<p> Despite its importance, little is known about how psychologists are trained to reflect on their conduct of psychotherapy. These abilities are collectively known as reflective practice, which is considered a core competence within the field of psychology. This study examined the use of reflective practice by clinical, counseling, and school psychology interns and looked at how reflective practice is being facilitated by supervisors. The study examined the use of reflective practice in different clinical situations and obtained opinions about which reflective practices are believed to most impact clinical effectiveness. The study also examined barriers that may impede engagement in reflective practice. A mixed-method approach, including quantitative and qualitative analyses, was used to examine study questions in a sample of 69 pre-doctoral psychology interns. Results of this study indicated that for clinical cases in which the therapeutic work was &ldquo;going well,&rdquo; psychology interns engaged in reflective practice slightly more than once per month. However, for challenging cases (whether the &ldquo;work was going well or not&rdquo;) reflective practice was reported to increase, on average, to more than once per month, but less than once a week. There was no significant difference in frequency of reflective practices used between &ldquo;challenging cases going well&rdquo; and &ldquo;challenging cases not going well.&rdquo; This study found that supervisors facilitated an average of slightly over half of the total reflective practices measured. Further, the number of practices facilitated by supervisor was significantly correlated with the frequency of reflective practice use among interns. The reflective practices perceived to have the most impact on clinical effectiveness were (a) reflecting on feelings during session, (b) examining personal beliefs and values, and (c) reflecting on the quality of the therapeutic relationship. The most significant barrier to engagement in reflective practice was reported to be time. In regard to interns&rsquo; beliefs about how helpful reflective practice is to clinical practice, two major themes emerged: (a) whether reflective practice was helpful to the therapist (e.g., increased self-awareness) versus (b) if it was helpful to the client (e.g. helped client process their emotions more). Implications for future research and application to clinical practice are discussed.</p>

No description available.

Cognitive, motivational, and emotional contributors to depressive affect were investigated in dependent and self-critical college students. In the first study, Dependency and Self-Criticism were related to anaclitic and introjective dysfunctional cognitions which explained part of the variance in perceived stress for events involving loss and failure respectively. In the second study, the personality styles were related to different motive dispositions including achievement, affiliation and intimacy. Dependency and Self-Criticism were also related to motivational characteristics which were significant predictors of positive and negative affect. In the third study, Dependency was linked to the occurrence of romantic relationship stressors and Self-Criticism to academic stressors. Both personality styles were related to greater ambivalence over emotional expression, which significantly predicted depression. The variables from the cognitive, motivational, and emotional domains, and stress, were combined in an integrative vulnerability model for depression.

Several past studies have identified that dysphoric undergraduates (those with depressed mood) sometimes give estimates of their control over outcomes closer to the actual contingency than estimates made by the nondepressed. This "depressive realism" phenomenon is typically found in tasks with zero control and frequent outcomes. The present paper investigates this phenomenon with a more powerful design for comparing estimates. Experiment 1 manipulated motivation for accuracy to compare the prevalent self-serving motivational bias explanation to an information processing bias perspective. Depressive realism was found under the typical conditions, but under conditions of higher motivation for accuracy, all participants overestimated their control on the key task. Response patterns appeared to influence estimates via the proportion of exposure to different trial events. Experiment 2 confirmed an influence of response frequency on estimate bias. In Experiment 3 the depressive realism pattern was found for positively valent outcomes, but the reverse pattern occurred for negatively valent outcomes. Both those with and without depressed mood showed biased processing on some tasks. The implications for contingency processing in depressives and the general population are addressed.

This dissertation explores how an interdisciplinary analysis may contribute insight into how literary and policy discourses construct the life experiences of people who have mental disabilities that impair their ability to communicate their own life stories. Chapter One explains why a more comprehensive understanding of the cultural construction of mental disability may be achieved by exploring interdisciplinary relationships between social work, disability studies and literary theory. Subsequent chapters examine theoretical assumptions and frameworks associated with these contributing disciplines in greater detail, across systematic and interpretive analytic approaches. In addition, key concepts and questions relevant to constructing a vocabulary that facilitates collaboration between the contributing disciplines are considered. This literature review informs a methodology for undertaking an interpretive discourse analysis of pertinent policy and novels that depict disability within the context of Ontario's 'Institutional Cycle'. Specifically, the research attempts to answer the following questions: What is the relationship between the representation of mental disability in literary narratives and public policy discourses about mental disability; and, how may an interdisciplinary analysis of literary and policy discourses inform policy planning and the provision of services for people with mental disabilities in Ontario? Chapters 6-8 analyze the literary and policy data across Establishment, Reform and Dismantlement phases of the Institutional Cycle to arrive at a set of findings and recommendations that explain relationships between policy and novels across the phases of the Cycle. Finally, key themes for consideration in policy planning for people with mental disabilities are identified as priorities for action in an emerging 'post-institutional' era, in Ontario.

No description available.

The hypothesis that depressed individuals selectively attend to instances of depressive ideational themes (dysphoric stimuli) is derived from Beck's cognitive model of depression and general theories of information processing. A dichotic auditory shadowing task with alternating dysphoric and nondysphoric distraction was employed to assess relative allocations of attention to dysphoric and nondysphoric spoken prose by 88 mildly depressed, moderately and severely depressed, highly test-anxious nondepressed, and low test-anxious nondepressed university students. Only moderately and severely depressed Ss were significantly more distracted by dysphoric than nondysphoric stimuli, with Helplessness the most salient, and Failure the least salient, of ten depressive themes. All groups performed equally well with nondysphoric distraction. No subsequent changes of relative allocations of attention were found to result from experimenter-induced success-reward or failure-loss experiences. It is proposed that the results directly demonstrate depressive information processing disturbances at stimulus selection, which are congruent with Beck's formulations. The potency of descriptions of helplessness for the moderately and severely depressed groups support the Learned Helplessness model of depression. Selective attention to noncontingency may be a mechanism by which the cognitive set to perceive noncontingency produces perceptions of current helplessness.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

Thesis (M. Med. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Psychology, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 252-286).