in clinically significant distress or impairment in daily functioning. We judge this impaired functioning by seeing if the client has two or more of the following experiences within a 12-month period. The client has a strong desire or urge to drink alcohol, they spend a lot of time getting alcohol, drinking it or recovering from its effect, or they drink more than intended or they drink alcohol for a longer time than intended. In addition, the client with alcohol use disorder would continuously want or attempt to unsuccessfully cut down or stop their drinking, they would continue to drink despite the harm it does to their relationship with friends and family members, as well as the person prioritises drinking by cutting back or stopping other important activities. Additionally, a person with alcohol use disorder might have withdrawal symptoms if they stop drinking so they might drink to relieve or avoid these symptoms. Also, they might need much more alcohol than was once needed to get the same desired effect (also known as tolerance) or when they drink the same amount, they don’t experience the same effect. As well as they drink in situations where it is physically dangerous to drink. A final symptom of alcoholism is a person continues to drink even when they have one or more persistent psychological or physical difficulties that drinking has caused or has made worse. Finally for this section, a person can be diagnosed with mild alcohol use disorder if two or three of the above symptoms are present. They’ll be diagnosed with a moderate case if four or five of the above symptoms are present, as well as a person will be diagnosed with a severe case of alcohol use disorder if six or more of these symptoms are present. How is Alcohol Use Disorder Treated? I’m sure all of us have heard of treatment programmes like the 12-step program for alcoholism, but there is more to treatment of alcohol use disorder than that. We’ll explore these other options in the next few sections. Yet first of all, I want to be clear by saying that treatment for alcohol use disorder can work for a lot of people, but at the end of the day, alcoholism is still a chronic condition. This means that there are varying levels of success for different people as some programmes will work for some, but not others. Some people will stay sober and other people will have to battle with sobriety for years, if not decades, as they relapse and try to get sober again. The most important thing to remember is that the longer a person can abstain from alcohol, the more likely it is that they will be able to maintain their sobriety. Also, whilst the majority of these treatment options in the next few sections are effective for alcohol use disorder, they are more commonly used for people who experience alcohol abuse and have a problematic relationship with alcohol. What is Detoxification? When a person’s drinking behaviour is problematic because they’re experiencing withdrawal symptoms or they’re significantly intoxicated then the person might need to start off with detoxification to start the treatment process. Detoxification is done in a controlled and supervised setting that uses medications to relieve symptoms. Typically, this takes about four to seven days and during this time, the person undergoes other medical examinations to check for other problems. Such as liver problems or blood-clotting. They’re given a balanced diet with vitamin supplements too. Afterwards, the person should enter an alcohol rehabilitation or recovery programme to support the person in maintaining their abstinence from alcohol. These programmes normally provide people with medical care, nursing, counselling as well as psychological support. Another key part of the therapy is providing the person with education about alcohol use disorder and its effects, and a lot of the people employed by these programmes have recovered from alcoholism themselves. Furthermore, within these programmes, which can be inpatient or outpatient, it’s important to consider what mental health conditions can coexist with the alcohol use disorder. Since the depression, anxiety or other condition might be maintaining the alcoholism and vice versa. If you want to treat the alcoholism, you have to treat the other conditions too. What is Alcoholics Anonymous? Alcoholics Anonymous is another treatment option for alcohol use disorder because this is an effective mutual-help programme that allows people to support each other, share their stories and learn from each other. Even though people typically find that AA is most effective when used with another treatment option alongside like medication or psychological therapy. What are Harm Reduction Approaches? If you’re like me then you might have thought that the 12-step programme was all there really was to treat alcohol use disorder and it was a type of harm reduction approach. Instead the two are very different. Since the 12-step programme sees abstinence as the cure for alcoholism whereas a harm reduction approach focuses on being more individualised. This means that the treatment programme is tailored to the individual’s needs and situation instead of simply following the exact same 12-steps as everyone else just because the person has alcohol use disorder. Furthermore, abstinence isn’t the end goal for harm reduction approaches. Instead the aim is to reduce the consequences of alcohol use so someone doesn’t need to give it up entirely to stop the negative impact that it has on their lives. As well as harm reduction approaches are nothing new because public health often relies on these approaches. For example, giving out free condoms to reduce the risk of sexually transmitted infections, safe injection sites for people with drug addictions as well as needle exchanges. The reason why I’m writing about harm reduction approaches on a psychology podcast is because psychotherapy is often used in a harm reduction approach, and this is where it gets interesting for me to reflect on. If we think about it, this is immensely skilled work, even more so considering how skilled clinical psychology naturally is. In a harm reduction approach, we would need to focus on reducing the harm that alcohol does to an individual, their family and their social network, whilst not saying that the client has to give alcohol up entirely. That is interesting because we would have to work with a client to give them the tools and techniques so they can develop a satisfying, healthy and adaptive relationship with a substance that has damaged their life for so long. It’s interesting to think about how difficult that must be at times, and I really admire mental health professionals who can do this. How is Medication Used to Treat Alcohol Use Disorder? In addition to more behavioural treatments for alcohol use disorder, at the time of writing, there are three types of oral medication that can be used to treat the condition. These are Antabuse (disulfiram), Campral (acamprosate) as well as Depade or ReVia (Naltrexone). These medications are used because they help people to avoid relapse into heavy drinking, they help a person to achieve abstinence and they reduce a person’s dependency on alcohol. The different types of medication work in different ways. For example, acamprosate is one of those drugs where we know it works but we aren’t too sure how. Therefore, it is believed that acamprosate works by reducing symptoms of alcohol use disorder that manifest after a period of abstinence, like insomnia or anxiety. Whereas naltrexone works by reducing cravings for alcohol after a person has given up. Finally, disulfiram works by making a person feel sick if they drink alcohol. If oral medication doesn’t work, then people with alcohol use disorder can receive naltrexone in an injectable and long-acting form as well. Also, other medication is available if a person experiences alcohol withdrawal as we learnt about earlier. Personally, this section is more in this podcast episode to make sure that we’re all aware of it, because this medical side of alcohol use disorder isn’t really something psychologists would be involved in too much. What is Abstinence in the Treatment of Alcohol Use Disorder? The final treatment for alcohol use disorder I want us to look at is abstinence and this is the treatment option that is strongly recommended for people who have tried to cut down but couldn’t stay within their set limits, they’ve been diagnosed with alcohol use disorder, they have a mental or physical health condition that is made worse or caused by drinking, they’re pregnant or they’re taking medication that interacts with alcohol. Clinical Psychology Conclusion As a non-drinker, this was always going to be an interesting episode because I don’t like what alcohol does to the body, how it makes others act and I’ve seen how destructive it can be in friendships and other relationships. Therefore, it was really interesting to learn about alcohol use disorder because now, we understand what it actually is instead of the myths and misconceptions, we know the symptoms, causes and most importantly, that there are effective treatments. It is these treatments that give friends, families and individuals hope for a better future. A future where they can have a relationship, they can go out for nice family events and they don’t need to be scared of what state their loved one will be in. They can return to how they used to be without alcohol, or they can undergo some kind of growth so they’re even better than they were before alcohol use disorder took over their life. Treatment and mental health professionals are what make this possible. As a little reminder to end this episode, alcoholism or Alcohol Use Disorder is a problematic pattern of alcohol use that leads to significant disorder or impairment. As well as it's the significant amount that we need to focus on because the majority of people use alcohol as a way to celebrate, socialise and relax at home or out with friends and family. However, alcohol becomes problematic when someone drinks in excess or they drink as a way to avoid problems or stressors in their life despite the physiological as well as psychological risks that excess alcohol poses. I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Biological Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Adams, C., Conigrave, J. H., Lewohl, J., Haber, P., & Morley, K. C. (2020). Alcohol use disorder and circulating cytokines: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 89, 501-512. Flores-Bonilla, A., & Richardson, H. N. (2020). Sex differences in the neurobiology of alcohol use disorder. Alcohol research: current reviews, 40(2), 04. Guinle, M. I. B., & Sinha, R. (2020). The role of stress, trauma, and negative affect in alcohol misuse and alcohol use disorder in women. Alcohol research: current reviews, 40(2), 05. