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Susan, a quiet and withdrawn 45 year old woman, has been referred to a therapy clinic due to memory difficulties and impaired movement of the right side of her body. Susan’s family support consists of her husband, Juan and her two adolescent sons; Sean aged 14 years and Isaac aged 12 years. The boys have been displaying problematic behaviour of recent times, and as a result Juan is considering moving out of the home to live with a friend. From the referral, the therapy clinic has no indication as to what has caused Susan’s memory and physical impairments. Susan’s memory difficulties and physical impairment to the right side of her body are significantly being influenced by her memory function, motivation, emotions and personality, and
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The ability to recall previous therapy sessions and rehabilitation tasks is crucial for effective therapy sessions. As a result of Susan’s short-term memory impairment, she may experience difficulties in managing her activities of daily living (ADL’s). The impact of Susan’s short term memory impairment requires an intensive, slow and cautious approach to be implemented into her course of therapy. Susan is most likely to derive maximal benefit from short, frequent and repetitive therapy sessions to improve her short-term memory function. To improve Susan’s memory recall in her therapy sessions, she will require repeated instruction and feedback to complete tasks (Corbett, 2011). Mental repetition and maintenance rehearsal would be a technique used in Susan’s therapy sessions to improve her short-term memory retention (Burton, Westen and Kowalski, 2012). Burton, Westen and Kowalski (2012) define maintenance rehearsal as the “deliberate effort to maintain information by repeating it over and over”. A range of recall strategies that are focussed particularly on one aspect of memory would also be influential to contribute to the effectiveness of therapy sessions. The ability to re-learn any lost skills, to learn new skills and compensatory skills would also be impacting significantly on Susan’s progress with therapy. A mental imagery approach may be utilised to help Susan relearn lost motor function skills (Liu, Chan, Lee, & Hui-Chan, 2004). A mental imagery approach to re-learn lost skills would involve creating a mental model to represent, describe and explain the way in which things work (Burton, Westen and Kowalski, 2012). Susan experiences significant challenges in learning new tasks due to her short-term memory impairment and limited attention span. Use of an implicit learning approach to recognise new patterns in
The therapist Stephanie has had the liberty to have a few sessions with her client, Martha Rose. The client is an elderly Caucasian female, age 70 whom was recently diagnosed with early onset Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. She is a widow who lives alone and has retired as a Navy nurse. Her source of income is from a neighbor, JoAnn, age 67; whom she helps care for. Martha also has two children, Jennie age 45 and Thomas age 42. Both of her children are currently in the military and are station overseas and have children of their own. Martha Rose has very little contact with her 2 children and 4 grandchildren; only able to see them about once a year. The commonly used form of communication is via email, on average once weekly. The last visit from Martha’s children Jennie and Thomas has been about 20 months ago.
Mary has suffered with her illness for over 10 years. She has previously been diagnosis with a Cluster B type Personality Disorder. Mary comes across as narcissistic, self-engrossed and can be very demanding at times. Mary suffers from anxiety and is prone to panic attacks in relation to her PD diagnosis. At times Mary has been known to make ...
As I mentioned at the beginning of this paper, the professional relationship of Susan and I started somewhat slow. There were numerous attempts to make the first initial contact and to complete the necessary paperwork. Clinically, I had a million thoughts running through my head. Was Susan avoiding me. Was she safe? Does she have cell phone minutes available to return my call.? Is her depression overwhelming her? After our first meeting in the community I quickly assessed that Susan was used avoiding behaviors.
Leahy, R. L. (2003). Cognitive therapy techniques: A practitioner's guide. New York, NY [u.a.: Guilford Press.
What is Alzheimer ? Is Alzheimer 's more difficult for the patient or for the patient’s siblings?
Sarah reports that she has been having depressive symptoms such as sadness, weight loss, inability to sleep, and mood changes. Client also reports substance abuse. She reports that she feels sad most of the time and that she has had a hard past. She reports having anxiety most of the day and has a hard time functioning. Client reports that she was gang raped and suffers from flashbacks and severe mood changes. Client reports that no matter what she
The physician will question the patient about any stressors she may be contending with at home or work prior to her entering the hospital. The physician will order lab tests and speak with the patient to understand the psychological factors; a referral will be made for making a final diagnosis. After the physician reviews both lab tests and the psychological factors, a referral will be made for the patient to see a clinician. The referral will focus on obtaining support and stabilization. The clinical assessment will gather information using written forms as a first step, including releases to speak with family members. The second step would be to invite the family along with the client in an effort to obtain a better understanding of existing medical conditions along with any past mental disorders. Abuse as a child or abuse as an adult will be determined. The clinician will evaluate if the client is portraying any signs due to alcoholism or a drug addictions. An example of one question her clin...
