Deployment Psychology Blog

Working in an active duty Department of Defense (DoD) Behavioral Health Clinic can be challenging, with busy patient loads, complex cases, limited administrative time, and frequent short notice tasks. It can be a recipe for burnout, and those of us working there are often encouraged to engage in “provider self-care.” Such self-care is intended to be a daily ritual with the hope that doing so will prevent burnout and keep the caregivers healthy and productive. I’m a fan of the daily self-care model. I have an active social life, I regularly engage in my hobbies, I read, I exercise, I have a healthy diet, and even go to yoga. Even with all this text book self-care sometimes tragedy and adversity can crash into the personal lives of the caregiver.

It’s Friday and that means it’s time for another edition of our weekly roundup of all the happenings in and around the Center for Deployment Psychology, CDP News. This week marked the conclusion of our latest iteration of the eight-day “Topics in Deployment Psychology” course. We’d like to thank all of our participants and presenters, both staff and guests. We certainly couldn’t have done it without you! It’s a lot of work for everyone, but it’s well worth the effort for such successful results.  One particular panel of note, after the enthuastic reception it received in our last iteration, we held another panel focusing on lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender in the military. It was a very thought provoking discussion and we’d like to extend a special thank you to all involved in making it happen.