The Psychologist September 2019

the

the psychologist

psychologist september 2019

september 2019

Schooling the good citizen

www.thepsychologist.org.uk

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06/08/2019 16:34

the

the psychologist

psychologist september 2019

september 2019

contact The British Psychological Society 48 Princess Road East Leicester LE1 7DR 0116 254 9568 info@bps.org.uk www.bps.org.uk the psychologist and research digest www.thepsychologist.org.uk www.bps.org.uk/digest www.jobsinpsychology.co.uk psychologist@bps.org.uk Twitter: @psychmag Download our iOS/Android apps advertising Reach 50,000+ psychologists at very reasonable rates.

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Schooling the good citizen

www.thepsychologist.org.uk

The Psychologist is the magazine of The British Psychological Society It provides a forum for communication, discussion and controversy among all members of the Society, and aims to fulfil the main object of the Royal Charter, ‘to promote the advancement and diffusion of a knowledge of psychology pure and applied’

The Psychologist needs you!

We rely on your submissions throughout the publication, and in return we help you to get your message across to a large and diverse audience.

For details of all the available options, plus our policies and what to do if you feel these have not been followed, see www.thepsychologist.org.uk/contribute The main message, though, is simply to engage with us.

Contact the editor Dr Jon Sutton on jon.sutton@bps.org.uk, tweet us on @psychmag or call /write to us at the Society’s Leicester office.

Managing Editor Jon Sutton Deputy Editor Annie Brookman-Byrne Production Mike Thompson Journalist Ella Rhodes Editorial Assistant Debbie Gordon Research Digest Emma Young, Matthew Warren

Associate Editors Articles Paul Curran, Harriet Gross, Michelle Hunter, Rebecca Knibb, Adrian Needs, Paul Redford, Sophie Scott, Mark Wetherell, Jill Wilkinson History of Psychology Alison Torn Interviews Gail Kinman Culture Kate Johnstone, Sally Marlow Books Emily Hutchinson Voices in Psychology Madeleine Pownall International panel Vaughan Bell, Uta Frith, Alex Haslam, Elizabeth Loftus, Asifa Majid Psychologist and Digest Editorial Advisory Committee Catherine Loveday (Chair), Emma Beard, Harriet Gross, Kimberley Hill, Rowena Hill, Deborah Husbands, Peter Olusoga, Richard Stephens, Miles Thomas

08/08/2019 11:28

the

psychologist september 2019

02 Letters Eysenck, climate and more

34 Breaking down barriers Pooky Knightsmith on school-based approaches to mental health

07 Obituaries

38 Imagine all the people Siân Jones on prejudice towards immigrants

10 News European Congress and more

24 Digest Language learning and more

30 President

We meet

David Murphy

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62 Jobs

Latest vacancies

42 Building resilience to radicalisation Lynn Davies

66 Books Birth trauma, book award and more

46 ‘It’s a real critical period around gender’ We hear from Sarah Davidson from the Gender Identity Development Service

72 Culture Far-right, 55 Steps…

50 Teaching individuals gender equality and respect Dan O’Hare

54 Civic and political engagement in young people Martyn Barrett and Dimitra Pachi

58 A recipe for taste connoisseurs Helen Coulthard on teaching healthy eating

76 Look back

Kellye McBride’s history

of stigma 80 One on One

How does it feel to be a psychologist in these ‘interesting times’? Can it seem like the weight of the world is on your shoulders: so many societal issues, so little time?

I can feel overwhelmed on your behalf with the idea that psychologists can work across health and social systems, with shrinking budgets, in order to nip problems in the bud or tackle them if they do arise. But then, in British Psychological Societyorganised sessions at the European Congress of Psychology in Moscow (see p.10), I hear examples of this already happening.

In many of these areas – mental and physical health, prejudice, political engagement – there’s also a sense that the next generation are far more ‘woke’ than we might be. Psychologists are often playing a key role in seeking to ensure this is the case. In this issue, we bring together some of those ‘schooling the good citizen’ (starting on p.34).

Also bringing a strong focus on underlying values is incoming Society President David Murphy: meet him on p.30.

Dr Jon Sutton Managing Editor @psychmag

08/08/2019 11:28

A role in auditing Hans Eysenck?