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/alcohol-use-disorder Jacob, L., Smith, L., Armstrong, N. C., Yakkundi, A., Barnett, Y., Butler, L., ... & Tully, M. A. (2021). Alcohol use and mental health during COVID-19 lockdown: A cross-sectional study in a sample of UK adults. Drug and alcohol dependence, 219, 108488. Koob, G. F., & Colrain, I. M. (2020). Alcohol use disorder and sleep disturbances: a feed-forward allostatic framework. Neuropsychopharmacology, 45(1), 141-165. Kranzler, H. R. (2023). Overview of alcohol use disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry, 180(8), 565-572. Milani, R. M., & Perrino, L. (2021). Alcohol and mental health: Co-occurring alcohol use and mental health disorders. In The handbook of alcohol use (pp. 81-106). Academic Press. Puddephatt, J. A., Irizar, P., Jones, A., Gage, S. H., & Goodwin, L. (2022). Associations of common mental disorder with alcohol use in the adult general population: a systematic review and meta‐analysis. Addiction, 117(6), 1543-1572. Tsermpini, E. E., Plemenitaš Ilješ, A., & Dolžan, V. (2022). Alcohol-induced oxidative stress and the role of antioxidants in alcohol use disorder: a systematic review. Antioxidants, 11(7), 1374. Yang, W., Singla, R., Maheshwari, O., Fontaine, C. J., & Gil-Mohapel, J. (2022). Alcohol use disorder: neurobiology and therapeutics. Biomedicines, 10(5), 1192. Zhifeng, C. (2020, November). Analysis of the Causes, Effects and Treatments of Alcohol Use Disorder. In 2020 International Conference on Public Health and Data Science (ICPHDS) (pp. 342-346). IEEE. Zhou, H., Kember, R. L., Deak, J. D., Xu, H., Toikumo, S., Yuan, K., ... & Gelernter, J. (2023). Multi-ancestry study of the genetics of problematic alcohol use in over 1 million individuals. Nature Medicine, 29(12), 3184-3192. 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 I spoke about in January 2026, I want to apply for the Doctorate of Clinical Psychology and the Doctorate of Educational Psychology this year. I want to do this to progress my own career, I want to familiarise myself with the application process, as well as I want to learn more about my strengths and weaknesses for future applications. Yet the majority of your doctoral application comes down to your ability to write a reflective personal statement. How do you do this? Therefore, in this careers in psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn how to write reflectively for the doctorate personal statement, what needs to be included, what skills you need to show and a bunch of other tips and tricks to help you write a better DClinPsych application. If you enjoy learning about clinical psychology, doctoral applications and more, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Clinical Psychology Second Edition. 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 DClinPsych Personal Statement? As any aspiring psychologist will understand, the process of applying for the Doctorate of Clinical Psychology is very competitive. The general rule of thumb is that for every single place on the doctoral course, there are another 4 or 5 people applying for it. The chance of anyone actually getting onto the Doctorate is very remote and often people need to apply multiple times before they even get an interview. Let alone get onto the doctorate. However, even if you have all the clinical skills, the experiences and you would make an amazing clinical psychologists, it doesn’t matter if you cannot write about your experiences in a reflective way. It also doesn’t matter if you have amazing references if your personal statement is awful. Similar to how your personal statement can be amazing, but it doesn’t matter if you have bad references. As a result, whilst all aspects of your doctoral application are very important, in this podcast episode, I want to focus on the personal statement. Hopefully, all of us are going to learn how to write better, be more reflective and demonstrate our clinical knowledge to the university administrators. Building upon this, the personal statement of a Doctorate of Clinical Psychology application is typically asked in the following way: in what way have your work and/ or research experiences made you a better candidate for training in clinical psychology? The maximum length of your answer is about 3000 characters, or around 500 words. Immediately, what is key is that you don’t see this as an opportunity to list your past roles or your responsibilities. These are already on your application. What is important is that you use this personal statement as a chance to thoughtfully demonstrate your personal and professional growth, you show your motivation as well as readiness to be a clinical psychologist and you reflect on the significant insights that you’ve gained from your experiences. In addition, I would add one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever seen on personal statements is to remember you’re applying to be a clinical psychologist, not a therapist. If you’re going to be a clinical psychologist, it’s important that you understand that a clinical psychologist is way more than a therapist. They are also a researcher, a teacher, an advocate, a supervisor and so much more. You need to use your personal statement to show that you understand what a clinical psychologist is, and this is one of the aspects of showing that you’re truly ready. To summarise, this is one of the aspects of a personal statement because selectors want to know that you understand what clinical psychologists do, in terms of multi-disciplinary teamwork, assessment, formulation, supervision and more, the demands of the three-year training course and why clinical psychology is the right fit for you. The selectors need to understand that you want to be a clinical psychologist and you aren’t just applying because other roles won’t take you. On the whole, a strong personal statement doesn’t only show readers what you’ve done, but how your experiences have shaped you into someone capable of thriving during clinical psychology training. Something that is very challenging but very rewarding. What are Selectors Looking For in a Clinical Psychology Personal Statement? When the selectors at different universities are looking through the hundreds upon hundreds of DClinPsych applications, they aren’t only interested in your research experience, your grades and your academic background. They want to understand that you’re an emotionally mature, professionally aligned and intellectually curious person that would make a good trainee clinical psychologist. Personally, I would add here that this is the exact same for aspiring educational psychologists, because I want to apply for both. Selectors on the educational psychology courses want to understand if you’ve got the potential to be an excellent educational psychologist by the end of the course. Since that’s the main thing. Universities aren’t looking for you to already be a clinical psychologist because otherwise there would be no point in you applying. They want to understand if you have the potential to become a clinical psychologist by the end of the three-year course. Moreover, selectors want to see that you have self-awareness as well as insight, because they want to see what you’ve learnt and this learning makes you a better candidate for clinical training. For example, in your personal statement, you should talk about any challenges that you’ve faced, how you overcame them as well as how these challenges have contributed to your professional and personal growth. Ultimately, selectors want to know that you understand your motivations, reactions and limitations, the psychological perspectives and needs of others, and the wider systems that impact mental health. Showing Self-Awareness and Insight in Your Personal Statement Another piece of criteria that selectors want to see in personal statements is your reflective capacity. This means that applications need to show a wide range of experiences and you need to reflect on them very well. This is because selectors want to know that you can think deeply on your experiences. In practical terms, this means instead of simply saying that you’ve worked with depressed clients. You might write Supporting clients with depression helped me to recognise my tendency to want to “fix” problems quickly. Through supervision, I learned the value of containing anxiety rather than rushing to reassure and how this aligns with CBT principles of tolerating uncertainty. Personally, there are a few important things that the example above gives us about writing the personal statement. For example, we always need to remember the importance of concise writing because as the example shows, you can actually say a lot without that many words if you pick them wisely. Secondly, a few words that link your example to a psychological concept is great because it shows your ability to link research and theory to real-world practice and clinical challenges. Thirdly, there is no shame in leaning on others for support, like supervision. I know it shouldn’t need to be said but we all have our moments of needing to be reminded. Even though this is an educational psychology example, systemic thinking is still important in clinical psychology. Therefore, I might write something along the lines of “working with a diabetic SEN student deepened my understanding of how the school-parent relationship can affect treatment engagement in educational settings,”. All in all, in a personal statement, a selector is looking for you to reflect on what you’ve learnt from each role instead of just listing them, the ability to question your assumptions and adapt your thinking, and show insight in your emotional responses, your professional growth as well as your areas for development. Show Your Clinical and Research Readiness in Your Personal Statement A third aspect that selectors on doctoral courses are looking for is candidates who have exposure to or have been involved in research and they’re able to show an understanding of evidence-based practice, an ability to integrate research and theory into practice and a candidate with relevant clinical experience. Of course, being an assistant psychologist is apparently the gold standard of experience, but myself and others have written in other places about why that isn’t true. Anyway, the relevant clinical experience is any direct client work with psychological thinking. This is one of the reasons why in the last example I mentioned that it’s really useful to explicitly link your clinical experience with a psychological concept, because it demonstrates that ability to link psychological research and theory into clinical practice. That is what the selectors are looking for. When it comes to your personal statement, you need to reflect on how these experiences have prepared you for clinical training and remember that these experiences aren’t meant to show that you’re already a fully formed psychologist. Personally, if I think about my own personal statement, I would need to mention my research background because I do have a lot of research behind me. Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten round to getting any of it academically published but I will next year and I’ll make it a priority. For example, I could talk about my undergraduate EEG research, my 4 transgender mental health studies during my Masters and more. Yet I would need to reflect on them and how they’ve prepared me for clinical training. Therefore, I would probably focus on my transgender mental health studies and explain how these studies helped me to understand how to create a compassionate research study that protected the mental health of a vulnerable clinical population. Something like that. As you can see, you really do need to think about everything you put into a personal statement and it can take a while to refine it. Especially, as there are times when you know exactly what you want to say but it’s about how to write it concisely so a complete stranger understands exactly what you mean. How to Write About Research Experience in Your Personal Statement? As you can see in the previous section, one of my concerns about my research experience at the moment isn’t so much about the amount of experience I have, but my lack of academic publications. This is a concern that a lot of potential applicants share, because we believe that the only way to become a clinical psychologist is to have a lot of publications. Personally, I’m not too sure where this misconception came from. Maybe it’s because psychology students spend a lot of time at universities with lecturers that are required to publish and conduct a lot of research if they want to progress in their career. Perhaps we internalise this need for publications and conflate it with applied psychology professionals, but I’m not certain. Anyway, despite this concern that a lot of applicants have, doctorate of clinical psychology courses aren’t interested in publications. Instead they’re more interested in seeing that you’re engaged in research and that you’re research literate. This is critical because as part of your doctorate, you will have to complete a thesis. This is supported by the fact that a lot of successful applicants don’t have perfect or extensive research experience, like PhDs or publications. On the other hand, what is important in a personal statement is that you write high-quality reflections that demonstrate what you’ve learnt from your research experience. In other words, two research studies that are reflected on thoughtfully and demonstrate the skills that a clinical psychologist needs will always be better than an applicant with ten or twenty research publications but they can’t reflect on their experiences thoughtfully. In addition, clinical psychology programmes want you to be able to link psychological research and practice, so even if you only have a small amount of research experience, this can still be great on your application if you present it thoughtfully. This is one of the reasons why on my personal statement, I’m going to focus on my transgender mental health studies because I firmly believe I’ll be more successful in writing a stronger, more reflective sections compared to my EEG study. Speaking of which, how do you choose the research to focus on in your personal statement? A lot of us have a wide range of research experience to draw from. In terms that some applicants will have publications, others will have academic passion projects or undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations, and some applicants will have poster presentations and international conferences to write about. Given how the personal statement is around 3000-characters, it’s important that we’re very selective about our research experience. We need to talk about the research experience that gives us the best chance of getting onto the doctorate. One way to do this is to focus on research that demonstrates dissemination and communication skills. For example, times when you summarised research for service users, gave a poster presentation or other examples of communicating research findings. This is especially useful because if you can easily and effectively explain your research to non-experts and link research to practice, then this can suggest you’ll be a good clinical psychologist by the end of the course. Personally, this is another reason why I’m going to focus on my transgender mental health research because for those projects, I had to give presentations, I frequently had to talk about my research with non-experts and once I plan the section, I should be able to easily and effectively point out how these studies have given me effective communication skills that will help me as a clinical psychologist. Another important factor you should consider when picking your research experience to show on is connect your research to clinical understanding. As a result of selectors are looking for an understanding of how your research experience has informed your understanding of clinical practice. Even if you don’t have too much clinical research experience, non-clinical research can be useful here if you highlight your transferable skills, like data analysis, critical thinking and understanding the importance of evidence-based practice. You need to make these connections clear to the reader. Thankfully, I’m very grateful that I was given free rein during my MSc because there was a particular transgender mental health study that was the first of its kind that I conducted. I really should try and write it up and get it published at some point. Yet it was about the mental health needs of transgender people post-transition because of the transphobic and discriminatory world that we live in. I’m already considering the clinical practice implications of the study because it taught me the importance of follow-ups, giving a client ways to support and protect their mental health after therapy ends and so on. That’s a useful realisation to have. Values, Core Competencies and Tailoring to the Course: More on the Research Section I wanted to write this next part as a standalone section because I want to make a few things very, very clear and I don’t want to risk information getting lost or buried in other sections. Therefore, I want to stress the importance of giving your personal statement a lot of thought because you only have a single chance to impress a selector before they reject you and you have to wait yet another year to apply again. This is why it’s a great idea to research the specific courses that you’re applying for. For example, I could be wrong but I remember off the top of my head, in the United Kingdom, you’re allowed to apply to three clinical psychology courses and three or five educational psychology courses. It’s a great idea for you to research the course requirements because different courses want slightly different things. For example, the clinical psychology courses at the University of Bath, University of Oxford and University College London are more research-heavy than other courses. This means that the personal statements you send to these courses need to focus a little more on the research experience than others. Also, each course and university will have slightly different values and ethos so your personal statement can be better by matching these different values and ethos. For example, when it comes to writing about professional values in your research experience, you need to explicitly show that your research experience shaped your personal values, like your curiosity, your empirical rigour and commitment to evidence-based practice. Again, as we learnt in a previous section, one of the goals of the personal statement is to show the selector that your personal values as well as your passion aligns with modern clinical psychology and that you’re a good fit for the profession. As well as it’s best to focus on the insights you gained from your research over your results, because it is the insights that will show your readiness for clinical training over your results. In my experience, this section reminded me that something I can talk about in my personal statement somehow (and I have no idea how yet) is how my professional curiosity and want to support a clinical population led me to research transgender mental health and create my own research studies from scratch during my Masters. There was no one at my university researching this aspect of mental health but because I was curious, compassionate and empathetic towards transgender people, I researched this area. In terms of yourself, I would read or listen to this entire episode, have a rest and then allow yourself to just think about your experiences and what particular experience shows what selectors are looking for the best. Finally for this section, it’s important to point out how your research experience links to the core clinical competencies in our profession. For instance, you might write something like “Conducting my MSc research project on mental health implications of gender-affirming clothing taught me about the research process, from formulating hypotheses to navigating ethics. When I presented my findings to a non-academic audience, I learned to adapt my communication style to make the information accessible. A critical skill when explaining concepts to peers and clients,” Before I talk about a brief side note, the above is a good example because it demonstrates both your competency as a researcher and an ability to communicate about psychological research