Clinical Psychology Reflection Collection: 60 Thoughts On Psychotherapy, Mental Health, Abnormal Psychology and More: Clinical Psychology Reflections, #3.5

INTRODUCTION

Clinical Psychology, at least in the United Kingdom, places a massive emphasis on the reflective practitioner. Basically, encouraging people in clinical psychology to be reflective and learn from their experiences.

And I absolutely love clinical psychology and it is truly an amazing area of psychology. Since clinical psychology takes facts and theory and applies them to real life so we can help people.

That is why I love this area.

As a result of this passion, I'm studying a Psychology With Clinical Psychology degree at the University of Kent, and in my second year I had to do a reflective log. 

Allowing me to develop my reflective skills for my possible future career, and I really enjoyed reflecting on different topics within and outside clinical psychology.

However, the reason I'm writing this book is because the feedback from my university lecturer was extremely positive and she encouraged me to continue these reflections.

So the idea of a book of clinical psychology reflections got born as well as whilst this is very different from my normal fact based psychology books. All my thoughts and feelings are based on my experience and research into clinical psychology.

This is going to be great fun!

Who Is This Book For?

At first, I had no idea but after writing these reflections, this book is definitely for university psychology students AND professionals.

Students will love this because these reflections will give you great perspectives and topics into areas of clinical psychology that aren't talked about in lectures. (They never were for me!)

Then professionals will greatly enjoy this book too because these reflections can act as great reminders and they can inspire too.

In fact, most of these reflections are rather inspiring for everyone.

Overall, this book of reflections can help you learn more and deepen your understanding of clinical psychology.

Who Am I?

I always love to know who writes the nonfiction I read.

Therefore, in case you're like me, I'm Connor Whiteley. The author over 15 psychology books as of June 2021 including an extremely popular clinical psychology book. 

Also, I'm the host of the weekly The Psychology World Podcast available on all major Podcast apps and YouTube. Talking about psychology and psychology news.

Finally, I'm a university psychology student at the University of Kent, England. Doing a psychology degree that has a large focus on clinical psychology.

So BUY NOW and let's start reflecting together!

THE PURPOSE AND MANDATE OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY

This reflection was initially inspired by the integrity reflection later in the book. But as I love this idea so much I needed to bring this forward.

In addition, there is no ‘official’ mandate of clinical psychology so of course this is my own opinions and thoughts.

Therefore, if you’re a clinical psychologist then you know it is our job as clinical psychologists or people interested in clinical psychology to help improve people’s lives and to alleviate psychological distress.

Now, I want to turn this into a mandate because this is the entire point of clinical psychology.

Since clinical psychology’s entire existence comes back to this purpose. Without this purpose, there is no clinical psychology.

Because everything from the clinical research to the therapist to the clinical paperwork it all comes back to improving people’s lives.

If there were no researchers to research cases and treatments for depression, anxiety or any other mental health conditions. Then it would be next to impossible for the practitioner to help improve their client’s lives and alleviate their psychological distress.

Yet these researchers are and must be guided by this mandate. Because if their research doesn’t help distress or improve lives. Then I am sorry to say it is of no use to clinical psychology.

Not because it is bad research (necessarily) but because it doesn’t support the clinical psychology mandate.

Applying this mandate to clinical psychologists and other practitioners, it is vital that they are and must be guided by this mandate. Because everything a clinical psychologist does is in our client's interest. From advocacy to conferring with our team members to the therapy itself.

Everything a clinical psychologist does is to help alleviate their client’s psychological distress and improve their lives.

If a clinical psychologist has done the mandate then they’re done an amazing job.

It isn’t always easy to help alleviate psychological distress or improve lives. But it is amazing when you can.

And if you follow this mandate and use it as an internal compass then hopefully this will help you in clinical psychology.

I never ever say these things to scare you.

I say them to make you realise clinical psychology is an amazing area of psychology to love and want to work in.

So please remember the mandate and read on, there are a lot of amazing things to reflect on...

SHOULD PSYCHOLOGISTS BE ABLE TO PRESCRIBE MEDICATION?

Today on my podcast The Psychology World Podcast, I did an episode on the for and against arguments for should psychologists be able to prescribe medication as treatment.

So, the episode introduced the background information and the for and against arguments.

Personally, I found the background information rather interesting because in 5 states of the USA psychologists can prescribe medication, and I discussed the training required as well.

Therefore, I think it’s interesting to think about psychology in these states has developed.

However, this raises a number of valid questions about prescribing privileges.

Why hasn’t this spread to other states or countries?

Could it mean it doesn’t work?

What other factors could lead to these States to adopt prescribing privileges? Such as: a shortage of psychiatrists or prescribing doctors?

Additionally, I really liked exploring the topic because the BPS have raised this debate in The Psychologist in 2020. And if psychologists don’t engage with the topic then others will make the decisions about prescribing rights for psychologists without their input.