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Anna Widoff/AFP/Getty Images

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A recent paper (Pelosi, 2019) has provided prima-facie evidence, some of it from documents disclosed in the process of litigation against tobacco companies, that Hans J. Eysenck was implicated in what is described as ‘one of the worst scandals in the history of science’ (p.434). We believe that it is now incumbent on the British Psychological Society to conduct an audit of his scientific publications.

Eysenck is one of the most prominent psychologists in the history of British psychology. When he died in 1997, he was the most cited living psychologist and the third most cited of all time, just behind Sigmund Freud and Jean Piaget, according to Rushton (2001). In Rushton’s opinion, he was ‘the single most important psychologist who ever lived’ (p.17). Although many psychologists would not go that far, there is no doubting his prominence in British psychology, in particular.

He should have been investigated long ago.

In 1971, he published a scientifically shoddy book on Race, Intelligence and Education. In 1976, when the Sunday Times exposed the fraudulent research of his former mentor Sir Cyril Burt on the heritability of IQ, he initially leapt to Burt’s defence, although the statistical implausibility of Burt’s data was patently obvious in the IQ scores themselves. Burt had fabricated the IQ scores and had published them in articles, sometimes with fictitious co-authors. Eysenck described the Sunday Times allegations as ‘unspeakably mean’ and likened them to ‘McCarthyism, smear campaigns, and witchhunting’, although he was later forced to concede that all the allegations were true. He dabbled frequently in pseudoscience, and in 1977, he began to write in support of Gauquelin’s preposterous Mars effect – the supposed statistical correlation between athletic eminence and the position of the planet Mars relative to the horizon at time and place of birth. Worst of all, in 1980, he published a book entitled The Causes and Effects of Smoking that sought to discredit the well-established causal link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. His later collaboration with Ronald Grossarth-Maticek on related medical issues led to the latest revelations in the Journal of Health Psychology.

We are living through a ‘replication crisis’ that threatens the reputation and scientific standing of psychology. The British Psychological Society has a statutory obligation, enshrined in its charter, ‘to promote the advancement and diffusion of a knowledge of psychology’. These latest revelations make a scientific audit of Eysenck’s research publications imperative, with a view to retracting any found to be scientifically unsound or based on falsified data. The 61 publications arising from his collaboration with Grossarth-Maticek (Marks, 2019) are most urgently in need of inspection, but a wider examination of Eysenck’s research publications would be desirable. Failing to act would not only damage the reputation of the Society and the discipline of psychology,

it could also cause harm to patients and members of the general public. The Society is uniquely placed to conduct a formal investigation and audit, and we call on them to act as soon as possible.

Andrew M. Colman, FBPsS, CPsychol Professor of Psychology, University of Leicester David F. Marks, FBPsS, CPsychol Editor, Journal of Health Psychology Chris McVittie, AFBPsS, CPsychol Professor of Social Psychology, Queen Margaret University Edinburgh Dr Richard Smith, CBE, FMedSci Former editor BMJ and co-founder of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) References Eysenck, H.J. (1991). Smoking, personality, and stress: Psychosocial factors in the prevention of cancer and coronary heart disease. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Eysenck, H.J., & Eaves, L. (1980). The causes and effects of smoking.

London: Maurice Temple Smith.

Marks, D.F. (2019). The Hans Eysenck affair: Time to correct the scientific record. Journal of Health Psychology, 24(4), 409–420. doi:10.1177/1359105318820931 Pelosi, A.J. (2019). Personality and fatal diseases: Revisiting a scientific scandal. Journal of Health Psychology, 24(4), 421–439.

Rushton, J.P. (2001). A scientometric appreciation of H. J. Eysenck’s contributions to psychology. Personality and Individual Differences, 31(1), 17–39.

Society reply: The BPS is the professional body for psychology and psychologists in the UK, with a leading role in promoting the advancement of psychology and setting a high standard of professional education and knowledge.

Our code of ethics and conduct and code of human research ethics provide the framework for ethical decision making for our members. They make clear that research should be designed, reviewed and conducted in a way that ensures its quality, integrity and contribution to the development of knowledge and understanding.

However, the conduct of research lies with the academic institution which oversees the work carried out by its academics and we welcomed the investigation into this research carried out by King’s College, London.

