In today's blog entry, Dr. Jenna Ermold discusses some of the potential missteps behavioral health provides may make when treating military-connected clients. Many of these examples come directly from Service members, Veterans and their families, who were interviewed while creating the "Military Culture: Core Competencies for Healthcare Professionals" online course. Click below to check it out!
For the past few years I find more and more people using smartphone apps for professional purposes. I admit that I've been hesitant to give up pen-and-paper for more advanced methods. But I will also admit that there are some really neat and useful apps out there for the mental health professional. I have also been stubbornly resisting electronic change, mainly because I don't want to have to deal with figuring out how to navigate a complicated, non-intuitive application. If you too enjoy electronic simplicity and how it can be applied to your profession, below are two applications specific to individuals who need to better manage anxiety.
At the Center for Deployment Psychology, we’re always looking for new ways to fulfill our mission to provide training and education to behavioral health provider to ensure they’re able to offer the highest-quality care to Service members and Veterans. On our website, we use several avenues to try and facilitate this effort and today we’re going to take a look at one of those methods, specifically, podcasts.
More and more people are becoming aware of the impact of smartphones, tablets, and easy Internet access on our ability to think, maintain relationships, and remain productive. It has even been proposed that overuse of technological media can change our brains structurally in ways that will, over time, rob us of the ability to think deeply and utilize our cognitive horsepower! This is a controversial topic, and undoubtedly people will have varying opinions, but no one can argue that various forms of technology are changing how we interact with each other. So, how does this apply to mental health, and the military specifically? Well, we know that healthy relationships contribute to good mental health, and conversely, troubled relationships create risk for mental health problems. Perhaps some of today’s relationship woes and mental health problems are a by-product of our increasing use of technological gadgets.
To learn more about this possibility in a military context, I interviewed Lt. Col. Kirk Rowe, an Air Force neuropsychologist at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.
As both a therapist using Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) with my PTSD patients and a CPT Trainer, I was eagerly awaiting the revision of the treatment manual. And my wait was finally over in May 2014! But then I found I was faced with a dilemma - do I throw out my old manual along with notes and reprint the new one? Or can I simply keep the old manual and replace a few pages here and there. It seems others were wondering also given the number of times during trainings and within my own clinic I've been asked this. So, I did an in-depth comparison of the two manuals, and here is what I found along with my suggestions.