My interest in the field of Psychology began during my sophomore year of high school when I started working as a Peer Educator for the S.A.V.E. (saving adolescents via education) program. This position trained me to educate Detroit’s inner city youth about sexual responsibility while advocating community participation into the program. This experience gave me the opportunity to build relationships with local teens and their parents. This was a great experience and it made me realize how much I enjoyed helping others; at that moment I decided to pursue a career in the Psychology field. I remember completing a paper in my senior year which focused on how clients responded to the difference between African American and Caucasian Psychologists therapeutic techniques. During my research I discovered there was not a major difference in the techniques used, during sessions, however clients responded better to therapy when his/her psychologist shared similar cultural backgrounds. This finding, combined with the limited number of minority psychologists further convinced me that a career in psychology would be perfect for me. My final wave of inspiration came in the summer of 2006 when I became an Office Aide at an Adult Foster Care home in Highland Park Michigan. While employed there my supervisor strongly encouraged me to attend a self-help seminar, while there I met another attendant who was there to improve her relationship with her 23 year-old daughter. She stated her daughter was a hard-working responsible woman who worked really hard at the family business. However, she couldn’t understand why her daughter constantly spent time with her friends all the time. I explained to her that it was perfectly normal for her daughter to spend ...
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...Geared towards helping to establish spiritual, financial, and social independence via educational programs. There will be assistance to child (ren) as well. After fulfilling these goals I plan to enroll into a culinary arts program during my leisure time. Once completing my mentioned goals and implementing my organization I am confident, I will be well equipped with knowledge and experience needed to successfully open up a multi-cultural restaurant. Although these goals may seem overwhelming to some, I’m confident my drive and determination will be my fuel during my anticipated journey. The Michigan School of Professional Psychology is a strong historical institute that understands the importance of approaching every individual as a human being instead of a statistic. These are the reasons l why the Michigan School of Psychology is my dream school of choice.
Who suggested that “we feel sorry because we cry . . . afraid because we tremble”?
When you think of a psychologist, you typically do not think about what minority they are. It never did occur to me before this assignment was due, that a book was prejudice against which they select to be referenced in books. In any subject, not just psychology, why would it matter if someone were of color, what his or her gender is? Many psychologists have not been given any recognition or an opportunity because they are not in the stereotype of a “white male.” When you intentionally type, “psychologists” on Google, the results are all white males. Ironic? That is up to interpretation. I did some more browsing, and eventually came across an African American man, who was psychologist. He is known by, Joseph white. Joseph is well known as the “ Godfather of the field of Black Psychology.”
My personal experience consists of me being a single parent with a special needs child. When my child was 3 years old, his doctor diagnosed him with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), I was completely in denial after finding out about my child 's mental health condition mainly because of his young age at the time. However, I still took advantage of the early intervention services that his doctor recommended. As my son got older, he entered public school and his mental health condition seemed to be getting worse. During this time he had been diagnosed with a second disorder called Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). That 's when I finally came to terms with myself and realized I had a special needs child that needed extensive mental health services. This became a very important social issue for me, because it interfered with his learning capabilities and social interaction amongst his peers. As a parent, I started researching about the disorders because I wanted to educate myself and gain as much information as I could about the mental disorders my son been diagnosed with. Moreover, I started working with special needs children and completing required trainings that focused on children with emotional, social and behavioral issues. As a result, my personal experience became the main reason that fostered me to start working on a career in the Social Service
One of my visions as a psychology practitioner scholar is becoming a clinical counselor. My purpose in psychology is to help people understand their life in a clear distinct way. I specifically want to target children and, help them grow and be more than they have the potential to be. I want to focus on the child development of children based on their environment. I want to be able understand children react the way they do in certain situations. Children have a way of not being able to express themselves fully so being able to help them understand their emotions.
Adolescents that are the minority are confronted with their ethnicity at an earlier age then Caucasian adolescents majority and they are constantly aware of ethnic differences, which means it is of greater importance to understand the development of the minority individual. It should lead to different assessments when it comes to ethnic identity. For example, African American adolescents are psychologically compared to Caucasian American adolescence diagnoses, which are sometimes inaccurately assessed. Bronfenberner explains the theoretical perspective such as the ecological perspective by saying, The implications for clinical treatment of African American adolescents, mental health workers must be sensitive to the ecological context of their clients. Mental Health workers must realize that th...
