Treatment approaches for sleep difficulties in college students

College students face many challenges and live experiences that may lead to sleep difficulties, including: varied and changing schedules, repeated deadlines, increased freedom and self-responsibility, and group living arrangements, to name but a few. A high frequency of sleep difficulties is commonly reported among college student and others who encounter similar life experiences. The prevalence of sleep difficulties is explored and a rationale provided for treatment. It is suggested that interventionists need to consider the impact of sleep difficulties on their clients' immediate and long-term functioning. To help psychologists, counsellors, and therapists better ameliorate sleep problems a number of proven techniques are reviewed which are applicable to individuals in both clinical and non-clinical settings.     

Therapist responses to requests for disclosure of therapeutic records: An introductory study

This paper describes a questionnaire survey of therapists in the UK who have been subject to requests for disclosure of client records as part of a legal process. Therapist responses are outlined in terms of the perceived effect of such disclosure on the client, therapist and the therapeutic relationship. Negative effects included the experience of exposure of sensitive client material in an adversarial legal system, of powerful emotional responses by therapists, and a sense of feeling professionally de‐skilled in an unfamiliar and often challenging legal environment. Positive effects for the client included the achievement of valued outcomes such as compensation, and, for the therapist, the facilitation of support for the client in this process. These findings are discussed in terms of a contrast between therapist perceptions of consensual and contested disclosure. In the former, therapist and client are in agreement about the restorative value and outcome of disclosure. In contested disclosure, the process is experienced as disrupting therapeutic privacy, undermining professional self‐confidence and introducing an unwelcome element of critical re‐evaluation of client motives for undertaking therapy.     

Noticing and responding in a discrimination based on a distinguishing element

In learning a successive go/no-go discrimination between a positive display consisting of the elements A and B, and negative display consisting of A-alone, pigeons first trained to peck A shift to pecking the distinguishing B element. In order to learn whether or not the shift to B is facilitated by B's function as a signal of the reinforcer, apart from the direct reinforcement of B responses, six arrangements of the elements with respect to the food reinforcer were used. Discrete trials were terminated by a single peck or after 4 sec. The A and B elements were dots of different color. The most critical comparison was between two groups, both of which received no reinforcement for a response directed to B. In one case, B signaled the reinforcer: An A response was reinforced when B was present but not when A appeared alone. In the other, B signaled the absence of a reinforcer: An A response was nonreinforced when B was present, while the response to A-alone was reinforced. During training and in extinction many more reponses were made to B when it signaled the reinforcer than when it signaled its absence. It is concluded that in a discrimination between AB positive and A negative the shift from pecking A to pecking B is facilitated by B's role as a signal for the reinforcer even on trials in which the peck is not made to B. Results from certain other groups showed that, unless pecks shifted to B within the positive display, pecks to A continued on the negative, A-alone trials as well as on the positive AB trials.