effectively. This shows a selector that you’re able to bridge the gap between science and practice. On a side note, I always enjoy learning and seeing various examples of academic or concise writing when I’m producing these podcast episodes, because I’m always slightly amazed. Because I want my writing to be fun, engaging and conversational, as well as I want to preserve my voice, I don’t worry about writing concisely. It’s always been a weakness of mine and it’s a reason why I struggled with academic writing for the first two years of my undergraduate degree. Therefore, when I come across academic writing, I’m always slightly in awe because I forget just how much you can say with a handful of words when you write thoughtfully, concisely and with purpose. What Clinical Experience Should You Include in Your Personal Statement? I won't lie but the clinical experience is the aspect of the personal statement that terrifies me the most. This is because doctorate of clinical psychology courses require you to have at least 12 months of experience working with people with mental health difficulties, and because I'm human, I keep falling into the mental trap. The trap is that you trick yourself into believing that only working in a mental health service counts as clinical experience, as well as only being an assistant psychologist counts. This is not the case. Personally, I am really glad about that because it helped me to realise that I have a lot more clinical experience than I ever thought possible and hopefully, if I don't get onto the doctorate this year, I can continue to build up my years of experience in the future. Anyway, in terms of the personal statement, clinical experience refers to your hands-on experience in any setting where you directly interact with clients with mental health difficulties. As well as clinical experience provides you with insights into the realities of clinical practice and they demonstrate your commitment to working in a client-facing role within the mental health sector. In addition, what is flat out critical to understand here is that clinical experience is not just about the conventional route into clinical psychology and assistant psychologist roles. The clinical experience doesn't even have to be in an NHS mental health service. It can be in any setting and in any job role as long as you are interacting with people with mental health difficulties. For example, nursing, teaching, social work amongst other roles. It's also useful to mention that research assistant roles can be very useful in gaining clinical experience because if you work on a research project that involves directly interacting with people with mental health conditions, then you can potentially write about this and the clinical skills you developed in this research role. The most important thing to remember is that what makes a strong application is your ability to reflect and talk about these experiences. Not your job title. Personally, I am relieved about that because I have had some amazing clinical experiences as a teaching assistant, but I didn't want my job role of "only" being a teaching assistant to weaken my application. A final source of clinical experience that I am very interested in is talking about your lived experience of mental health difficulties. Whether you've personally engaged with mental health services, being a carer or your lived experience of being from an underrepresented background. You can talk about this in your personal statement, but it is flat out critical that you reflect on how these experiences have shaped you, how they would help you cope with the demands of training as well as what you've learnt from them. Of course, only talk about what you're comfortable discussing in your clinical interview. As a podcast host and psychology author, this is something I am very interested in. Since a lot of the content in my book, Healing As a Survivor, is based on my interactions and what I learnt through my rape counselling and so much of that can be applied to clinical practice. There's a lot I can talk about, but I would only pick one or two things to discuss on a personal statement. As well as something that I am realising now is that I am not sure what I would be comfortable talking about in a job interview. I know when it comes down to it, I would be comfortable because I basically talk about my trauma for a living and I am inviting those conversations, but at the end of the day, you need to do what's best for you. If you have lived experience, but you would get distressed talking about it in an interview then don't add it to your application. You are a brilliant, compassionate and dedicated aspiring psychologist. There will be other ways to show a selector how amazing you are. How Do You Link Clinical Experience to the Role of a Trainee and Clinical Psychology Competencies? Once you're identified the clinical experiences that you want to talk about in your personal statement, or as a way to help narrow down the experience you want to reflect on, you need to explicitly link your clinical experience to the qualities and core competencies that selectors would expect of a trainee clinical psychologist. This means that you need to show the selector how your skills and experience have prepared you for the role of being a trainee. You can do this by showing in your personal statement that you understand the role of what a clinical psychologist does beyond the traditional talking therapy, as well as you need to explain why clinical psychology is what you want to do instead of research or other therapeutic roles. Equally, you need to reflect on how your experiences have developed your clinical skills in interventions, evaluation, consultation, teamwork, risk assessment, formulation, psychological assessment, professional conduct and using supervision. Personally, something that I realised because I'm writing this podcast episode is that the reason why my MSc in Clinical Psychology was marketed as unique and it should help us get onto the doctorate of clinical psychology is because of its use of role-plays. Very similar to the role-plays used in the clinical interviews for the doctorate. I'm mentioning this because it is very hard to get experience in psychological assessments and of course, you doing psychological assessments with real clients with mental health challenges will always be the gold standard. Yet to show my competencies in psychological assessment that I can continue to develop on the doctorate, I might reflect on these role plays and what I learnt. As well as I could tap into my lived experience of undergoing the psychological assessment for my rape counselling. Furthermore, something that is flat out critical to talk about in your personal statement is the National Health Service. Doctorate courses want to see that you're passionate about working in the NHS as well as that you understand how it works. Including the current issues, how services are structured and pressures within the NHS. A few final pieces of information for this section is when writing about your clinical experience in your personal statement, it can be immensely useful for you to talk about the following situations. Application of psychological theory in clinical practice, so you should talk about times when you've applied a theory to your work and what you learnt about the situation. This is even more useful if you can reflect on how the theory didn't perfectly fit a situation so this highlights your flexibility and critical thinking. Also, ethical dilemmas can be useful to talk alongside what you've learnt and your decision-making process. Moreover, reflect on difficult clinical cases or relationships because these can show how you react in these situations and highlight your clinical and interpersonal skills. Everyone is going to have a difficult case or client in the future, so the selectors need to understand whether you can handle it when the time comes. Therefore, it's useful to briefly outline the client and the situation, your involvement and the end result before you quickly start to write about what you learnt and your reflections. Finally, working in multidisciplinary teams is always useful because this is a key part of a clinical psychologist's job so selectors look for trainees who can communicate easily and effectively with other professionals, and what you learnt about collaborative care in the process. As well as reflect on the emotional impact of your clinical experience by reflecting on your strategies and how you learnt resilience, self-care and boundaries. This is really important for you to write about because clinical psychology is a demanding profession and there will be days when you are emotionally and mentally exhausted. It's important that the selectors understand that you are resilient and you joining the doctorate won't harm your mental health. This shows self-awareness too. Personally, I want to add here that you might have gotten to this point in the podcast episode and you're feeling a little overwhelmed because we only have 3000-characters to cover so much ground. I completely agree and I am concerned that I won't be able to pick the "perfect" examples that demonstrate all the critical clinical and research skills that the selectors are looking for. In response to that, I would say let's all stop for a few moments, take some deep breaths and relax. Towards the end of the episode, I do break down how to approach your writing so you don't get overwhelmed and you feel confident in writing your personal statement. Also, please remember that you shouldn't let the fear stop you. More on that later. Explain How Your Values Align with Clinical Psychology in Your Personal Statement If you’ve been around clinical psychology for a while, like at university or in the workplace, then you’ve likely seen that clinical psychology attracts a certain subgroup of people. The type of people who want to work in clinical psychology tend to be empathetic, compassionate, respectful towards others, they’re responsible, they show professionalism and integrity and more. This is important for your personal statement because clinical psychology is very much a values-driven profession, and it’s all well and good you saying that you have these values. You need to show the selectors that your personal values align with clinical psychology. Some other values in clinical psychology are commitment to inclusion, equity as well as anti-oppressive