Mechanical or rote repetition of the information is a great way to remember this information. The more time you spend rehearsing the information the longer the information will be remembered. This is actually a poor way of remembering things because it doesn’t make the information meaningful; “surface processing”. Elaborative Rehearsal is a more effective way of remembering information through “deep processing”, which is relating the information to information you already know. This technique is used in more in the education system than maintenance rehearsal. Even with these two ways to store things we still run into filling errors. Filling errors are where your brain has filed information incorrectly. The final step in the memory process is retrieval. Retrieval is the locating of stored information and returning it into your conscious thoughts. There are a few cues that help us retrieve them, such as priming, context, and state. Priming is the nonconscious identification or words and objects, by referring in to particular representations or associations in the memory just before carrying out the action or task. The memories that come back to your conscious mind when you are in a certain place or area are called context, dependent memories. When you are in a certain emotional state you many retrieve memories of when you were also in that same emotional
The horrible feeling of forgetting a coworker’s or an acquaintance’s name may be one of the most frustrating things a person can experience. This is a fact that many patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s face on a reoccurring basis. Loss of memory is a common part of the aging process and is sometimes referred to as dementia. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia and is not reversible in this day and age. In fact, 60 to 80 percent of dementia cases are Alzheimer’s and in 2015 more than 5.1 million cases age 65 or older were reported (Alzheimer’s Association, 2016). The most startling statistic is that by 2050, 14 million Americans and 81 million worldwide cases are expected (Wierenga & Bondi, 2011). While dementia is a part of Alzheimer’s it also affects an afflicted patient ability to perform day to day tasks, increased mood swings, and in the later stages, the ability to even walk or care for themselves. This horrible disease
Furthermore this article expands upon this subcategory of memory by describing the two types of tasks involved with it: verbal-production ta...
Farrants, J. (1998, September). The 'false' memory debate. Counseling Psychology Quarterly. Retrieved September 14, 2000 from ProQuest database (Bell & Howell Information and Learning-ProQuest) on the World Wide Web: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb
There is no clinical evidence of psychomotor disturbance. At times he struggled to maintain adequate eye contact. Although he was apprehensive to speak at first his speech was coherent, spontaneous, appropriate with normal rate, volume and rhythm. He described his mood as “overwhelmed.” Objectively, his mood was a combination of sullen and angry. His affect is full range, appropriate, with spontaneous emotional reactivity. There were no clinical features of psychotic illness. His behavior is appropriate for a frustrated teenage male. His memory for recent and remote events is intact. He is well oriented to place, time and person. His concentration and attention were both adequate but he did disassociate at times. Additionally, he was preoccupied with the event and its ramifications. He was able to add and subtract figures without difficulty. His general level of intelligence and fund of general knowledge appears to be above average. His level of personal hygiene is adequate. He was able to communicate clearly and he was able to achieve goal directed ideas without difficulty. He denied any current suicidal or homicidal ideation. Client disclosed ideations of hopelessness, shame and guilt. I was able to maintain adequate rapport with him throughout the interview and he was able to follow directions. He denied any auditory or visual hallucinations. Client denied having “real time” flashbacks of the traumatic event. However, he disclosed unwelcome and intrusive memories of the event that occur sporadically outside of therapy. The client has poor insight into the nature of his
Memory is a process by which we learned are stored for future use. Like the computer, researchers have characterized human memory as an information processing system that has three separate stages during which an already stored memory is called in consciousness. This is called model memory. Once a computer has been named and stored, we can “call it up” by its name and use it again. Human memory works much in the same way. When we recall or bring a memory into consciousness, we have retrieved it. This process is known as memory retrieval. Sensory memory is a very but brief but extensive memory for sensory events. Short term memory is more limited in capacity than sensory memory but lasts longer. Proactive interference occurs when old materials learned more recently. Retroactive interference occurs when recently learned materials interferes with the retrieval of material learned earlier. The initial 10 to 20 second STM period often leads to a second phase, working memory, during which attention and conscious effort are brought to bear on the material at hand. Long-term memory is the memory stage that has a very large capacity and capability to store information relatively permanently. We use maintenance rehearsal when we want to save or maintain a memory for a short period. People who are instructed to remember a list use elaborative rehearsal, which adds meaning to material that we want to remember. These are the models of memory.
Learning and memory are fascinating. The world could not function without either. They both are used in many different fashions in a wide variety of places. Learning and Memory have been carefully studied by professionals but are also well known and used by the common people on a daily basis. I am one of those common people, a student who is constantly learning and making the most of my memory. Since enrolling in The Psychology of Learning and Memory class I have come to the realization that I encounter situations in my life that exemplify the very concepts I have studied. I have also learned that it is beneficial to apply the lessons learned in class to my everyday life. Positive reinforcement, learned helplessness and serial recall are a few among many of the learning and memory models that have come to action in my life and in my final reflections surrounding the course.
There are a total of 36 clients that participated in the study, 15 being men and 21 being women. All of the clients requested therapy and also the clients are over the age of 18. “Exclude from the study were clients exhibiting sings of psychotic behavior, disoriented thinking, or neurological impairment”. The mean age of the clients is 27, the range 18-42. The client “presenting problem included issues such as depression, social or performance anxiety, relationship conflicts or lack of impulse control. None of the client where ...