What Is Intervention In Clinical Psychology?

Everyone has off days where they just don’t want to do anything because they don’t feel like themselves. Most of the people were able to get by this phase while some may have a hard time in processing these overwhelming emotions and feelings that it took them a long time before realizing that they need to ask for help.

What is Clinical Psychology?

According to the American Psychological Association, Clinical Psychology is a specialty that provides continuing and comprehensive mental and behavioral health care for families and individuals. They also give consultation to agencies and communities, provides training, education and supervision about mental health. Clinical Psychology also relies on research in providing therapeutic regimens for their clients.

Clinical psychology is just one out of the broad branch of Psychology and encompasses all ages, multiple diversities and varied systems. It mainly focuses on diagnosing and treating mental, emotional and behavioral disorders that a person is experiencing. Substance abuse, depression, anxiety and eating disorders are just a few of the common disorders that is existent in the society.

How to be a Clinical Psychologist?

There are different requirements for each state or country in order to practice clinical psychology. Some states recognize and grant limited licensure to master’s educated psychological associates which allows them to work at a limited capacity. In order to practice it fully, it requires a doctorate degree in Psychology or in Philosophy major in Psychology. This often takes about five to seven years plus a year of internship to finish this degree. Many opted to be board-certified.

What Does a Clinical Psychologist Do?

Clinical psychologist is often found on clinical settings such as the psychiatric hospitals, general healthcare facilities and mental health clinic. There are many specializations that a clinical psychologist may focus on such as neuropsychology and the like. Many of the Clinical Psychologist opted to open a clinic of their own and do private practice. This might be a difficult task, but it is often fulfilling on their end.

Clinical psychologist helps treat mild mental disorders that are associated with the common mental health problems in the society such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and even bipolar disorders.

Clinical Psychology Interventions

There are various methods that clinical psychologists’ practice to provide therapy to their clients. Interventions are often actions that a person can perform to bring about change in their life. There are a wide variety of psychological interventions and are often directed towards various issues. The ultimate goal of these psychological interventions is to not only alleviate the symptoms that a person is experiencing but also find the root cause of the existing mental disorder and help them get pass through it if not, live through it.

Positive Psychology

This type of interventions is one of the most popular. This technique was pioneered by Dr. Matin Seligman and Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the 1990s, from the on it was used to treat various mental health problems. Positive psychology is uniquely solution focused. It is the study of various conditions and their processes that might have contributed to the flourishing or optimal functioning of people, groups and institutions. It works by improving whatever is already there and helps cultivate the inner strengths of a person.

The 5 key aspects of Positive psychology are:

  • Helps a person to look at life with optimism
  • Helps a person appreciate the “now”
  • Helps a person be able to accept and make peace with the past.
  • Helps a person to be more grateful with their life and forgiving themselves or other people for their harm done
  • Helps a person look beyond the momentary pleasure and pains of life.

Positive Psychology Interventions

Positive psychology interventions are a set of scientific tools and strategies that focuses on a person’s well-being, increasing happiness, positive cognitions and emotions. We listed down a few of the psychological interventions under positive psychology:

Savoring Positive Psychology interventions

This particular experience aims to increase a person’s level of happiness. It encourages one to grab every aspect of their experience – physical, mental, social, emotional and even sensory. This intervention is often associated with mindfulness strategies, but they are different in their own right.

Savoring interventions helps connect everyday experiences such as eating, smelling or even observing to focus to what we are consciously attending to. This strategy is used in treating depression and mood disorders.

Gratitude Interventions

Gratitude intervention helps evoke strong feelings of positivity in the person who gives it and the person who receives it. Gratitude interventions has two categories: Self-reflective and interactive methods.

  • Self-reflective interventions may be writing a gratitude journal or writing small notes everyday as a tool for self-expression.
  • Interactive methods by saying “thank you” or giving small tokens of appreciation to other people you care about.