practice. Also, you need to show curiosity towards evidence-based practice and psychological theory. Furthermore, a personal statement is about showing who you are, not only what you can do. Therefore, instead of just saying that you’re passionate about inclusion, you might write “working in a youth service for LGBT+ clients deepened my understanding of how systemic discrimination can affect engagement with mental health services”. When it comes to me writing about my values, I might write something along the lines of “I found my core values of curiosity and compassion were vital in building rapport with a challenging client who was initially hostile towards new people. I believe these values developed through my experience working with SEN students where I saw firsthand how genuine respect and curiosity and start to build trust,” Ultimately, what’s important in your personal statement is that you reflect on how your research and/ or clinical experiences have reinforced or shaped the values that are important in clinical psychology. As well as your personal statement should highlight how you embody the core values of a clinical psychologist. Remember Structure, Authenticity and Clarity in Your Personal Statement The final main point that we need to remember when writing our personal statement is that it needs to be clearly written and well structured so that it flows smoothly as well as there are logical transitions. Now, I will always remember the start of my academic placement year during my undergraduate degree because I was handed a literature review to finish off and I read it and it was a little confusing. The placement student before me had written a lot but it didn't flow smoothly and there were no logical transitions. It actually made the literature review really difficult to read and it was hard for me to get absorbed into the subject material. This isn't what you want during your personal statement because the very last thing you want, even on a subconscious level, is for the selector to get to the end of your personal statement (if they make it to the end at all) and breathe a sigh of relief that it's over. You want them to almost enjoy reading your personal statement and you want them to see you as a potential clinical psychologist, so they admit you to their course. Your structure, your clarity and your authenticity is part of how you do that. Another tip is that you need to avoid overly academic, generic or vague statements because vivid and reflective examples will make your personal statement stronger. In other words, don't write "I've always wanted to help people" or "I want to make the world a better place". Be more reflective and be more specific in your examples. Whilst I'll talk more about this in the "How to Approach Your Writing" section of the podcast episode, you need to show your real voice and your unique journey to becoming a clinical psychologist as this shows your authenticity. As well as stick to the prompt and stay within the character limits. This is actually a great tip because this will help you be brutal when you're cutting down your first draft. If a word or sentence doesn't specifically answer the question, cut it. How Do You Approach Writing Your Personal Statement for a Doctorate of Clinical Psychology Application? This is definitely the section that I've been looking forward to writing, because after seeing all the different things that you have to include and reflect on to impress selectors, I am a little overwhelmed. Thankfully, this next section will help us to approach the writing of the personal statement in a calm methodological way so we shouldn't get too overwhelmed. Yet I also want to mention that one reason why this is overwhelming is because we place a lot of importance on it. For example, like myself, you probably really, really want to get onto the doctorate of clinical psychology. You want to get onto the clinical training and you want to be a step closer to becoming the clinical psychologist that you've always dreamed of. It's why a lot of us started studying psychology after all. However, whilst you should try your hardest with your personal statement and you should try to move heaven and earth to give yourself the best possible chance to get onto the doctorate, remember that it doesn't define you. As well as like I wrote in a Beyond The Lecture book previously, it's useful to have a backup plan because there's only a 20% success rate for getting onto the doctorate. Just bear that in mind and please don't plan your entire life around getting onto the doctorate because it will only make the rejection worse if it comes. Anyway, when it comes to writing your personal statement, it's immensely useful for you to plan your statement carefully. This includes breaking down the process into more manageable steps, like reflection, drafting, editing and feedback, as well as revisiting the personal statement with fresh eyes can help you to improve the clarity and quality of your statement. Personally, in addition to finishing this podcast episode this week, I am also going to pick the university courses that I want to apply for. In the UK, you're allowed to apply for four courses for the Doctorate of Clinical Psychology and three courses for the Doctorate of Educational Psychology. Then I'll look at each university's course page, make notes about the main approaches and other things I need to know so I can tailor my statement to each course, and then I'll create a list of clinical and research experiences that I might want to talk about. That's it for this week. It is a lot to some extent but I am not reflecting, I am not writing and this helps to make it more manageable. Additionally, to help reduce the overwhelm. Remember that you cannot write about everything and all of your experiences, so it's best if you only pick 3 or 4 key learnings and link them to a specific aspect of training. I just realised that I need to think about the sort of experiences that I want to reflect on because I just tried to list some initial thoughts but I couldn't. That's useful to know because it shows me I need to do extra preparation in this area. As well as whilst there is no perfect structure to a personal statement, a common rule-of-thumb that I've heard is to do a 60% and 40% split in favour of clinical experience over research experience. The next step is planning your personal statement. For this step, you can write a list of your biggest lessons learnt, your current clinical competencies and why you want to be a clinical psychologist. Something that is very difficult for a lot of people to write about, myself included. I have no idea off the top of my head about why I want to be a clinical psychologist, but I know when I get writing, my reasons will just flow out. Other people might find the "pub" analogy useful. This is a method where you imagine yourself sitting with close friends down the pub, you're talking to them about why you want to be a clinical psychologist and this method helps you to be authentic with your reasons. It is your authenticity that will help your personal statement sound natural, not rhythmic and it will engage your reader. After you've planned your personal statement, you can write a first draft. It's recommended that you just write a free first draft so don't worry about character limits or being too concise and just let it flow out of you. Allow all your lessons learnt, your reflections and your experiences to flow onto the paper and then you can ruthlessly cut down your first draft later on. You need to be very brutal in your cutting down because remember, you only have 3,000 characters. Afterwards, you can get feedback from trusted friends, family members and others for feedback, then you can redraft until you're happy with it. It can be useful to send your personal statement to non-psychology people because they're the best at telling you if something isn't clear. If a non-psychology person can understand your personal statement then a selector definitely will. Nonetheless, a key element of your personal statement is your authenticity and your uniqueness because it's important to allow your values, your personality and your voice to come through. This helps you to highlight your unique interests, strengths and how they align with clinical psychology. This is important because you need to bear in mind that when receiving feedback, you can effectively use it to refine your statement, but it is flat out critical that you don't dilute your uniqueness and voice. Finally, for this section, it's okay if you want to reflect on areas that you need further development on and any weaknesses that you have, because this shows a readiness to learn as well as self-awareness. Just don't make this section too long and make sure you highlight everything that you can do. Also, remember confidentiality so you always avoid names and identifiable details in your statement. On the whole, when approaching the writing of your personal statement, it's important that your final statement sounds like you and it reflects your unique journey. As well as it's very likely that you won't be fully satisfied but at some point, you do just need to send it off. Do not allow the fear and the perfectionism to make you miss the deadline. What to Avoid on Your Clinical Psychology Personal Statement? Moving onto the final section of this detailed episode, let's look at the mistakes that we need to avoid. For example, the first mistake is something that I am very likely to be guilty of because I've done it so much in the past. You need to answer the question. In essence, you need to make sure that every single sentence, every single example and every single point in your personal statement explicitly connects to the question that the university is asking you. This is even more important because you only have 500 words to make yourself seem flat out amazing to the selector. Only 500 words to get onto a very competitive university course. You cannot afford to waste a single word or character, so make sure everything answers the question. Do not waffle on about something that will not help you. I might be talking more to myself there. A second mistake to avoid is retelling your duties or experiences without any reflection. This is a problem because anyone can do what you do and to be honest, most people have. Every single person applying to the doctorate has been working in mental health for at least 12 months; your experiences are