Blog posts with the tag "Staff Perspective"

Staff Perspective: A Tour of the New Military Culture Homepage

Today we’re excited to unveil the newest version of our Military Culture homepage. The Military Culture section of our website is one of the most heavily trafficked and popular sections of the Center for Deployment Psychology’s website. So we revamped the homepage to ensure we were making this section as user-friendly and intuitive as possible. There’s so much great information in there, we want to make sure as many providers as possible are able to take full advantage of all of the resources contained within. Let’s take a quick tour!

Staff Perspective: Musing About Grief

Elizabeth Parins, Psy.D.

As we move through life, we accumulate experiences with death and grief, sometimes other’s grief and sometimes our own.  In 2014, my twin boys died the day they were born.  Their death propelled me into my own very personal experience of grief, but also heightened my awareness of other’s experiences with grief.   As I began searching for topics for this blog entry I kept coming back to grief.

Staff Perspective: Decreasing Risk Aversion in Service Members Who Have Deployed

If you spend any time talking candidly with a Veteran or active duty Service member who has deployed during recent military campaigns, you will shortly determine that they are generally hypervigilant and risk averse.  As a clinical psychologist working with Service members and Veterans who have deployed in support of OIFOEF, etc., I continue to realize anecdotal interventions to help address and decrease the negative impact and/or influence of disruptive post-deployment adjustment issues resulting from deployment experiences (to include trauma experiences).  This blog entry will address “risk aversion” (i.e., the post-deployed service member’s or veteran’s tendency to avoid things that, from their perspective, might put their safety or security at risk such as being in crowds, not having control of a situation, going places without plan, etc…).  This “protective” avoidance is extended to the Service member or Veteran’s family and/or loved ones and consequently, has a significant impact on their lives as well. 

Staff Perspective: Evidence-Based Care: Why Are Providers So Resistant to Treatments We Don’t Know?

Debra Nofziger, Psy.D.

While every provider may experience some initial discomfort with implementing an unfamiliar treatment, I am often surprised with how resistant many mental health providers are toward learning and implementing evidence-based treatments.  An article on this topic by Scott Lilienfeld and colleagues demonstrates this resistance, reasons for it, and potential ways to work through it.  I believe providers on all sides of this issue should read this article as a way to both consider another perspective and to clarify their own opinions.

Staff Perspective: Symptom Exacerbation When Using Evidence-Based Psychotherapies

When I was starting out with practicing EBPs, there was a part of me that was a little frightened by the prospect of guiding my clients toward their worst fears, and I was more than a little concerned that I wouldn’t be able to tolerate seeing them in distress. I had visions of my clients “falling apart”. Luckily, the training and supervision I received (and a decision to have faith in the data) helped me. I’ve gone on to learn, practice, and teach EBPs for a variety of issues, including both Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE) and Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) for PTSD.

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