2016 was a great year for the Center for Deployment Psychology. We held numerous training events, both face-to-face and virtual. We’re looking forward to doing even more in 2017. As we turn the calendar to a brand new year, we’d like to showcase a few of the exciting training opportunities coming up.
As we reach the close of 2016, we thought it would be a good opportunity to look back at some of the most popular blog entries from CDP faculty members. There are a wide-range of topics, from military families to provider resources to suicide, but they’re all well-worth checking out. We’ve got plenty more great entries planned for 2017, but in the meantime, here are 2016’s top 10!
In the late ‘90s I did not give much thought to preparing for a career in military psychology while I was in graduate school. It was only towards the end of my third year of school that I began to entertain the idea of a military internship, but even then my thoughts were not heavily centered on what courses I should take, what practicum I should pursue, what treatments did I need to learn, what specific disorders should I gain experience treating, or what I needed to know about military culture.
From the late 1760’s through 1780, Captain James Cook and his small fleet had fantastic adventures. His ships were small with relatively light crews who did not have particularly good health practices (this was the late 1700’s, so we’ll give them a pass since toothpaste and masculine-scented body wash weren’t invented yet). Yet, they circumnavigated the globe multiple times, visiting exotic locations like Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, Tahiti, and Alaska. Captain Cook and his crew are mostly remembered for their intrepid voyages and consequent additions to English sea charts, but they also achieved something even more remarkable for sailors at the time: almost none of them died of scurvy (Berwick, 2003) . How did he do it? He forced everyone on his ships to eat sauerkraut every day.
To “group” or not to “group”…. Have you ever found yourself asking that question as a provider? There is, of course, the general concept of group theory and what patients work best in a group and those that don’t. It can be easy to spot people who will not interact with others well, to one extreme or the other. But it can be harder as a provider to determine the more intricate question of what type of behavioral health problem can be better served in a group format instead of individual.