nothing new and probably not even that interesting in the grand scheme of things. What makes your personal statement unique, interesting and actually shows that you would make a great clinical psychologist after training is your reflections, your thoughts and what you personally learnt from those duties. This is why you shouldn't just list your experiences, make sure you follow up with your reflections. On the other hand, this is why it's important to be specific and very selective with your experiences. You won't be able to list all your duties, so it's best if you just pick a handful and reflect on them really well and show your clinical and research skills than pick ten or twenty and not reflect on them very much. Thirdly, a common mistake is to focus on only the clinical or only the research side of the doctorate. The reason why this is a mistake is because the Doctorate of Clinical Psychology highly values research and clinical experience. You cannot be a clinical psychologist without either, as well as if you only talk about one then it's likely that you're selling yourself very, very short. Nonetheless, when you're talking about your research experience, you need to show your compassion and your humanity. You can easily do this by talking about your clinical experience because if you only show your research experience then you might come off as cold or a stuffy academic that might be amazing at research, but lack the clinical experience that a trainee needs. Therefore, even if your experience is stronger in one domain over the other, make sure you talk about both. For example, I used to think that I had much, much stronger research skills than clinical skills, but even if that was true, I would need to make sure that I show my clinical skills too. At the end of the day, your personal statement is all about showing that you would make a great trainee. A great trainee has excellent research and clinical skills that they can grow and develop over the next three years. Personally, I'm not sure why anyone would make this next common mistake but people do, please make sure that your personal statement is positive. I know I might be biased because everyone tells me how positive I am, and most of them are surprised that I'm still so positive and happy despite my severe trauma, but your personal statement is not a space to be negative. Of course, you've likely experienced professional failure like everyone else, but keep your tone professional and positive. One reason for this is because you want to show the selector that you're focused on your professional and personal growth and that you're enthusiastic about clinical psychology. Don't come off as a bitter and deeply frustrated person. Penultimately, another common mistake is starting your personal statement too soon or too late. Starting too early is a problem because it might lead you to burnout as well as over-editing your statement whereas starting too late is a problem because you're going to get in a rush and your writing is likely to be more shallow. Personally, this is something that I am a bit concerned about and this is another reason why I'm breaking the writing process down into more manageable chunks, so I can draw out the process a bit more. On the other hand, I do think that a month-and-a-half will just fly by. Just please be aware of this common mistake. Lastly, I have two final tips for you. Be aware and avoid formulaic writing so make sure that you aren't writing "I did X and learnt Y" for every single sentence because that comes off as superficial and it weakens your personal statement. Instead you're aiming for something more narrative and you need to integrate your reflections so it almost reads like a journey and not a checklist of your experiences. As well as proofread your statement as much as possible to make sure that it reads smoothly, there are no grammar or spelling errors and there are no convoluted sentences. Personally, I am concerned about formulaic writing in my own personal statement, because like so many of you, I have never done this before so I'm unsure how to write it. This is another reason why it's important to do a free first draft so you can just write everything down and then you can polish it later. This polishing includes seeing how to reword your sentences and experiences so they don't read like a checklist. Careers in Psychology Conclusion We have learnt so much in this podcast episode that I am feeling excited, nervous and a little overwhelmed about all the work I’ve got to do ahead to write and polish and finalise my personal statement for the doctorate. Yet I am immensely grateful to all of you for giving me this opportunity to write and reflect on this topic, because I wouldn’t have done this without you. Therefore, as a brief recap of this episode, here are some things that you need to include or demonstrate in your personal statement: · Your reflective capacity · Self-awareness and insight · How your personal and professional values align with clinical psychology · Your research and clinical readiness · Your clinical experience · Any research experience so selectors know you’re involved in research and literate · Understand the training and role of a clinical psychologist · Show your uniqueness and voice · Be clear and authentic · Have a clear structure I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Clinical Psychology Second Edition. 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. Careers In Psychology References and Further Reading McLeod, S. (2025). DClinPsy Personal Statement Reflections. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/dclinpsy-application-guide-the-personal-statement.html Johnson, K., Fallon, V., & Dayus, B. (2026). The experiences of parenting during clinical psychology training: a qualitative study. The Journal of Mental Health Training, Education and Practice, 21(4), 308-322. Mooneapillay, E. U. (2025). Navigating Mental Health Difficulties as a Parent-Trainee on the Clinical Psychology Doctorate Programme (Doctoral dissertation, University of Hertfordshire). Parikh, T. (2025). Embedding Social Justice within DClinPsy Training: Experiences of Trainees and Qualified Clinical Psychologists (Doctoral dissertation, University of Hertfordshire). Bawa, H., Cudmore, K., Ong, L., & Knott, K. (2021, March). Barriers and improvements to the clinical psychology doctorate selection process. In Clinical Psychology Forum (Vol. 1, No. 339, pp. 16-20). British Psychological Society. Francis, D., & Scott, J. (2023, July). Racial equity and decolonisation within the DClinPsy: How far have we come and where are we going? Trainee clinical psychologists’ perspectives of the curriculum and research practices. In Clinical Psychology Forum (Vol. 366, No. Special Issue July 2023, pp. 32-42). British Psychological Society. Butler, C., Cove, J., & Sherbersky, H. (2024, February). Embedding systemic training into a DClinPsy programme: The possibilities and restraints. In Clinical Psychology Forum (No. 372, pp. 16-21). British Psychological Society. 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.

Typically when people think of addiction, they imagine someone who can't stop anything. It might be gambling, drugs or something else. Equally, people tend to trivialise addiction by calling someone addicted when they enjoy something like a cup of coffee, so they're "addicted" to caffeine. In reality, there is a lot more to addiction than most people know and addiction can destroy lives. Addiction can ruin families, friendships and relationships. Yet why? Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you'll learn what is addiction, what are the signs and symptoms and you'll develop a deeper understanding of what addiction actually is beyond the pop psychology "facts" we hear from the media and friends and family. If you enjoy learning about mental health, addiction and clinical psychology, then this will be a great episode for you. Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Biological Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What is Addiction? Addiction is when a person engages in a behaviour or uses a substance with rewarding effects, and it is these rewarding effects that compel the individual to repeat the activity despite the harmful consequences. For example, if we take heroin addiction, it is the high that the drug gives a person that compels them to continue to take heroin despite the negative impact it has on their health, finances and social relationships. Other addictive substances can include cocaine, inhalants, alcohol or nicotine, as well as behaviours like gambling are addictions too. Despite addictive behaviours or substances being wide ranging, addictive substances are united by the fact that they share key neurobiological features. Such as, all addictive substances are heavily involved in the brain’s reward pathways that use the neurotransmitter dopamine. As well as addictive behaviours and substances lead to the pruning of synapses in the prefrontal cortex, this is the brain region responsible for our higher-level functions, so this means our attention gets more focused on the cues related to the addictive substances or behaviour, and less on the non-addictive cues in our life. This is very similar to what happens in the brain with other highly motivated states. These neurobiological changes are important to be aware of because these brain changes cannot be undone after the addictive behaviour or substance use is stopped. Furthermore, to bridge the physical and psychological aspects of addiction, individuals with addictions repeat the addictive behaviour or substance use regardless of the physical or psychological harm that it causes them. And someone’s physical tolerance to a substance increases as the body adapts to its presence. This is a reason why substance abusers take stronger and stronger drugs over time because they need more of the drug to get the same high. One of the most alarming facts about this is that because addiction changes the brain’s executive functions, people with an addiction might not even be aware that their behaviour is causing problems for themselves and other people around them. This leads to the pursuit of the pleasurable effects of the behaviour or substance being a dominant activity over time. Personally, this is a good example of why I wanted to deep dive and learn more about addiction. Since I live in an area of poverty and I understand that mental