The Development of a Code for Australian Psychologists

Section 35(1)(c) of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Act (2009 Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Act of 2009. (Queensland).  [Google Scholar]) requires the newly formed Psychology Board of Australia (PsyBA) “to develop or approve standards, codes and guidelines.” In 2010 the PsyBA decided to initially adopt the Australian Psychological Society's (APS) Code of Ethics (2007 Australian Psychological Society. 2007. Code of ethics, Melbourne, , Australia: Author.  [Google Scholar]) and develop a new code in the future with the involvement of key stakeholders without deciding what the nature of this code will be. The PsyBA now has to decide exactly how it will proceed in future. My aim in this article is to examine the options available to the PsyBA by exploring the definition and function of codes; presenting a history of the APS Code; and considering approaches that had been followed in Europe, Israel, New Zealand, and South Africa.     

Ethically Questionable Behaviors Among Supervisees: An Exploratory Investigation

In spite of numerous studies of program outcomes finding little or no positive effect on violent behavior, the Duluth model remains the most common program type of interventions with perpetrators of domestic violence. In addition, Duluth model programs often ignore serious mental health and substance abuse issues present in perpetrators. These and other issues of possible threat to mental health professional ethics are reviewed in light of the court-mandated, compulsory nature of most Duluth model programs and client and victim expectations for program efficacy.     

An Exploratory Study: Perceptions of Ethical Behaviors Among Psychologists Practicing in the Caribbean

A sample of 44 psychologists who practice in the Caribbean completed a web-based survey containing 73 behavioral items related to ethical issues in professional practice. The aim of this exploratory study was to learn about perceptions regarding ethical behaviors that create ethical dilemmas and the level of agreement to their responses and to identify how demographic variables influenced their perceptions of ethical behaviors. Findings suggest that there was approximately an equal level of agreement on behaviors such as being an advocate for your client and being sexually involved with a current client rated as ethical and unethical, respectively. Several demographic variables and ethical behaviors such as level of degree and confidentiality issues were statistically significant. Finally, psychologists prefer the presence of a professional psychological association with an ethics committee.     

Compassion satisfaction,compassion fatigue,and burnout in a national sample of trauma treatment therapists

Abstract

For behavioral health professionals working with traumatized clients, continuous and prolonged exposure to the stress of working with the myriad of trauma-related stressors experienced by their clients can lead to various responses including burnout, compassion fatigue, and compassion satisfaction. The present study investigates the impact of using evidence-based practices on compassion fatigue, burnout, and compassion satisfaction in a random, national sample of self-identified trauma specialists (N=532). The 30-item Professional Quality of Life Scale (Stamm, 2005) and the 19-item Trauma Practices Questionnaire (Craig & Sprang, 2009) were included in a survey to licensed social workers and psychologists from professional membership rosters. Age and years of experience proved to be powerful predictors of only two of the three criterion variables, with younger professionals reporting higher levels of burnout and more experienced providers endorsing higher levels of compassion satisfaction. The utilization of evidence-based practices predicted statistically significant decreases in compassion fatigue and burnout, and increases in compassion satisfaction. The utility of these findings in understanding the process of trauma transmission between therapist and client as well as directions for future research are discussed.     

Domestic Violence Service Providers’ Technology Readiness and Information Needs

Technology-based applications hold promise as effective, efficient means of disseminating research- and practice-based information to professionals whose work relates to domestic violence. Other related uses of technology in the field have grown, including safety planning to address technology-related risks to victims and software programs being integrated into domestic violence agencies. However, to date, the levels of technology readiness and technology-related information needs of these professionals have received minimal research attention. This study involved a national survey of 471 professionals whose work addresses domestic violence. The findings demonstrate differences in professionals’ technology readiness based on key demographic and professional characteristics. They also reveal the most frequently noted information needs within this professional field. Implications for future research and practice are provided.     

Evaluation of the Delayed Discovery Case

Summary

In this chapter, practicing lawyer Michael S. Morey guides the reader through the complex legal and non-legal issues involved in evaluating whether legal action should be pursued on behalf of an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse. After analyzing how evaluation of sexual abuse cases differs from that in most other personal injury cases, he presents a model for non-suggestive yet thorough client interviewing and case evaluation to help both survivor and lawyer decide whether to pursue litigation. Viability of a case, determined by three critical legal issues, does not necessarily mean litigation ought to be pursued, and he explores how to make the initial interview a valuable resource to survivors, whether or not legal action is ultimately sought, with practical tips and a reproducible intake form.     

The co-constructed therapy alliance and the technical and tactical quality of the therapist interventions in psychotherapy

This study sought to describe a brief review of studies conducted on the therapeutic alliance, taking into consideration therapeutic process and outcomes. We seek to reflect about the need to encourage the communities who engage in and conduct research on clinical practice not only to implement surveys of empirically validated measures of therapeutic outcomes, but also make them a regular practice among all clinical mental health psychotherapists. We therefore suggest the following paradigm – the Practice Based on Evidence of Results (PBER) – as a way to improve the quality of technical and tactical interventions of psychotherapists     

Intuition as a Healing Modality: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

This article examines intuition as an archetypal, cultural-spiritual healing modality. It builds on the notion of intuition as a reality founded on the archetypal calling to become a healer. Consideration is given to a variety of intuition traditions as well as contemporary understandings of intuition based on natural scientific evidence. Intuition needs to be understood within the context of practice for appropriate use.     

Influence of multiple-day temporal distribution of repetitions on memory: A comparison of uniform,expanding, and contracting schedules

Very few studies have examined the influence of schedules of repetitions across multiple days (e.g., Tsai, 1927 Tsai, L.-S. 1927. The relation of retention to the distribution of relearning. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 10: 30–39. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Three temporal schedules of four presentations of pseudoword/word pairs over a 7-day learning period were compared: a uniform (presentations on Days 1, 3, 5, and 7), an expanding (1, 2, 3, 7), and a contracting (1, 5, 6, 7) schedule. Schedule was a within-subjects variable. Experiment 1 was performed on the Internet and showed that cued recall on Day 9 led to higher scores for the stimuli of the expanding schedule. Experiment 2 was performed in the laboratory and showed that the expanding and the uniform schedules led to the highest scores on Day 9. A recognition task performed during the learning phase revealed that stimuli recognized at the time of their repetition were more likely to be retrieved later than the others. Our results are discussed within the framework of the study-phase retrieval and encoding variability theories.     

Suppression in retrieval practice,part-set cueing,and negative priming memory: The hydrogen model

A number of phenomena in memory have been explained using appeals to active suppression processes, including retrieval practice, part-set cueing, and the negative priming that is observed with associative interference. However, more formal attempts to capture such processes have been absent. This paper outlines the hydrogen model of memory retrieval, which aims to be a simple model with the modest goal of trying to explore what influence suppression would have on memory retrieval. This model contains a single activation component and a single suppression component in which suppression comes into play only after retrieval interference has been detected. This model was created to explore the plausibility and viability of ideas about the operation of suppression during memory retrieval. For hydrogen, the degree of suppression recruited is proportional to the amount of interference experienced. Overall, the pattern of human data was captured by the suppression model.