BECOME A PROFESSIONAL
HELPER, Part I:
Key Skills & Critical
Commitments
Introduction to
Clinical Psychology
PSY364
Dr. Kirsten Bradbury
All slides copyright Dr. Bradbury, 2017; paintings copyright Guy Robinson 1999-2017 unless otherwise credited.
Student access to slides is for individual educational use only. Not to be cited, reproduced or redistributed in whole or in part.
To Become a Professional Helper…
• Develop Key Skills
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Multi-Professional Relevance
Multi-Problem Applicability
Evidence-Based Practice
Collaborative Practice
- evidence based technique to
determine treatments
- collaborative practice - not just
with other professionals but be able
to collaborate with your clients incorporates clients wishes and
world’s view into the way we
practice
To Become a Professional Helper…
how to treat people with
• Make Critical Commitments
different or offensive world
• Ethics in Practice
view?
• Life-long Learning
• Self-care
• Embrace and Defend Diversity
• Oppressed, Vulnerable, and Underserved Populations
life-long learning - reading continuous studies
professional helpers see most damage when diversity is not
embraced — notice differences and embrace
Key Skills
• Today’s practice increasingly complex, multidisciplinary
• Requires training that is:
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Broad, diverse in settings and topics
Has multi-professional relevance
Provides solid foundation upon which to build specialized content
Deep enough in one or more areas to allow true expertise
Inclusive of some training in business administration, leadership and supervision
Deliberately multicultural and multilingual
true expert - profession specific training different
from other helping professionals
expand skills in other cultures/language
Key Skills
• Helping services provided
• In a large range of settings
• Schools, in- and out-patient healthcare facilities, social service and mental health
centers, family services agencies, correctional system, residential facilities, and
independent practices
• For a large range of problems
• Multi-problem applicability
• The process of helping
• Practice perspective:
• Unavoidable mental health problems you all want to be trained in
• Vs. Avoidable/specialized mental health problems
multi-problem applicability - depression and
anxiety are found in different professions
always dealing with anxiety because people
are nervous when meeting helping
professionals
Key
Skills
Personal
increase social infleunce with client
• Social influence
• Listening, building rapport, alliance, relationship
• Empathy and compassion, warmth, caring
• Humility, honesty, genuineness
• What qualities do you have that will serve you well as a
professional helper?
compassion fatigue - warning as a clinician to watch
for whether ot not you are getting burned out.
compassion channel can get tired of being
compassionate
humility - no fugding information. be aware of own abilities
Key Skills
• Tools for change: emphasize cognitive–behavioral skills bc CBT
rd
blue-chip for many problems; includes 3 wave CBT varieties –
ACT, DBT, Motivational Interviewing
• listening plus psychoeducation plus problem-solving
• May integrate others (e.g., person-centered,
psychodynamic/insight-oriented, solution-focused, relational)
cognitive behavioral therapy - primary source of therapy
acceptance and commitment therapy. Dialectical behavioral therapy
Key Skills
• First choice are empirically based strategies applicable to
diverse clientele, settings, issues
• EST, Empirically supported practice and evidence-based
decision making
• Part of training accreditation as well as work-site expectations
• Generalizability and efficiency
Key Skills
• Collaborative practice:
• Significant, sustainable change in people’s lives requires more than
helping sessions alone can offer
• Self-determination and informed participation
• Building on strengths toward problem solving
• Educational; client owns goals
• Effective practice is not done to but with clients: Partnership
Critical Commitments
• Helping professions convey serious commitments and
responsibilities
• Ethical guidelines and standards for practice
• Ethical practice relates to all aspects of being a helper
• Many frameworks developed to help practitioners address dilemmas
• Ethics requires critical thinking, strong respect for clients; more than
just knowledge of dilemmas
Critical Commitments
• Self-care
• Lifelong learning
• Continue growing as a clinician
• Learn emerging or evolving interventions
• Add specialized tools
Critical Commitments
• Reflective, critical thinking crucial for clinical decision-making
• Must critique oneself, others, and environments
• Also need: creativity, openness, and tolerance for complexity,
ambiguity, and difference
Critical Commitments
• Growing pluralism of nation in terms of cultural, racial, religious, and
linguistic diversity
• Helping professionals must be aware of inequities and engage in
culturally sensitive practice, recognizing cultural forces in people’s
lives
Critical Commitments
• Crucial to be sensitive to issues of age, culture, ethnicity, gender,
language, disability, race, gender expression, sexual orientation,
religion, socioeconomic level, and unique characteristics of individual
• Oppressed, vulnerable, and underserved populations
• Epistemic privilege
concept that says that you own your background and your identity
- my privelege to tell you about my epistemology
Clinician Development
• Stage theories (e.g., Skovholt & Ronnestad 1995)
• Other developmental theories (e.g., Bruss & Kopala 1993)
• Process entails didactics, observational learning, guided
practice with increasing levels of autonomy; it is a
developmental identity-building process of skills and attitudes
Clinician Development
• At first, you pretend to be a professional; then you imitate a
professional; then you become a really good professional on the
outside; then you try out being yourself as a professional and
integrate your identities
• Fear of the imposter
• “Me” as a clinician and “me” as a client; only two chairs in the
room
Cautions
• Helping definitions and guidelines not akin to cookbook; skill
application not formulaic
• Supervised practice needed to master these skills: limits of
didactics, perils of “a little knowledge”
• There is great value in recognizing one’s own lack of knowledge.
supervised practice is the training needed to apply skills learned