Psychologists With Different Duties
Introduction
Psychologists play crucial roles in helping different individuals cope with their problems, understand themselves and become a productive member of the society. Mostly, the role of psychologist is to aid in the family and patients in managing psychological and emotional distress and to facilitate in coping and living with a painful, chronic and sometimes disabling illnesses. Psychologists play a cital role in clinical, educational, research and organisational aspects and helps in promoting individual behavior.
Primary the role of this paper is to analyze the role of the psychologists in different settings. In this research the psychological settings that will be included includes psychological responsibilities in local schools (children to medical pressures); treatment for chronic pain; psychological preparation approach for adults before surgery and recovery programs and structured programs for substance abuse; psychological approach in managing stress for employees.
Overview of the Role of Psychologists
Psychologists assesses both the family and individual's psychological status as well as the ability of the patient to cope with the disease, stress and other psychological issues which affect their behavior and quality living. Psychologists conducts interviews and tests which can be used for assessing the psychosocial aspect which includes the adjustment to the current condition, adherence to psychological treatment, coping mechanism, levels of depression, anxiety, as well as cognitive function.
The role of psychologists tend to vary depending on the situation of the patient and this can range from short-term crisis intervention or dealing with coping issues to long-term clinical psychologists for treating individuals with chronic disorders and can be done individually or in group.
Psychological responsibilities Local School Setting
In local school setting, psychologists plays a vital role in terms of enabling children, specifically those who are having medical problems to cope with its burden. Herein, psychologists should have the ability to provide psychological preparation approach for children before they experience medical procedures. Herein, psychologists should be creative in generating different approach and one aspect that they can use for children is having creative therapy sessions which include the creative play therapy. This method is known to be effective in psychological intervention for children.
Since children lack the cognitive maturity to benefit from communizing with their problems, the psychologists should be able to find ways in making the children understand their condition. In a play creative therapy session, the child who will undergo medical procedure can be the director and rule maker. They create a world they can master, practice social skills, overcome frightening feelings, and symbolically triumph over the upsets and traumas that have stolen their sense of well-being (Wessels, Willems & de White, 1996).
Creative Play therapy is suitable for children from the age of four and upwards who may have experienced divorce or have been through the medical care system, may have been subject to abuse or neglect, also many hospitals now offer this therapy to sick children in their healthcare The process of Creative Play Therapy can facilitate the children to quickly uncover and heal deep core issues about their personal problems. Raise the child’s self-esteem and heal their inner self. Resolve all their relationships and be successful in interacting with other individuals. The children are also thought to learn how to communicate and release their emotions in constructive ways.
Treatment for Chronic Pain
Chronic illnesses such as diabetes, emphysema, asthma, Alzheimer's disease and other chronic illnesses and pains are said to have major effect on the patient and their families. It can be said that each of this chronic pain has various effect in terms of emotional, psychological, physical and financial factors of the patients and their families. It is said that each disease causes a psychological response and the impact of the disease depends on the type of the disease a person has.
For example, if a person is diagnosed to have a chronic pain like diabetes, asthma and others, the reaction may be raged, anxiety, depression, fear, passive resentment, stubborn denial. Coping with such normal human reactions can deeply impact the systemic effects of any disease. Against a background of such psychological emotion, the optimal treatment of a chronic pain requires a skilful healthcare professionals and an insightful patient (Thompson, 1993). According to Brannon & Feist (2007: 299), one of the effects of having chronic disease with the patient is their inability to sustain better relationship with the healthcare providers as well as other people around them. Patients have low self-esteem and oftentimes have this hopeless attitude with their condition.
In this regard, because of the increasing rate of individuals which are afflicted with the chronic pain, psychologists has been able to do various approach about helping the patients and their family in dealing with the chronic patient. Psychologists are trying to study different issues about chronic pain and how this type of disease affects or influence the quality of life, dimensions of quality of life as well as concerns of quality of life of the patients.
Psychologists can consider different models to care for the patients who are suffering from chronic pain. One of these psychological approach is through linkage model which helps in increasing the adherence of patients to treatment. Herein, the model can be used to which the provision of care and progress monitoring of the psychological condition of the patient is a team effort. As every health team member is involved in giving sufficient care to patients, become more encourage to recover from their chronic illness and comply with their medications. Another positive approach of the linkage model is it increases patients’ access to quality care.
Psychologists Role in Post operative pain
Various psychological approaches are involved in the manifestation of pain brought by surgery. In this regard, the role of the clinical psychologists is to ensure that the patient have the ability to endure the pain, not only in physical aspects but more importantly the cognitive and the emotional behavior of the patient. In this regard, the psychologists play an important role for patients who have undergone a major surgery. . The responsibilities of the clinical psychologists then lie on the administration of how the patient can be able to manage the pain. However, as theories explained that pain is also based on psychological, behavioral as well as sociocultural aspects, the role of clinical psychologists on pain management (Eccleston, 2001) become more in depth. Clinical psychologists then should give comfort by being effective listeners to their patients. Moreover, the clinical psychologist can also consider a personal relationship or bond to be established between clinical psychologists and their patients so as to help them recover from the pain they are experiencing (Peterson, Beck, and Rowell, 1992, p. 335).
This can also help the patients in having fast recovery if they know that there are people who will always be by their side to listen and help and understand what they feel.
Psychological Responsibilities Substance Abuse
Substance abuse has been characterized by desire or a strong need, or craving, to use drugs and alcohol drinks. It is also described as loss of control which is the frequent failure to stop abusing once a person has started doing it. Substance abuse is considered as a chronic behavioral disorder which is manifested by undue preoccupation with alcohols and drugs to the detriment of physical and mental health, and by a self-destructive attitude in dealing with personal relationships as well as life situations (Judge, 1997).
Accordingly, there are different ways to control or solve the issue of substance abuse among individuals; one of these is to consider rehabilitation with the help of psychologists. Through the help of other family members, these people can consult psychologists to know their problems as well as to determine if they need special medications or not. Aside from this people who wish to stop their drinking problems can also submit themselves personally with rehabilitation clinics and centers. Furthermore, the psychologists can also encourage these individuals to be engaged in social activities for solving this issue.
Managing Stress in Workplace
It can be said that stress not only affects the employee an individual but also have negative impact to the firm. The pressures which emerge exist in the organizations today, have increased significantly in recent years, due to stress which affects the entire stability of the company. In this regard, the psychologists can consider cognitive behavior therapy, an approach which involves talks and conferences. In this approach, the employee will have to discuss as well as express their feelings, thoughts and behaviors to the psychologists. The main goal of this is to identify these feelings and identify how these are affecting the employee, in terms of their actions. The main aim of this psychological approach is to teach individuals how to properly think and react to certain stressful situations (Kassel, 2005).
A clinical psychologists applying CBT will then try to make the employee realize this distorted view and change it through cognitive restructuring. Behavioral therapy is also part of the CBT. In this case, the clinical psychologists try to train the person to remove all undesirable behaviors and change it with good ones. This approach is not after the identification of why the employee behaves in certain ways; rather, it is more after teaching the affected individuals how to modify their behaviors (Ford-Martin, n.d).
Basically, CBT is given to the affected patient to be able to determine the causes of the negative behavior as well as show the employees that they can bring about changes to these behaviors. From other case observations, patients who undergo this kind of psychological treatment often have schemas or core beliefs about their self or their surroundings; these scenarios are then the ones that must be identified and changed. This can perhaps be explained further through an actual situation. For example, a patient with anxiety disorder has this fear about being with people. Thus, in order to avoid this fear, the person tries isolating themselves from others.
Recommendation
Analysis shows that psychologists play different roles in different settings. However, the role that they play in these situations can be narrowed down into a coherent approach. Managing psychological problems and issues enables the patients to gain a life with better quality. Addressing different issues, like medical, chronic and even work-related problems will also help them in performing various activities. This then led to the consideration of various treatment approaches like the psychological approach mentioned. These approaches have certain differences; however, the principle of these psychological approaches has a single objective, and that is to help patients recover from their ailments or their problems. From this research, the efficacy of clinical psychologists has been stressed through a number of clinical trials and relevant researches. In addition, the usefulness of this approach to the patients as well as to the school and clinical or workplace field had also been stressed though these studies. It can be said that clinical psychologists should then consider the distinct features of these treatment approaches and apply them according to the preferences and needs of individual patients.
Reference
Eccleston, C. (2001). Role of Psychology in Pain Management. British Journal of Anesthesia. The Board of Management and Trustees of the British Journal of Anesthesia, 87 (1), 144-152.
Judge, M.G. (1997). Alcoholism: Character or Genetics? Insight on the News 13 (8), 8.
Slay, J., & Glazer, W. (1995). Carving in and keeping in: Mental health care in managed care settings. Psychiatric Services, 46(11), 1119-1125.
Wessels, R. D., Willems, Ch. G., and de White, L, P. (1996). How to select a method to evaluate usability of assistive devices. Journal of Rehabilitation Sciences, 9 (2), 53-57.
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