health difficulties and addiction are more common in poverty areas, but as an aspiring psychologist, I don’t know that much about addiction. As well as whenever I see mental health jobs in addictions services, my lack of knowledge is possibly one of the reasons why I don’t get an interview. Therefore, constantly researching and learning things about psychology is important because it allows you to grow your knowledge, you can talk about this knowledge in job applications and in interviews and hopefully, it will help you in the future. As well as learning about addiction will hopefully help develop our understanding, empathy and compassion towards people with addictions. Also, because after this podcast episode, we’ll understand what addictions actually are and what they involve, we’ll be able to challenge the myths and misconceptions that others have about addiction. For example, we now understand that addiction causes physiological changes in the brain that makes someone focus on the addictive substance even more, so that’s one reason why it’s so difficult to stop. In addition, substance misuse as well as gambling disorders are complex mental health conditions because they impact the motivation, reward, reinforcement as well as memory systems in the brain. Since these conditions are characterised by social impairment, disruption to everyday activities, cravings, relationships and impaired control over usage. This is one explanation as to why continued usage of addictive behaviours and substances can be harmful to work, school and relationships. Building upon mental health conditions for a moment, when someone has substance use disorders or shows gambling behaviours, it’s likely that they will also have another mental health condition. Such as, depression or anxiety. This is important to be aware of because depression and anxiety and addiction all use different areas of the brain. Therefore, you cannot use addiction treatments to treat the depression or anxiety and vice versa. You need to treat each condition separately. Personally, this reminds me of transdiagnostic approaches to mental health. In essence, this is when we recognise that different mental health conditions have similar underlying mechanisms and factors. Like both depression and anxiety disorders impair emotional regulation and so on. Yet like everything in psychology, it’s important to understand that everything also needs to be treated individually as depression and addiction shows us. This is another reason why I really like formulation where you tailor the psychological intervention to the individual. Instead of simply saying because you have depression, this intervention will work for you because it always works for depression. Therefore, this is a useful reminder that whenever we approach our clinical work, we must focus on the individual with their unique challenges, conditions and reasons for engaging and maintaining the addictive substance use or behaviour. Additionally, all addictions can induce feelings of failure as well as a sense of hopelessness in people, especially as it promotes feelings of shame and guilt. Thankfully, research shows that recovery is the rule rather than an exception and there are a lot of routes to recovery. For example, a person with an addiction can recover on their own through improving their social, psychological and physical functioning without the help of others. This is called so-called natural recovery. Other people with addictions can find it useful to engage with peer-based or community networks, or they can go through clinical-based recovery through addiction services. Like with all mental health conditions, the road to recovery is never straight. If you want to see a firsthand account of this from a trauma perspective, please check out my book Healing as a Survivor. Since people with addictions will start to recover, then they’ll relapse, then they’ll recover some more for a longer time and then another relapse and so on. As well as recovery isn’t the end of the road, because the person with the former addiction still has to maintain their recovery. Even though research shows that a person who is in remission for their addiction for five years shows no greater likelihood of relapsing than the rest of the general population. There’s even some research from neuroscientists that’s synaptic density is gradually restored after recovery. What are the Types of Addiction? I wanted to include this next section because after writing the majority of this podcast episode, I’ve realised that addiction is more of an umbrella term for a wide range of addictive disorders. As well as throughout the podcast episode, we learn about addictive substances and behaviours, and I think we need to realise that when we talk about addiction we are not only talking about cocaine, heroin and gambling addictions. There is a lot more to addiction than those three addictive substances and behaviour. For example, when it comes to substance use disorders, there are ten distinct disorders and all of these share the same defining features of addiction. The addictive substance is directly as well as intensely involved in the reward and reinforcement systems of the brain so they stimulate the compulsive use that typically leads to the neglect of normal activity with negative consequences. The only real difference between the ten substance use disorders is that the withdrawal symptoms differ in major ways, and some disorders don’t have withdrawal symptoms. Some examples of substance use disorders include alcohol use disorder because alcohol is a brain depressant, whereas caffeine intoxication is characterised by restlessness, nervousness, flushed face and muscle twitching. A final type of substance use disorder is sedative, hypnotic or anxiolytic use disorder and this is an addiction to sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication because these agents are brain depressants. Whilst there are seven other substance use disorders, I wanted to introduce you to the idea that addiction covers so much more than cocaine, heroin and gambling. Speaking of gambling, addiction isn’t limited to biochemical substances and they can involve behaviours that provide opportunities for immediate reward. This is because the fast feedback that happens with these activities, like gambling, can cause a hobby to turn into a compulsive pursuit of the reward that can lead a person to neglect life goals, activities and this leads to negative consequences. Interestingly, whilst gambling addiction is the only “properly” recognised form of addictive behaviour at the moment, there are some behaviours that are being studied as possible behavioural addictions. Such as gaming, pornography, internet gambling and smartphone use. Since these behaviours imply that a person gets an immediate reward from the behaviour, but researchers and practitioners aren’t sure if these behaviours meet all the criteria for addictive behaviours. What Causes Addiction? One of the most interesting things about addiction is that it is a multi-faceted condition. This means that there are multiple factors that go into the development and maintenance of addiction for any given person. This also means that it is impossible to predict who will and who will not develop compulsive substance use or gambling behaviour. Of course, we can imply who might be likely but we cannot state it outright. As well as it’s a lot more accurate to consider risk factors for the development of addictions instead of direct causes. Before we move on to the biological, psychological and social risk factors of addiction, I want to be brutally honest with you wonderful readers or listeners. Even though I have never used drugs in my life, there was a time in August 2023 when I would have happily used drugs and become addicted to them. I’d honestly forgotten about it until I was writing this podcast episode. Since August 2023 was when my mental health started to collapse after a decade of abuse and living in fear for my life. I wanted to end my own life, I was self-harming and I was in so much emotional pain. I just wanted the pain to stop, and when I was filling out the university mental health support referral form, there was a question about drug use. In the referral form, I wrote very bluntly that if someone offered me drugs in that moment, I would have taken them because I didn’t care what harm they did to me or the long-term consequences. I just wanted to feel something. All I knew in that time because of the extremely negative mental health was emotional pain and numbness. I wanted to feel something else and drugs were an answer for me. Therefore, whilst I never actively looked for or took drugs, I would have seriously considered it. What are the Biological Risk Factors of Addiction? In addition, some risk factors for addiction include gender because males are more likely than females to develop substance use disorder and the so-called gender gap might be narrowing for alcohol use disorder. As well as females experience the effects of intoxication at lower doses of alcohol compared to males. Another biological risk factor for addiction includes physiological factors because the variations between people’s liver enzymes that metabolise substances are known to influence a person’s risk of alcohol use disorder. A final biological risk factor is genes. Since whilst estimates vary, research suggests that genetic factors contribute to around half of a person’s risk for developing a substance use disorder. This includes the nature of a person’s body’s hormonal response to stress, as well as the brain’s receptors for the neurotransmitter dopamine. What are the Environmental Risk Factors for Addiction? In terms of the environmental or social risk factors for developing addiction, the easy accessibility of alcohol or other addictive substances in your home, community, work or school increases the risk of repeated use. This is one of the reasons why I didn’t take drugs back in August 2023 because I didn’t have easy access to drugs, but I am sort of aware that other people in my local community do judging from local stories and official data. A second environmental risk factor is employment status because if you have a job and you develop the skills for employment then this exerts pressure for stability as well as employment provides psychological and financial rewards that decrease addiction risk. This is another reason why addiction is rather high