Forty years of group psychotherapy at the Menninger Clinic

Despite the skepticism and indifference to group psychotherapy that existed in the 1950s and 1960s within the psychoanalytic community in general and among the staff and administration of the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas in particular, a few clinicians there forged ahead in pursuit of incorporating this modality as an accepted treatment. After gaining some acceptance first in the hospital, we experienced a slow rate of growth, except with our trainees who were generally enthusiastic about group work. Many of them were intrigued first by their exposure to the group dynamics seminars and later by the didactic courses and supervised group work that eventually came to be required by the accrediting body for residency programs of the American Psychiatric Association. Visiting senior consultants and teachers, mainly associated with the American Group Psychotherapy Association, as well as an esteemed clinician from the Tavistock Clinic, also lent credibility and legitimacy to our effort. When group treatment began to be adopted by units of the Menninger Hospital in the early 1970s, there was a significant sea change in the attitude of the organization and group psychotherapy became a well established modality.     

Reducing teachers' psychological distress through a mindfulness training program

Teachers constitute one of the professional collectives most affected by psychological problems. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study is to examine the efficacy of a mindfulness training programme to reduce psychological distress in a group of teachers. The sample comprised 68 teachers of Secondary School Education, from various public schools; half of them formed the experimental group, and the another half the control group. The levels of psychological distress were measured, in both groups, by the Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R) before and after the application of the programme. Statistical analysis shows the significant reduction of three general measures of psychological distress (Global Severity Index, Positive Symptom Distress Index, and Positive Symptom Total), as well in all its dimensions (somatization, obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensibility, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism), in the experimental group compared with the control group. Follow-up measures show that these results were maintained for four months after termination of the intervention in the experimental group.     

The psychological impact of training deprivation in martial artists

Objectives: The aim of the study was to examine the psychological impact of a one-week deprivation period from training in martial artists, training at brown and black belt levels in Shotokan karate, and to observe whether the effects are different for men and women.Method: Twenty martial artists were tested in two counterbalanced study-waves one consisting of pre-, during- and post-deprivation periods and the other of a baseline period. Each wave lasted for two weeks. The participants completed the “Well-Being Questionnaire” (WBQ) (J. Sport Exercise Psychol. 14 (1992) 361) and the Profile of Mood States Inventory (Int. J. Sport Psychol. 23 (1992) 93) every evening before their bedtime. All participants took part in both waves of the study and they refrained from all physical activity during the deprivation period.Results: Considerable increases were seen in anger, depression, negative affect, tension, and total mood disturbance. The latter increased by 249% during the deprivation period. More modest, but significant, decreases were observed in positive affect and vigour. No differences were found between the responses of men and women.Conclusion: Advanced martial artists in Shotokan karate report severe mood disturbance during a one-week period of abstinence from training, which is independent of the sex of the individual.     

The influence of training on the attentional blink and psychological refractory period

A growing body of research suggests that dual-task interference in sensory consolidation (e.g., the attentional blink, AB) and response selection (e.g., the psychological refractory period, PRP) stems from a common central bottleneck of information processing. With regard to response selection, it is well known that training reduces dual-task interference. We tested whether training that is known to be effective for response selection can also reduce dual-task interference in sensory consolidation. Over two experiments, performance on a PRP paradigm (Exp. 1) and on AB paradigms (differing in their stimuli and task demands, Exps. 1 and 2) was examined after participants had completed a relevant training regimen (T1 practice for both paradigms), an irrelevant training regimen (comparable sensorimotor training, not related to T1 for both tasks), a visual-search training regimen (Exp. 2 only), or after participants had been allocated to a no-training control group. Training that had shown to be effective for reducing dual-task interference in response selection was also found to be effective for reducing interference in sensory consolidation. In addition, we found some evidence that training benefits transferred to the sensory consolidation of untrained stimuli. Collectively, these findings show that training benefits can transfer across cognitive operations that draw on the central bottleneck in information processing. These findings have implications for theories of the AB and for the design of cognitive-training regimens that aim to produce transferable training benefits.     

Accredited internship and postdoctoral programs for training in psychology: 2011

Presents the official listing of accredited internship and postdoctoral residency programs. It reflects all Commission on Accreditation decisions through July 17, 2011. This list also is provided by electronic means (http://www.apa.org/ed/accreditation/programs/index.aspx), but that listing is for informational purposes only and should not be used for official credential review.