Afterwards, I explained the pros and cons of prescribing rights. In my opinion, I can understand why prescribing privileges could be a good idea. As it might increase access to mental health treatment and it could free up doctors, as I said on the podcast.

However, in addition to the other disadvantages, I mentioned in the episode. My central concern still remains. As a profession, we need to move towards Formulation being engrained at every level of a service, and we must focus on the biopsychosocial model. I have discussed this in my Formulation In Psychotherapy book and Lucy Johnstone says the same.

So, my concern is if we allow psychologists to get prescribing rights, then could this push psychology backwards to the biomedical model?

And we place less of an emphasis on psychological and social factors as we can simply give medication to solve the condition?

Again, it might only be a school of thought within psychology, but surely that’s still a lot of psychologists?

Regardless of what happens psychologists need to act in the interest of their clients and not in the interest of ourselves or the service. We are there to improve lives and alleviate psychological distress.

GENETIC TREATMENTS FOR MENTAL CONDITIONS

This week for my biological psychology module seminar, I had to read a paper called: Plomin and College (2001): Beyond Inheritance and I really wanted to reflect on this paper. As it mentioned Clinical psychology in a passing note.

Due to it mentioned that if psychology can find specific genes. Then it’s possible to find genetically based treatment options for mental conditions.

Personally, I can understand the logic as it would be amazing, cheaper and much more effective than current biological treatment. If we had a magic bullet where we could give someone a drug that targets specific genes, and the mental conditions goes away.

However, as my podcast audience and readers know, I am a massive opponent to the biomedical model. And this is what this idea would mean. It would be reductionist and propose that everything is down to ‘simple’ genetics.

Whilst, completely informing the cognitive and social factors because how would a genetic treatment help a depressed person with a negative cognitive style or someone with a bad parental relationship?

Therefore, in my opinion, I love the simple idea of this tiny paragraph. As it could save people time as you might only need to take this treatment one. It could save services money as this treatment is a magic bullet. As well as it could prevent the service or organisation from confounding the mental condition. Since the client spends virtually no time with the service.

On the other hand, I strongly believe in this is a reductionist way of thinking. That reinforces the biomedical model. And it neglects the social and cognitive factors that are just as important as the genetic factors.

Therefore, I want to wrap p this entry by stressing the importance of the biopsychosocial model. So, we acknowledge the different factors and how they interact.

Also, I want to emphasise the importance of formulation as instead of creating a magic bullet for the type of condition. Where we’re label people. We need to acknowledge that they are a person and we need to tailor make a treatment for them and their unique difficulties.

THE IMPORTANCE OF REFLECTION IN CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Whilst I talk about the reflective practitioner in my Clinical Psychology book, I wanted to do a bit more of a personal reflection on why reflecting is important in clinical psychology.

There are two angles I want to perceive this from. And yes, I think after my perception reflection, I will mention it from time to time because it is important.

Firstly, I want to take this reflection from the viewpoint of a psychology student that is passionate about clinical psychology.

Therefore, it’s important to reflect on what we’ve learnt in clinical psychology because it helps us to have a deeper understanding of the topic. And it helps with deep processing from cognitive psychology which helps out memory.

However, the most important reason to reflect is because we are the next generation of clinical psychologists. So, if we reflect on something and we know it needs to change then we can.

We have the power to do that, but without reflecting and knowing something needs to be improved we can’t.

Personally, if you’ve read my Formulation In Psychotherapy book, the other reflections or listen to The Psychology World Podcast. You know how passionate I am about coming away from the biomedical model and ensuring formulation is used. Yet if I hadn’t reflected or learnt about this amazing topic, I wouldn’t be able to have this opinion.

Therefore, I really want to encourage psychology students to reflect on what they’ve learnt not just for their own education but for their own thinking too.

Moving onto the other angle, I want to discuss why it’s critical for clinical psychologists to reflect.

The main reason is really simple. It's all about improvement because as a field, clinical psychology must always be improving and hoping to improve.

As a result, clinical psychologists should reflect on the services they work in. Like, is the service confounding the client’s difficulties, is the service being as effective as it could, could they decrease the bureaucracy and so on.

All of these questions and more could help the service to improve and become even better at alleviating the psychological distress of the clients.

Equally, the clinical psychologists could reflect on a technique, and whilst this is more aimed towards the clinical psychologists in research. It can still apply to everyone because by reflecting on a technique you might pick up on a flaw or something the technique lacks. Meaning you might want to improve it allowing the field of clinical psychology to develop further.

For example, if you use a self-reported questionnaire to measure depression with your clients. But you feel as if it didn’t really explore the interpersonal relations as well as it could. You might want to improve it and a better, more holistic technique is always good.

This, as you can see in this example, it’s good to reflect on techniques clinical psychology uses because things can always be improved. And you