Unlike cultural competence, Anti- racism and the Anti-oppression framework has a clear focus, to directly address oppressive practices, and privilege in large institutions. In the “ More than being against it: Anti– racism and Anti –oppression in mental health services “ the authors Simon Corneau and Vicky Stergiopouls, identify seven strategies of the anti-racism and anti-oppression that should be employed when practicing direct service with clients. These seven strategies are "empowerment, education, alliance building, language, alternative, healing strategies, advocacy, social justice/activism, and fostering reflexivity” (Corneau & Stergiopoulos, 2012). The goal of using these seven strategies with clients is to engage the client in the process of care by recognizing the strengths and knowledge that the client brings to the relationship and honoring the idea that there is a racial feature of oppression that is inherent in the dynamics of the client clinician relationships. For example, the use of this practice in my current job with the Family Drug Courts could have a profound effect on the outcomes for both parents and children involved in the program. One example is the case of a 28-year-old mother of three that was separated from her children because of her drug addiction. This parent had an extensive history of trauma,
Counseling diverse clients ethically involves knowledge of one’s own cultural group, values, and awareness of one’s current stage of racial identity development as well as an understanding of minority clients’ stage of racial and cultural identity (Sue, & Sue, 2013). As a White student counselor I read the article titled, “Racism and White Counselor Training: Influence of White Racial Identity Theory and Research,” by Sherlon Pack-Brown (1999) and reviewed Sue and Sue’s (2013) stages of racial and cultural identity in order to gain personal knowledge and insight.
1. Summary: From small incidences, we can distinguish two types of people: the ones who sigh in frustration out of small mistakes and those who promptly deal with them without uttering any more than a single complaint or sigh. According to Michael D. Robinson(PHD at North Dakota State University), how we cope with these most dull incidents can reveal a lot about us as humans and our temperaments. In fact, this small deviation in behavior can prove detrimental to our health long term. Just as significantly stressful events can cause stress hormones to flood throughout our body, these small incidents can harm us according to Nancy Nicolson(associate professor of psychiatry and psychology at Maastricht University). Furthermore, Nicolson points to a 10-15% increase in cortisol levels for such small annoyances, which may be small compared to the 100% increase that we usually experience from greatly stressful events such as tests, but when accumulated over time, can lead to a bad combined effect. Carmen Sandi further states that feeling chronically stressed can weaken the immune system and increase heart disease. Rosalind S. Dorlen adds on, claiming that mental strategies can be practiced to help us exercise the brain region responsible for reasoning as long as we train ourselves to deal with this persistent tissue. Next, the article lists 5 signs of stress and how to deal with them. Often, we feel inconvenienced about a situation such as when a bus comes late and view our waiting of it as a “waste of time”. Perhaps, Dorlen concludes, we should try to see why the bus may have been late and take the issue from their perspective such as a maj...
Crying is important in infant development, as it’s infants’ way of communicating with the world surrounding them. The types of crying an infant does is thus important to understand, to know what the infant needs as he/she cannot explain themselves with the spoken language. Furthermore, crying is important to know whether or not the infants lungs have filled with air, since they couldn’t be crying without that, but also crying infants render signs that, for an example tells whether the newborn baby’s central nervous system works and functions. There are three types of cries: a basic cry, anger cry, and an in pain cry. The basic cry is what some experts
When I began my studies at the University of Northern Iowa, I had an interest in the field of psychology, but I was not yet sure that I wanted to pursue a career in that area. The classes that I consequently took and the professors that taught them solidified my desire to receive a degree in psychology.
My paper is based on an article from the text’s web site (chapter 9) entitled “Lack of sleep ages body’s systems.” The basic claim of the article is that sleep deprivation has various harmful effects on the body. The reported effects include decreased ability to metabolize glucose (similar to what occurs in diabetes) and increased levels of cortisol (a stress hormone involved in memory and regulation of blood sugar levels). The article also briefly alludes (in the quote at the bottom of page 1) to unspecified changes in brain and immune functioning with sleep deprivation.
Psychology is the investigation of the mind and how it processes and directs our thoughts, actions and conceptions. However, in 1879 Wilhelm Wundt opened the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany. Nevertheless, the origins of psychology go all the way back thousands of years starting with the early Greeks. This foundation is closely connected to biology and philosophy; and especially the subfields of physiology which is the study of the roles of living things and epistemology, which is the study of comprehension and how we understand what we have learned. The connection to physiology and epistemology is often viewed as psychology, which is the hybrid offspring of those two fields of investigation.
Concepts we discussed in both my Social Work and African American Studies classes such as white flight, housing discrimination, lack of school funding, and lack of access to adequate health care were reinforced when I began my practicum senior year at a local community mental health organization. The agency served a client population that was over 90% black. At practicum, I applied my skills learned in class such as communication, empathy, motivational interviewing, and strengths based perspective to form a bond with clients and ensure that services the agency delivered were what the clients needed. I combined my Social Work Research course with my practicum and designed a client satisfaction survey that assessed client involvement, satisfaction, and desired changes. These changes were presented to the board to help guide changes in activities and policies for the next fiscal
As I gradually make my way through this semester, I have come to realize that I am called to go into Psychology. I love watching people and trying to figure out why they act the way that they do. I, also, love knowing that I have finally figured out what careers I want to pursue. I want to become either a clinical or counseling psychologist, which both have the same requirements for everything – majors , classes, ect. So, I do not have to decide right off the bat on which career I want to pursue. Since I am planning on majoring in Psychology, I decide to do some research on my own, as well as go to a major’s fair hosted at the IU Southeast campus.