in my local area because unemployment is high. This means that individuals turn towards addictive substances and behaviours to get the psychological rewards that they desire, because they don’t have access to employment but they have access to drugs. From a systemic viewpoint, that is a very sad fact about society. That in certain areas, it is easier for people to get illegal drugs than it is for people to get legal employment. Common sense would surely suggest that it should be the other way round, and this is why investing in local communities is so important. It’s important that governments invest in people, local infrastructure and jobs in deprived areas so people don’t have to turn to drugs to get psychological rewards. In terms of peer groups as a risk factor for addiction, we know that humans are a very social species. This is why we’re strongly influenced by our peer group because we want to fit in, we want to be a group member and we want to protect our social standing. This means that we might adopt addictive behaviours from the ingroup, especially during adolescence. Whereas positive social relationships can be strong protective factors against substance use. Finally, family factors are a powerful risk factor for addiction because having a sibling or parent with an addictive disorder and a lack of parental support or supervision increases risk of addiction. Also, physical, sexual and emotional abuse can increase the risk. Yet having a strong family relationship, getting married or taking on childcare responsibilities can decrease risk of addiction as well. What are the Psychological Risk Factors of Addiction? Whilst a myth about addiction is that there is an “addictive personality” because as we can see addiction is caused by the interaction of a wide range of different risk factors, personality factors can be risk factors. Since sensation-seeking and impulsivity have been linked to gambling and substance use disorders, as well as impulsivity might be related to a person’s risk of relapse in particular. Additionally, mental health conditions, like anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and attention deficit disorder, can increase the risk of addiction. As can difficulties in managing strong emotions. Finally, when a person experiences abuse and trauma, especially significant adverse experiences in early life, can increase the risk of a person developing addiction, because the trauma overwhelms a person’s ability to cope by adding to the burden of stress and sensitising the brain’s pathways to distress and danger. Drugs and other addictive substances can be seen as an alternative way to cope in the individual’s eyes. Personally, it is this final psychological risk factor that I am very interested in. Not only because this is one of the reasons why I genuinely considered using drugs in 2023, but because it underlines the needs for compassion and understanding when supporting people with addictions. I’m also a massive fan of comedian Mae Martin who was a drug addict for much of their teenage years and early adulthood. Whenever Mae talks about their addiction experience, they talk about how they just needed some love and support to help them overcome their addiction. As well as they used drugs to overcome the difficulties in their lives. My point is that sending people to prison for using drugs isn’t going to break the vicious cycle of using addictive substances or behaviours, because going to prison isn’t going to help the person find more adaptive ways to get the psychological rewards associated with addictions. This is another reason why learning about addiction is important because by understanding what addiction actually is and how it works, we can better understand how to treat it. Without falling into the classic traps of listening to media and political sources that don’t know better about addiction so they sprout myths and misconceptions for their own gains. What are Symptoms of Addiction? The fundamental core of all addictive disorders is the engagement in an activity or the repeated use of a substance that leads to distress or impairment in daily functioning. That is the core symptom of all addictive disorders. Yet from a diagnostic viewpoint, for someone to be diagnosed with an addiction then they need to have at least two of the following clinical features. For example, their addictive substance or behaviour needs to disrupt their obligations at home, school or work, the substance or activity needs to continue despite the interpersonal and social problems that it causes the person, and there is an unsuccessful effort to cut down even if there is a desire to cut down. In addition, some other clinical features of addiction include a person using the addictive substance or doing the activity in larger amounts or for a longer time period than was intended. For example, we often hear stories about how people get addicted to pain medication because they only intended to use it until an injury was healed but then they get addicted and they end up using the pain medication after the injury’s healed. This is an example of using an addictive substance longer than intended. Another feature is a person has a strong desire or craving to engage in the activity or use the substance. Also, a significant amount of a person’s time is taken up by the pursuit of the substance or activity. Some final clinical features of addiction are that the addictive substance or behaviour occurs in situations where it is physically risky, a person’s participation in important work, recreational or social activities decreases or stops because of the addiction, the person continues to use the substance or engage in the activity despite knowing the psychological or physical problems that it’s causing or making worse. Also, withdrawal occurs and this manifests either as the presence of physiological withdrawal symptoms or the person takes another related substance to block the withdrawal effects. As well as tolerance occurs. This is when the person needs a markedly increased amount of the substance to achieve the desired effect or there is a significantly diminished effect for the same amount of the substance. On the whole, like all mental health conditions, there are different severities of addiction depending on the number of clinical features present. For instance, if someone has two or three symptoms then this suggests that they have a mild addiction, if they have four or five symptoms then they have a moderate addiction and if they have six or more symptoms then they have a severe addiction. Clinical Psychology Conclusion In a future podcast episode, we’ll explore how addictions are treated but considering that this was the first time that we’ve covered addiction on the podcast, I am really happy with this episode. It’s been a lot of fun to learn, understand and explore what addiction actually is and how it works. In addition, now that we know this information, if you’re an aspiring psychologist or someone who wants to work in mental health settings, then this information might help you sound more knowledgeable so you can get your foot in the door to a job. Then you can expand your clinical knowledge of addiction that way. Equally, if you’re a qualified psychologist then I hope this has made you think about your own assumptions and what you thought you knew about addiction, and whether you want to take some Continued Professional Development courses on addiction in the future. As a brief reminder at the end of this episode, addiction is when a person engages in a behaviour or uses a substance with rewarding effects, and it is these rewarding effects that compel the individual to repeat the activity despite the harmful consequences. For example, if we take heroin addiction, it is the high that the drug gives a person that compels them to continue to take heroin despite the negative impact it has on their health, finances and social relationships. Other addictive substances can include cocaine, inhalants, alcohol or nicotine, as well as behaviours like gambling are addictions too. I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Biological Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Alimoradi, Z., Lotfi, A., Lin, C. Y., Griffiths, M. D., & Pakpour, A. H. (2022). Estimation of behavioral addiction prevalence during COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Current addiction reports, 9(4), 486-517. Ceceli, A. O., Bradberry, C. W., & Goldstein, R. Z. (2022). The neurobiology of drug addiction: cross-species insights into the dysfunction and recovery of the prefrontal cortex. Neuropsychopharmacology, 47(1), 276-291. Dang, J., Tao, Q., Niu, X., Zhang, M., Gao, X., Yang, Z., ... & Zhang, Y. (2022). Meta-analysis of structural and functional brain abnormalities in cocaine addiction. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13, 927075. Ferrer-Pérez, C., Montagud-Romero, S., & Blanco-Gandía, M. C. (2024). Neurobiological theories of addiction: a comprehensive review. Psychoactives, 3(1), 35-47. Flannery, J. S., Burnell, K., Kwon, S. J., Jorgensen, N. A., Prinstein, M. J., Lindquist, K. A., & Telzer, E. H. (2024). Developmental changes in brain function linked with addiction-like social media use two years later. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 19(1), nsae008. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/addiction Nikolinakou, A., Phua, J., & Kwon, E. S. (2024). What drives addiction on social media sites? The relationships between psychological well-being states, social media addiction, brand addiction and impulse buying on social media. Computers in Human Behavior, 153, 108086. Pickard, H. (2022). Is addiction a brain disease? A plea for agnosticism and heterogeneity. Psychopharmacology, 239(4), 993-1007. Robinson, T. E., & Berridge, K. C. (2025). The incentive-sensitization theory of addiction 30 years on. Annual review of psychology, 76(1), 29-58. Tolomeo, S., & Yu, R. (2022). Brain network dysfunctions in addiction: a meta-analysis of resting-state functional connectivity. Translational psychiatry, 12(1), 41. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

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

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

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

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

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

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