Welcome to this week’s edition of CDP News! We like to use this space to review recent happenings in and around the Center for Deployment Psychology, while also looking ahead to upcoming events. The first full week of April was another busy one and there’s plenty more on the horizon.
The CDP's weekly research update contains the latest news, journal articles and useful links from around the web. Some of this week's topics include:
● Does a therapist's reflective ability predict the accuracy of their self-evaluation of competence in cognitive behavioural therapy?
● Predictors of depression severity in a treatment-seeking sample.
It’s Wednesday afternoon, and I’m sitting, cross-legged, on a meditation cushion in the dayroom at a Veteran’s hospital. There are 13 Veterans sitting around the room; some of them are outpatients and some of them are participants in a residential PTSD program. Some of them are sitting on cushions, but most of them are in chairs. Another psychologist and a few psychology interns are there, too. We are all sitting in silence. About seven minutes into the final period of practice in our mindfulness group, the thought that I knew was coming finally presents itself, front and center, in my mind.
While conducting workshops for decades around the world for many different types of individuals, both professionals and laypeople, the answer to the question I frequently pose to attendees—“Who here had a week recently devoid of problems?” leads consistently to an absence of raised hands. We all have problems—some small, and unfortunately at times, some being quite overwhelming. Based on this common sense consensus, we would all further agree that it is not abnormal or unusual to have problems.
64 and 45
The median ages, respectively, of male and female users of VA benefits in 2014, according to an analysis released last month by the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics --Unique Veteran Users Report: FY 2014 (PDF).