Kindness Boosters

Everyone is born with innate kindness but only a few were able to possess such trait. Happiness and kindness go hand in hand and often complements each other. This intervention focuses on the compassion of a person by doing simple acts like buying someone a small token of love or appreciation, volunteering for charity work, donating to communities in need or just randomly helping a stranger in need. The goal of these activities is to promote happiness through altruistic and selfless contentment.

Empathy Positive Psychology interventions

Empathy-oriented interventions helps strengthen one’s positive emotions in interpersonal relationships. It forms deep social bonds that is essential for happiness and inner peace of a person. Activities such as self-love meditation and mindfulness practice were helpful in creating positive feelings towards themselves. This intervention focuses on building relationships through effective communication with each other and bridging the gap between self and others.

Optimistic interventions

From the name itself, optimistic interventions help create positive outcomes. It uses one’s imagination to direct their mind to positive thinking about themselves and others in life. This practice focuses on a person’s strength and achievements in a person’s life.

The Difference Between Clinical and Counseling Psychology

If you are interested in the field of psychology, determining the type of psychology will guide your path on the way to your dreams. These two terms are often used interchangeably both by professionals and lay person. When people struggle on their daily lives, they either go to a clinical psychologist or counseling psychologist for help.

What is Clinical Psychology?

According to the American Psychological Association, Clinical Psychology is a specialty that provides continuing and comprehensive mental and behavioral health care for individuals and families. They also provide consultation to agencies and communities and provide training, education and supervision regarding mental health and are often research based.

They provide services to all individuals, families and groups across the lifespan and ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. They specialize on the intellectual, emotional, psychological, social and behavioral maladjustment of a patient, disability and comfort and minor adjustment issues and severe psychopathology.

The procedures and technique used in Clinical psychology are as follows:

  • Assessment using diagnostic interviewing, behavioral assessment, administration and interpretation of psychological test measures
  • Intervention in primary, secondary and tertiary levels
  • Provide clinical services to individuals, families and groups
  • Consultation with other health and behavioral health professionals and organizations.
  • Engagement with specific research and critical review of science, knowledge and methods pertaining to clinical psychology.

What is Counseling Psychology?

Counseling Psychology is a general practice and health service provider which specializes on professional psychology (American Psychological Association, 2020). It focuses on the functionality of people personally and in their relationships. It addresses emotional, social, work, school and physical health concerns that the person may have that affects their focus in their daily lives. It usually involves typical life stresses and other severe issues that may cause a person to struggle as individua and as a part of their family, a group or the community.

They specialize on the health aspects and strength of the client as an individual, as a partner, as a part of the family, a group or community. The environmental and situational influences that contributed to the person’s experiences and concerns. Lastly, it involves issues in diversity, social justice and role in career and work.

The procedures and technique used in counseling psychology are as follows:

  • Psychotherapy, group and family counseling and one-on-one counseling sessions.
  • Crisis interventions and disaster and trauma management
  • Assessment techniques for possible diagnosis of psychological disorders.
  • Programs or workshop that promotes mental health awareness. This may be done in communities, school, workplaces. Identifying these issues beforehand are important to prevent future problems.
  • Program evaluation and treatment of clients.
  • Training, clinical supervision and test construction and validation.
  • Research methodologies for scientific investigations.

Difference between Clinical and Counseling Psychology

There are differences in the history of Clinical and Counseling Psychology. Counseling psychology grew out of “vocational psychology” division of the American Psychological Association. Its efficiency focuses on the scientific study factors that affects performance on jobs. While Clinical counseling, was established by the American Psychological association in 1892. It is a result of the outgrowth of the medical field. It has traditionally studied mental health disturbances previously.

In terms of population, Counseling psychology focus more on the healthy populations such as student, workers etc. While, Clinical psychology works more on children and on specialized populations or those people who has psychopathology.

They also differ in theoretical orientation.  Counseling psychology uses the client-centered or humanistic approach. They are also espousing feminist and use multicultural approaches. While in Clinical psychology, they use psychoanalytic and behavioral theories to treat patients. And also provide manualized treatments and cognitive-behavioral therapy.

