Monitor on Psychology - January 2012 - (Page 55)

psychologists can point patients to as they begin re-integrating into their communities. And because few training standards and best practices exist, psychologists simply may not know how to use this orientation to facilitate their clients’ recovery. “The big challenge is addressing psychologists’ perceptions of recovery and how it impacts their work,” says APA 2011 President Melba J.T. Vasquez, PhD. “But another challenge that APA really cares about is getting recovery into education and training: It’s important for both our students in graduate doctoral programs but also for our current providers to learn these recovery concepts and principles and put them into practice.” Working with a recovery mindset is very different from what psychologists traditionally do, adds Vasquez. For example, in therapy sessions with the mother of a son with serious mental illness, Vasquez didn’t just focus on helping to ease her distress. She also reached out to a social worker and others in the community to help the woman find housing and a job for her son. “Working collaboratively with others in the community is important,” says Vasquez, “and we’re not usually trained to work that way.” training materials To help psychologists get that training, APA’s Recovery to Practice team is developing a curriculum for doctoral psychology training programs that emphasizes recovery outcomes and explains recovery-related principles and practices. “This process should be greatly facilitated by the tremendous work of CAPP’s Task Force on Serious Mental Illness and Severe Emotional Disturbance, which spent years developing and revising the Catalog of Clinical Training Opportunities: Best Practices for Recovery and Improved Outcomes for People with Serious Mental Illness,” says Nordal. Still in draft form, the curriculum features more than a dozen modules on such topics as the recovery movement’s history, the scientific foundations of recovery, health disparities, ethics and how to incorporate recovery principles into such tasks as clinical assessment, treatment planning and interventions. The APA team will spend the next year developing the curriculum and plans to have it ready for pilot testing by the end of next summer. The hope is to have three or four graduate training directors incorporate the curriculum into their programs and provide feedback. The Recovery to Practice team will then modify the curriculum as needed and either do another round of pilot testing or move ahead with working with the psychology training councils on dissemination and marketing. APA also plans to go beyond the SAMHSA-funded project in its efforts to spread the word on recovery. In addition to the curriculum for graduate students, APA will develop versions for use in internship programs as well as continuing-education J a n u a ry 2 0 1 2 • M o n i t o r o n p s y c h o l o g y programs for psychologists already in practice. For Jansen, the focus on recovery is especially timely given the roll-out of health-care reform. “Health-care reform is all about promoting wellness: getting people to be as healthy and productive members of society as they can be,” she says, adding that this will ultimately reduce costs. “If psychology as a profession doesn’t embrace the notion of recovery and the need to train psychologists in the rehabilitative interventions needed to assist people to recover, psychology will likely be left behind.” n Rebecca A. Clay is a writer in Washington, D.C. At a 2004 national Consensus Conference on Mental Health recovery and Mental Health Systems transformation convened by SAMHSA, patients, health-care professionals, researchers and others agreed on 10 core principles undergirding a recovery orientation: • Self-direction: Consumers determine their own path to recovery. • individualized and person-centered: there are multiple pathways to recovery based on individuals’ unique strengths, needs, preferences, experiences and cultural backgrounds. • Empowerment: Consumers can choose among options and participate in all decisions that affect them. • holistic: recovery focuses on people’s entire lives, including mind, body, spirit and community. • Nonlinear: recovery isn’t a step-by-step process but one based on continual growth, occasional setbacks and learning from experience. • Strengths-based: recovery builds on people’s strengths. • Peer support: Mutual support plays an invaluable role in recovery. • Respect: Acceptance and appreciation by society, communities, systems of care and consumers themselves are crucial to recovery. • Responsibility: Consumers are responsible for their own self-care and journeys of recovery. • hope: recovery’s central, motivating message is a better future — that people can and do overcome obstacles. Recovery principles 55

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Monitor on Psychology - January 2012

Monitor on Psychology - January 2012
Letters
President’s Column
Contents
Contents
From the CEO
Apa’s Statement on the Dsm-5 Development Process
Girl Scouts Badge Promotes Positive Psychology
Early Investments Pay Off for Poor Children, Study Finds
Apa Meets With Chinese Psychological Society to Further Interaction and Exchange
Unique Opportunity for Psychologists to Travel to Cuba
In Brief
Government Relations Update
On Your Behalf
Psychology’s Growing Library of Podcasts
Standing Up for Psychology
Judicial Notebook
Random Sample
Time Capsule
Questionnaire
Science Watch
Beyond Psychotherapy
Perspective on Practice
Yes, Recovery Is Possible
Inequity to Equity
Making E-Learning Work
New Standards for High School Psychology
A Trailblazer Moves On
Psychologist Profile
Plan Now for Psychology’s Regional Meetings
New Journal Editors
Apa News
Division Spotlight
American Psychological Foundation
Personalities

Monitor on Psychology - January 2012