The use of consultation in psychological practice: ethical, legal, and clinical considerations

The importance of consulting with other professionals to maintain acceptable standards of care is well documented in many health care professions. However, evidence indicates that many psychologists fail to utilize consultation when needed, and that consultation use varies along dimensions such as the education and training of the consultee, the type of setting, number of years in practice, and proximity to available consultants. In this article, we review the research on the use of consultation by psychologists as well as other health care professionals. We discuss the clinical, ethical, and legal implications of seeking consultation as a professional psychologist. Finally, a detailed and practical model for the regular use of consultation is given to improve the routine use of consultation in clinical practice.     

Racial Categorization and Stereotype-Based Judgments About Homeless People1

The present study uses a social-cognitive paradigm to examine the association between racial categorization and stereotype-based judgments about homeless people. The study uses data from a national White subsample (N= 1,221) surveyed about attitudes toward homeless/homeless mentally ill people. It was hypothesized that individual differences in perceptions of the representativeness of Blacks in the homeless population, as measured by subjective estimates of the percentage of Blacks, would be associated with the enhancement of racially relevant negative stereotypes about homeless people. A secondary hypothesis was that perceptions of the representativeness of Blacks would be more strongly associated with the stereotype of homeless people as dangerous than with the view of them as lazy. The results support these hypotheses.     

Physician-assisted suicide: the role of mental health professionals

A review of the literature was conducted to better understand the (potential) role of mental health professionals in physician-assisted suicide. Numerous studies indicate that depression is one of the most commonly encountered psychiatric illnesses in primary care settings. Yet, depression consistently goes undetected and undiagnosed by nonpsychiatrically trained primary care physicians. Noting the well-studied link between depression and suicide, it is necessary to question giving sole responsibility of assisting patients in making end-of-life treatment decisions to these physicians. Unfortunately, the use of mental health consultation by these physicians is not a common occurrence. Greater involvement of mental health professionals in this emerging and debated area is advocated. Beyond describing mental health professionals' role in the assessment of patient competency or decision making capacity, other areas of potential involvement are described. A discussion of ethical principles relevant to this area follows, along with comments on the training necessary to adequately serve patient needs.     

Richard L. Solomon and learned helplessness

This article reviews the course of development of research on a currently popular explanatory approach to dysfunctional behavior, the learned helplessness analysis. The early history is prominent in this review as it reflects the inspirations of Richard L. Solomon, a scholar who fostered the resurgence of psychologists’ interests in Pavlovian conditioning in the 1950s and 1960s. Current research is characterized as having four separate themes: elaboration of “symptoms,” elucidating the role of fear, explicit modeling, and extensions involving attributional constructs.     

Applications of rational-emotive therapy (RET) to love problems

Rational-emotive therapy (RET) can be particularly applied to individuals with serious love problems, such as people possessed by super-romantic love, limerents who are mired in obsessive-compulsive feelings, insensately jealous and possessive lovers, people who needlessly interfere with their encountering suitable partners, and those who suffer anguish and depression when they lose love. It also has important things to teach about keeping alive and enhancing normal love feelings. This paper outlines the RET theory of love and applies it to various amative difficulties.This article is to appear as a chapter inClinical applications of Rational-Emotive Therapy, edited by Albert Ellis and Michael Bernard, New York: Plenum, 1985.     

Do the mentally retarded have poor memory?

The hypothesis that mentally retarded persons have a short-term memory deficit whixh is due to inadequate rehearsal strategies is reexamined. A reevaluation of results of a number of experiments suggests that normal and retarded persons differ on short-term memory tasks, and the superiority of normals is present from the time of initial stimulus exposure. While some evidence for slope differences in retention curves is found in a few tasks, it is not strong support for memory differences. The hypothesis that “memory” differences are due to differential encoding as a result of more adequate rehearsal by the normal subjects is unacceptable. If this were the case, some differences in slope of retention curves could be expected unless rehearsal beyond the encoding stage was totally precluded. The review points to a need for an empirical reevaluation of the issue with a full recognition that deficits in particular processes may characterize some retarded persons and not others.