If you would like to visit a clinical psychologist, you can usually find them in hospitals or inpatient care facilities. While counseling psychologist can readily be found on counseling centers, in schools and at work.

What Is Clinical Psychology?

Ever had a breakdown or a family member had one? Where did you go for a check-up? Did you try to go to a nearby psychiatrist for a consultation? You may have talked to a psychiatrist practicing Clinical Psychology. Here’s what you should know about Clinical Psychology and its difference from other branches of psychology.

Clinical Psychology

As defined by American Psychological Association, Clinical psychology is a psychological specialty that provides continuing and comprehensive mental and behavioral health care for both families and individual. They also do consultations to agencies and communities and provides training, education and supervision regarding mental health. It is also concerned with the practical applications of research methodologies and findings in the diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders.

How to be a Clinical Psychologist

In order to gain the title of a Clinical Psychologist, you have to earn a four-year undergraduate degree at any university that offers a Bachelor of Science major in psychology, education or sociology. But if you changed your mind after finishing any undergraduate study, you can still continue pushing for an additional degree.

You’ll need to get a master’s degree in psychology in order to enter the field of Clinical Psychology which may take at least 1 or 2 years. Some finishes another 5-6 years to gain a doctorate on psychology. Some program requires a year of internship in professional psychology as part of the doctoral program.

If you are earning a PhD in psychology, you’ll need to complete a 3-year residency training program under a practicing clinician to be called a Doctor of Clinical psychology. There are licensing and certifications for psychologist that depends on the state’s guidelines.

What does Clinical Psychologist do?

The clinical psychologist does consultations with their clients to guide them by identifying their problems (mental, emotional and behavioral) that might have been affecting how they dealt with their lives. They usually give psychological test, interview and even observes the client during the whole hour that they are interacting with each other. Finally, they figure out the circumstances together and create a program of treatment that fits the patient’s problem.

At work the clinical psychologists:

  • Identify possible psychological, emotional or behavioral problems that the patient is experiencing.
  • Diagnose the psychological, emotional or behavioral disorders through the use of DSM-V.
  • Develop and implement treatment plans and its therapeutic processes that is in accordance with the treatment guideline for such disorder.
  • Helps the clients to define their goal and create a plan of action that can help achieve their personal, social, educational and vocational development and adjustment.
  • Monitor the patient’s progress or improvement all throughout the treatment through regular meetings or sessions.
  • Teach classes regarding the wonders of the psychological brain and mental health.
  • Conduct researches to broaden the knowledge regarding mental health.
  • Publish the research findings in industry journals and promote use of various treatments that was backed up by these studies.

Approach

Clinical psychologists utilize different approaches to patients during consultations and treatment. Some clinicians prefer to focus on a very specific treatment outlook that involves getting ideas from different theoretical methods to develop individualized treatment for patients.

Here are the major theoretical perspectives of clinical psychology:

Psychodynamic Approach – This approach focuses on the human functioning and their interaction with the drives and forces within a person, especially the unconscious. It also emphasizes the systematic study of factors that affects the human’s behavior, feeling and emotion which might relate to their early experiences in life especially in childhood. This approach originated from Sigmund Freud during the late 19th century where he suggested that psychological processes are flows of psychological energy in the complex brain.

Cognitive-Behavioral Approach – This practical approach focuses on changing the patterns of thinking or behaviors that might be behind a person’s problems. It is often used for patients who are suffering from sleeping difficulties, relationship problem, anxiety, depression and substance abuse. It works by changing the client’s attitude and behavior by focusing on their thoughts, images, beliefs and attitude and how these processes relate to the way a person behaves especially when dealing with their personal problems.

Humanistic Approach – This approach is a perspective that emphasizes looking at the whole individual and stresses concepts such as free will, self-efficiency, and self-actualization. Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers’ theories greatly contributed to the better understanding of oneself. They emphasize the importance of free will and self-determination and how it helps make a person the best version of themselves.