08/08/2019 11:33

the psychologist september 2019 letters

Harmful masculinity narratives There are three points in Martin Seager and John Barry’s letter ‘Toxic acts, not toxic masculinity’ (June issue) that we would like to discuss. 1) There are male specific issues that need to be addressed (which we can agree there are). 2) Their treatment of masculinity and its inherent link to maleness (which we accept is certainly the societal narrative). 3) Their claim that masculinity is being stigmatised and treated as toxic (which is where we disagree).

‘Boys and men are diverse.’

Five words that open the 2018 American Psychological Association (APA) Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men, which go on to discuss the many ways in which men suffer more acutely, such as suicide rates. The APA targets only some aspects, for instance criticism of men who act in a ‘traditionally masculine’ way (exemplified by but not limited to Trump, Mad Men etc). We are somewhat surprised that Seager and Barry view these guidelines as a ‘stigmatisation of masculinity’. Is masculinity really so fragile as to merit such

defensiveness over any criticism at all?

If masculinity is entirely positive then it cannot cause suffering.

But if certain narratives, especially those around strength, risk and self-reliance can hurt men, if they can in any way contribute to many of the awful outcomes like depression, suicide and abuse, then there is something harmful in those narratives. Such narratives, if not sufficiently diluted, can become, at their extremes, toxic.

Seager and Barry’s treatment of masculinity has two problems.

First they have read the term ‘toxic masculinity’ and proceeded as if it means ‘masculinity = toxic’. But ‘toxic’, to most who use the term, is an adjective. A modifier. ‘Toxic masculinity’ refers to masculinity only when it drives men to behave in harmful ways (to the individual or others). Men falling into ‘the trap of patriarchal masculinity is not only hurting the people they wish to be involved with in life, but it’s also hurting themselves by not allowing them to explore themselves and define themselves beyond the status

quo of gender’ (Everyday Feminism: http://tinyurl.com/edfeminism).

The claim is not ‘masculinity is toxic’, rather that some expressions of masculinity can become toxic.

Second, Faith Newton (July issue) demonstrated the limits of their characterisation of masculinity as ‘protection to women, children’ and how that promoted inequality.

This dichotomy of protector/ protected, as well as the addendum ‘in times of war and peace’ evoke an expression of masculinity that is rooted in violence, where men must shield women from the aggression of (presumably) other men. The nature of this characterisation is a helpful demonstration of how masculinity narratives can become harmful.

If masculinity is inherently linked to maleness, and we want to talk about men’s issues (we do!), then there’s a choice. Either masculinity is part of the conversation, both linked to maleness and open to criticism, or it’s completely irrelevant to men’s issues. We can’t have it both ways.

Meltem Osman Trainee Clinical Psychologist A.J. Walker

Modernising the Mental Health Act Tim Sanders/www.timonline.info

The Independent Review of the Mental Health published its final report, ‘Modernising the Mental Health Act: increasing choice, reducing compulsion’, in December 2018. Commissioned in late 2017 by then Prime Minister Theresa May, the Review, chaired by Professor Sir Simon Wessely, was set up to look at how the legislation in the Mental Health Act (1983) is used and how practice can improve. Having sought views from those with lived experience, their carers, and the full range of professionals who interact with the Act, the Review culminated in a published report of 154 recommendations, including four key principles that should underpin the reformed Act. The government have already committed to implementation of a number of recommendations and, in July, NHS England announced

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its Mental Health Implementation Plan outlining a substantial new investment in community mental health care. The government has recently set up a Mental Health Act Review Advisory Group to consider the Independent Review recommendations and a full response is expected by the end of the year.

I met with Kate King MBE, a service user; Dr Shubulade (Lade) Smith CBE, a Consultant Psychiatrist; and Dr John Taylor, a Consultant Psychologist; to discuss some of the key issues. Is a system based on deprivation of liberty still the appropriate way to support individuals experiencing serious mental illness? Why it is that so many service users feel a lack of dignity whilst under the Act? What are the challenges faced by staff working in this system? What needs to change?

Read our exchange on The Psychologist website at https://tinyurl.com/modernmha Sophie Carruthers PhD student Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London

08/08/2019 11:33

Highlighting comorbidities

the psychologist july 2019

As an Assistant Psychologist working within a drugs and alcohol service, I was excited to see a feature on alcohol in the July issue. However, I was rather disappointed by the lack of reference to dual diagnosis – comorbid mental health and problematic substance use.

Although Kelleher highlighted anxiety and depression as often comorbid with psychologist alcohol misuse and Haydock briefly mentioned the ‘messy issue’ of dual diagnosis, the articles failed to address the high prevalence rates and impact of this.

Within the service where I work, we support clients with complex dual diagnoses and/or complex trauma every day. We recognise that substance use and mental health arrive, all too often, hand-inhand. This fact is not highlighted enough.

If people better understood that there are often deeper psychological reasons Alcohol leading to alcohol or drug use and that the behaviour can be seen as a way to manage overwhelming thoughts and feelings then maybe there would be less self-stigma amongst those with problematic substance use and less stigmatisation by the wider society towards them.

Most clients I work with have been turned away by mental health services. Despite their distress, which can the

july 2019

The complex worlds of use and misuse Also… reports from the Annual Conference

www.thepsychologist.org.uk

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manifest as suicidal ideation, and despite their genuine mental health needs, services such as IAPT, CMHTs and even crisis teams routinely maintain that they cannot support clients who are potentially harming themselves through alcohol and drug use. The narrative that people cannot engage with (or benefit from) such support until they have addressed their alcohol and drug use problems, I would argue, is not our experience here or in the addiction psychology field.

I am lucky to work in a drugs and alcohol service which has an in-house psychology team that can support clients with dual-diagnosis. Practice-based evidence is teaching us that psychological interventions can and do alleviate the distress of people coming through with alcohol and/or substance issues and – in so doing – serve also to reduce and/or stop their use. However, there needs to be more mental health provision and fewer barriers within CMHTs for this population, especially as those with dual-diagnosis are some of the most vulnerable and marginalised people in our society. Services commissioned to address problematic alcohol and substance use cannot achieve this in isolation. Clients need compassionate, non-judgemental and effective mental health support and this is why dualdiagnosis must not become an aside in our communication about issues pertaining to alcohol and substances.

Ruby Ramsden MBPsS Senior Assistant Psychologist Northampton

Being Muslim in clinical psychology

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Recently, I have been driven to think about how difference and diversity presents itself within Clinical Psychology which has forced me to think about my own position. I am a young Muslim female who wears a headscarf. I openly wear something that identifies me as being different.

You know I believe in something before I have even had the chance to say hello. Your views are shaped by the political context, the news stories that feature almost daily sharing another terrorist attack in the name of Islam. Wearing a symbol of a religion facing growing hostility makes me feel like I need to be a symbol of something different. I need to show everyone that Muslims are fun, happy and kind people. In trying to do this I already feel different.

Throughout my training I have worked in services where the majority of clients are white British.

It is not just the patients though, in every team, by default, I feel different.

There is a serious lack of diversity in Clinical Psychology and most mental health teams I have gone into.

As a young person new to the profession it is difficult to know how to deal with these feelings of being different. I wonder about implicit biases that my patients and colleagues have.

I attempted to bring up discussions around difference and diversity in supervision, but my supervisors did not feel comfortable speaking about it. One supervisor told me they avoided discussing it because ‘you probably get it everywhere you go’. It feels like there is a fear of talking about difference.

Perhaps there is an anxiety that it will come across as racist? I’m not sure. I want to let you know that it is okay to ask how I feel within a

team. It is okay to ask if I have fitted in. You might ask these questions to my white counterparts and not think twice. It is okay to explore with me how connected I feel to my patients.

I might choose to completely ignore my race and religion and talk about how the patient being a different sex is bringing something up.

Supervisors and peers need to be open minded and explore diversity when it presents itself.

I am different, but only a little.

I wonder what it would be like for someone who wears traditional salwar kameez to work. The more diversity we see within the profession the more we will be able to celebrate that diversity. We need to create a society where ‘us’ encompasses the whole of humankind.

Tasmeah Zain Trainee Clinical Psychologist York

08/08/2019 11:33

the psychologist september 2019 letters

Supporting invisible parents I would like to add a voice to the discussion around paternal mental health, which we read about in Viren Swami’s article (May issue) and further in Jasmin Kaur Gill’s letter (July issue). Whilst we must acknowledge the unique experiences of new fathers and the role toxic masculinity may play in informing how they do or do not access support, we must not ignore the unique experiences of other gendered new parents, too.

I am a mother of two. My partner carried our first child and I carried our second. We have navigated issues unique to our own situation such as health care professionals at the hospital where our children were born assuming my partner or myself were an aunty or friend rather than parent. Every visit to the GP is an ‘outing’ of ourselves (‘this is my partner and also my child’s mum’). We have asked every childcare setting whether or not they have books about same gendered families, to which the response has been 100 per cent ‘no’. These are just the conspicuous, crass examples whereas it is the more nuanced, subtle microaggressions that tend to feel more profound.

For example, baby development websites refer to the father, not partner, and people refer to the sperm donor as ‘their dad’.

Complex new questions are raised when one child is attached to one parent, and one child attached to the other. My story is from the position of being a two-mum family, but there are also two-dad families, three or four parent families, single parent families, and so on.

Research in this area of attachment is scant.

Whilst fathers of heteronormative families may be less inclined to seek help due to masculine stereotypes, new parents of same-gendered families may also be less likely to seek help given that they already feel they are ‘less normal’ than most families and thus feel an extra pressure to ‘succeed’ as a family.

During these first few years as a parent I have set up and run a thriving social support group for LGBT+ families in North London. Many of us face similar challenges and the support of these groups is sacred.

The trouble is that our health care system (despite the sported NHS rainbow lanyards) and third sector service providers continue to assume that babies are born to a mother and a father in roles laden with gender stereotypes. We really need to check our assumptions and remain curious about families we serve.

There are many family structures. It can be a painful experience when families are assumed to be heteronormative – this, in a way, makes part of our existence invisible.

Dr Charlotte Whiteley Chartered Counselling Psychologist London

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from the chief executive Published in January, the NHS Long Term Plan is the blueprint for the future of our health service, and sets out a welcome ambition to rapidly expand access to psychological treatments.

This is needed to meet a clear demand in society for better access to psychological therapies.

We are keen to play our part in turning the plan’s vision into a reality, but we recognise that it will require commitment at every level of government and across the NHS. A plan is only as good as its delivery, and ultimately patients need to feel the benefits of more coordinated and better care from a health and social care workforce which is more psychologically informed.

That’s why we’ve joined with other professional bodies to call for the creation of a Chief Psychological Professions Officer within NHS England, which would bring the psychological workforce in line with other professions such as medicine and nursing.

A Chief Officer would provide a crucial link between professional bodies such as ourselves and the people tasked with implementing policy and delivering the plan.

They would also work with members of the psychological workforce who are in leadership positions at all levels of the NHS, and ensure that psychological approaches become ingrained at local, regional and national level.

With a welcome drive towards parity of esteem for mental health, and an unprecedented expansion of access to psychological treatments, the CPPO is needed to lead this expansion and make sure that service users, professional bodies and policy makers are all moving in the same direction.

Further changes to the landscape for the psychological professions are ongoing, with the emergence of new roles including Clinical Associates in Psychology and Education Mental Health Practitioners.

We’ve contributed to the development of apprenticeship standards for some of these roles, and will evolve our offer as an organisation to support the people who enter the workforce over the coming years.

Whether you work in the NHS or not, we all share an interest in the future of our health service, and I would be keen to hear from any members with a view on the CPPO role and the future of the psychological workforce.

Sarb Bajwa is Chief Executive of the British Psychological Society.

Contact him at Sarb.Bajwa@bps.org.uk

08/08/2019 11:33

The limits of our actions

Reflecting diversity

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I was perusing six months’ worth of The Psychologist this week and could not help but notice that they seemed for the first time (in my memory) to reflect the ethnic diversity of British trained psychologists. I think I had previously predicted that this might not be achieved in the career lifespan of the average psychologist.

I have now been retired for three years and was thinking of ‘divorcing’ the BPS but this has given me a boost to continue to be a part of the organisation.

So congratulations and I hope that this is the first of many more to come! Hotep!

Professor Jeune Guishard-Pine, OBE Harrow

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PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images

Maya Gimalova and Martin Milton’s letter ‘Taking action on climate change and environmental degradation’ (July issue), exhorting psychologists to become more active in combatting climate change, raises many issues. The majority of these issues have been far more exhaustively explored, even just in the pages of The Psychologist over the last few years, than the authors imply.

However, a crucial concern, I believe, is how the current tide of thinking (particularly amongst educationally-privileged groups) so often leads to conflictual, defensive and irrational conversations based on the fantasy that ‘if I just do my bit, we can reverse this awful catastrophe – you must also’. Many psychologists will recognise this type of statement as an understandable defensive response to uncertainty and a sense of existential panic. Surely the time has come to draw attention to, appropriately challenge and avoid perpetuating this type of thinking?

For example, social psychologists are familiar with the well-researched gap between expressed social attitudes and real-life behaviour. (This is increasingly relevant when we see reports that a brief heatwave in London significantly altered popular beliefs about the relative ‘importance’ of the threat of climate change).

It is uncomfortable but necessary to recognise that there will not be sufficient numbers of people changing their behaviour to reverse current trends in energy consumption, however much concern is expressed in public attitude surveys.

Political statements declaring a ‘climate emergency’ should be scrutinised to see if this corresponds to any effective policy changes, rather than being clutched at as an indicator of national hope. An understanding of ethnocentricity should remind us that just because ‘people we know’ are giving up air travel or behaving as ‘ethical consumers’, this is not a reliable indicator of universal trends. Research into the psychology of behaviour change shows how complex it is to facilitate a shift in an individual’s habits, and how behaviour change

in large populations is subject to a huge raft of variables, many linked to understanding economics, political influence and leadership trends. Radical thinkers relating this to environmental policy and human behaviour are outspoken in their criticisms of current approaches - see for instance letters from John Raven and Mallory Wober (November 2018 issue).

At a small group and one-to-one level, counsellors, therapists and those who study the psychology of interpersonal behaviour know that challenging someone’s beliefs and behaviours, or exhorting them to change, frequently elicits guilt, denial, defensiveness and other counter-productive responses. Many of these points were raised by Cameron Brick and Sander van der Linden in ‘Yawning at the Apocalypse’ (September 2018 issue).

Individuals’ expressed beliefs and emotions around the themes ‘what, if anything, can be done?’ and ‘we’re all doomed’ will vary considerably according to many background variables. This makes it even more challenging for psychologists to keep a cool head in trying to make a helpful contribution. Privileged, northern European and North American psychologists (like myself) can find that a mixture of guilt, anger and futility leads to apparently contradictory public statements and actions.

Comparing personal carbon footprint sizes or discussing reducing waste in organisations may enable people to feel less isolated and helpless, but is not going to make any significant contribution to the positive global change that we long for. Psychology is a scientific discipline. We cannot be in denial about climate change, but equally we cannot be in denial about the limits of our personal agency, however painful. Perhaps we all need to work harder at helping ourselves and one another face up to the multiple and complex psychological ramifications – at cognitive, emotional and behavioural levels – of our current global predicament and spend less time on magical thinking.

Rose Kent Counselling Psychologist Glasgow

08/08/2019 11:33

the psychologist september 2019 letters

Double empathy and autism I agree with Professor Rita Jordan (August 2019) that the double empathy problem leads to biases in interpreting behaviour. Carers may have feelings of inadequacy from difficulties understanding the autistic person’s point of view and vice versa.

Differences in cognitive bias aren’t the problem per se.

Communication is two way, both perspectives are equally valid, but as Dr Damian Milton says, a problem arises when one group has power over another.

The autstic community is well versed in the double empathy problem. Until recently there’s been little acknowledgment in psychology about how consequential the concept is; how it can free practitioners to let go of damaging, normative persuasions, to work more empathically with autistic people face to face and not resort to the bullying shown by the Panorama programme. Having listened to stories of lived experience and noting mismatches with traditional theory, some researchers are working

with the autistic community within participatory frameworks, paving the way for more respectful narratives, policy and practice. Momentum is rising with these laudable efforts to bridge the double empathy gap.

I’d like to add a further point to Jordan’s explanation. In addressing the readership she writes that ‘none of us have natural intuitive understanding of autism’ (emphasis added). However, numerous autistic scholars, professionals, and lay persons, myself included, read The Psychologist and are Society members. Some are formally diagnosed, some self-identify. A binary ‘them and us’ discourse is marginalising, and a factor in reinforcing the premise that the psychological study of autism takes place from the outside looking in, where the expert by professional experience maintains the narrative; or, in terms of double empathy, holds onto the power which causes problems in the first place.

The BPS has a committment to Equality, diversity and inclusion in its Declaration policy (March, 2017).

I suggest that as a profession, we need to be more mindful of our own language biases and underlying assumptions which may influence communication and practice.

Jacqui Price Educational Psychologist Milton, D. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The ‘double empathy problem’.

Disability & Society, 27(6), 1-5.

Editor’s response: Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I have often felt uneasy about the way autistic people can be portrayed as ‘other’ in psychological research, a ‘puzzle’ to be solved. I’ve noted the rise in participatory frameworks and new perspectives on autism; we’ve featured some recently, in print and online. We’ll soon be putting together a web collection with new comment.

I must also apologise for an editorial oversight in the August interview with Simon Bignell, which had us saying ‘people suffering the conditions’, when alternative wording may have been preferable. Thanks to reader Anne-Marie Green for rightly flagging that up.

Jim Drewery 1927-2019 Jim Drewery, a Fellow of the Society and one of the pioneers of Clinical Psychology training in Britain, died in April this year. Jim began his psychology career with a first class degree at Aberdeen where he was a fencing blue. After a period of time as assistant lecturer at Queen’s in Belfast, he founded the Edinburgh course with Boris Semeonoff and later became Director of Psychological Research at Dumfries. In 1974, Jim was appointed Area Clinical Psychologist for Devon where he appointed heads of department in Torbay, Plymouth and North Devon, and headed up the Exeter department himself. There, he held a joint appointment with the University, and established the training course in Clinical Psychology, first as an in-service course and later, with Jim Orford, as an MSc. Jim contributed to clinical training by instilling a deep and powerful passion about the role of Clinical Psychology as an important profession in its own right and separate from Psychiatry. He taught the practice and value of therapy, starting with the lived experience and distress of those who came to the service. At the time, this approach was very different from the more diagnosis-

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based approaches taught on other courses.

Trainees were encouraged to explore what they brought from their own lives to the therapeutic encounter and thus Jim was an early advocate of reflective practice, which is now an essential component of training.

After his retirement in 1987, he continued with a small private practice and enjoyed a range of outdoor pursuits in the company of his wife, Janice Smith, a fellow clinical psychologist. His interests included sailing, fly-fishing, skiing, walking and travelling. Sadly, it was not long before his health began to fail and gradually his outdoor activities had to be abandoned. He was to have 15 years of an increasingly debilitating condition, during which time Janice cared for him unfailingly. In all that time, he remained stoical and vicariously enjoyed sport, particularly through watching cricket on television or listening to the commentary on the radio.

Jim’s legacy of combining caring with psychological insight will be remembered by many.

Maggie Cormack Exeter

08/08/2019 11:33

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07/08/2019 14:32

UCL GREAT ORMOND STREET INSTITUTE OF CHILD HEALTH

Postgraduate Training in Paediatric Neuropsychology Applications are now open for the professional training programme in paediatric neuropsychology starting in September 2020 delivered by University College London and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.

The Masters/PG Diploma in Applied Paediatric Neuropsychology is open to all professional psychologists and psychology graduates. The Masters/PG Diploma in Clinical Paediatric Neuropsychology is open to Clinical Psychologists and Educational Psychologists.

Programme Directors: Professor Michelle de Haan & Dr Sara Shavel-Jessop

For further information please check: www.ucl.ac.uk/ich/education/taught-programmes/paediatric-neuropsychology www.ucl.ac.uk/centre-developmental-cognitive-neuroscience www.ucl.ac.uk/ich/research/developmental-neurosciences/cognitive-neuroscience-neuropsychiatry

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07/08/2019 14:32

From the European Congress Ella Rhodes, Jon Sutton and Michael Smith (Northumbria University) report from some of the BPS-organised sessions in Moscow Moving psychological science forward in Europe

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‘The scientific world has changed’, claimed Professor Daryl O’Connor (University of Leeds, and Chair of the British Psychological Society’s Research Board), opening this symposium. Since the publication of the Open Science Collaboration’s 2015 article in Science, a replication of 100 psychology studies in which only 39 per cent of effects replicated the original findings, psychologists have been forced to think about how to move the field forward and do better science.

‘This was a seminal, breathtaking article, but also devastating in its conclusions’, said O’Connor, who convened the symposium to bring together key academics and stakeholders involved in the dissemination of psychological knowledge from across Europe. So, how to remove the ‘threats to reproducibility’?

O’Connor observed that science is a behaviour, and that given our expertise in behaviour change, psychologists should be well placed to change their own questionable practices such as p-hacking and HARKing.

With reference to Susan Michie and colleagues’ COM-B model of behaviour change and behaviour change wheel, O’Connor stressed the importance that ‘all levels of the behaviour needed to be targeted’.

A theme that cut across the symposium was that to truly move the discipline forward we must focus not only on individual researchers, but also change the way that we train psychologists to undertake research, and the incentive structures within the discipline. O’Connor’s talk struck an optimistic tone, highlighting many of the

initiatives that are already in place. These include preregistration of studies, and registered reports, now adopted across the portfolio of British Psychological Society journals. ‘We are leading the way, not just for psychological science, but for science more generally’.

The idea that both ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ approaches to science are needed was also a key message from Andrea Abele-Brehm (Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany). She highlighted the need to better teach undergraduate students to develop theories, open research practices and methodologies including how to appropriately conduct direct and conceptual replications. But Abele-Brehm also discussed an evaluation of data sharing her and colleagues have conducted (in press in Social Psychology). This showed that Professors have the least positive attitudes towards data sharing of all career stages, but also the least fears – suggesting both opportunities and barriers to changing behaviours in the most senior academics.

Abele-Brehm mentioned that within the discipline there are too many small-scale theories with overlapping constructs, underpowered studies, questionable research practices, a lack of openness and insufficient collaboration across labs. Universities could do more, by making a commitment to open science practices a selection criterion when appointing academic staff.

Publishers and research funders could shift incentive structures, to ensure that researchers are required to engage in open science practices.

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the psychologist september 2019 news Professor Remo Job (University of Trento, Italy) also stressed the importance of providing appropriate training in theory development at undergraduate level.

He suggested that we needed to shift the mindset of students away from thinking that individual studies provide definitive insight; there needs to be greater emphasis on meta-analysis. Job also stated that ‘teaching replication can be exciting and fun, but adequate supervision is crucial’. There also needs to be a shift in teaching from focusing on whether an effect is statistically significant, to theory development and methods.

Rebecca Harkin (Wiley) then spoke about how the publishers are helping researchers to better engage with open research practices. Harkin said that it is now widely acknowledged among publishers and researchers that psychology has a replication crisis: ‘the question isn’t “why” anymore, it’s “how”’. Data sharing is one initiative which is now becoming ubiquitous, but it’s a challenge to overcome concerns that researchers have with data sharing, such as fears of being ‘scooped’. All journals in the BPS portfolio now require authors to state how their data can be accessed, and provide reasons why it isn’t publicly available if it isn’t being shared. Harkin also described Wiley’s transparent peer-review pilot, which is designed to explore how peer-review can be opened up in a smart, sensible, flexible and friction-free way. Reviews and author responses are published alongside the paper, and reviewers are encouraged to sign their reviews to increase transparency and openness.

The final speaker was The Psychologist’s Editor, Dr Jon Sutton. He opened with a quote from the TV series Game of Thrones: ‘There’s nothing more powerful than a good story’. A particularly potent aspect of such stories is change. Could we help people to tell a story of change about their work, and how the accuracy, openness and accessibility of psychological science can be improved?

Sutton highlighted how a lack of clarity in dissemination of science (for example in press releases) can lead to the propagation of unsubstantiated and inaccurate claims.

The Psychologist is providing opportunities for early career researchers to learn how to tell their stories in a simple, engaging and transparent way. ‘People often think that writing is profound if they don’t understand it, or if they’ve had to work hard to do so’, Sutton claimed, ‘but clarity is really important for transparency’. Sutton also discussed how we often hear that open science is a ‘renaissance’, yet there still isn’t a ‘culture’ of replication.

‘Do we need to make the story around open science more fun and engaging, in order to truly encourage researchers to adopt open science practices? