Clinical psychologists
The objective of these practitioners is to reduce psychological distress and to enhance and promote psychological well-being. They work with people with mental or physical health problems – which might include anxiety and depression, serious and enduring mental illness, adjustment to physical illness, neurological disorders, addictive behaviours, childhood behaviour disorders, personal and family relationships. They work with people throughout the life-span and with those with learning disabilities.
Clinical psychologists work largely in health and social care settings including hospitals, health centres, community mental health teams, child and adolescent mental health services and social services. They will normally be part of a larger team that will include social workers, doctors and nurses.
To assess a client, a clinical psychologist may use a variety of methods including psychometric tests, interviews and direct observation of behaviour. Assessment may lead to any or all three of therapy, counselling or advice.
Counselling psychologists
These practitioners apply psychological techniques to work collaboratively with people across a diverse range of human problems. Typically, they help people manage difficult life events such as bereavement, past and present relationships and working with mental health issues and disorders.
Counselling psychologists accept subjective experience as valid for each person, explore underlying issues and use an active collaborative relationship to empower people to consider change. In this context subjective means being formulated within the persons mind and modified by their personal biases
Many counselling psychologists work within the NHS both in general and psychiatric hospitals and GP surgeries. They may also work within private hospitals, independent practice, industry, education in schools and universities, and in public and private corporate institutions. And within these settings, counselling psychologists may work directly with individuals, couples, families, groups or act as consultants.
Forensic psychology
This discipline of psychology is one of the fastest growing areas of employment of psychology graduates. Forensic psychologists deal with the application of psychology in the criminal and civil justice field.
Whilst the largest single employer of forensic psychologists in the UK is the HM prison service, forensic psychologists are increasingly working with other agencies such as academic institutions, the National Health Service, probation services, police services and social services.
The work is varied both within and across forensic settings and may include both occupational and clinical elements, for example, part of the role of forensic psychologists in both the health and prison services may include providing a consultancy service to managers. Work is undertaken with offenders, victims, criminal and civil justice staff and managers.
Two key areas of development in recent years have been “risk assessment” procedures with offenders in general and interventions with sex offenders in particular, with a focus upon reducing the risk of re-offending. Also, forensic psychologists are increasingly becoming involved in child protection work with social services. Key tasks can include:
- Piloting and implementing treatment programmes
- Modifying offender behaviour
- Responding to the changing needs of staff and prisoners
- Reducing stress for staff and prisoners
- Providing hard research evidence to support practice
- Undertaking statistical analysis for prisoner profiling
- Giving expert evidence in court
- Advising parole boards and mental health tribunals
- Crime analysis
Health psychology
This is a new and rapidly evolving sub specialty and is defined as the practice and application of psychological methods to the study of behaviour relevant to health, illness and health care. Health psychologists are able to work in a number of settings. These include hospitals, academic health research units, health authorities and university departments.
In simple terms, health psychology studies why and when people seek professional advice about their health, why they do or do not recommend preventative measures, how patients and health care professionals interact, how patients adapt to illness, and the links between perception, health behaviour and physical functioning. The breadth of the discipline is far reaching and can be classified as:
- Health risk behaviours; the identification of health damaging behaviours (such as smoking, drug abuse, poor diet) and the use of psychological theories and interventions for primary prevention and health related behaviour change in community and workplace settings.
- Health protective enhancing behaviours; encouraging the uptake of behaviours such as exercise, healthy dietary choice, teeth brushing, health checks/self examination and attendance for preventative medical screening and psychological approaches to health problems.
- Health related cognitions; investigating cognitive processes which mediate and determine health and illness behaviours. There are a range of theoretical models and frameworks which can be used not only for explanation and prediction, but also for developing intervention (for example to modify health beliefs, increase internal control or self efficacy beliefs).
- Processes influencing health care delivery; includes the nature and effects of communication between health care practitioners and patients. Including psychological interventions to improve communication, facilitate adherence, prepare for stressful medical procedures amongst others.
- Psychological aspects of illness; looking at the psychological impact of acute and chronic illness on individuals, families and carers across the life span. Psychological interventions may be used to help promote self-management, facilitate coping with pain or illness, to improve quality of life and to reduce disability and handicap.
Industrial Organizational Psychologists
These commercial organisation based practitioners have many opportunities to help the staff of large corporations
- Become more efficient in their work practices and therefore increase overall company productivity
- Increase employee longevity, increase diversity, and avoid discrimination
- They will also help companies by providing consultation on marketing techniques by developing surveys and researching customer demands
- Tackling absenteeism by counselling staff who habitually take "duvet days" as and when they feel like it is now becoming everyday work for industrial psychologists
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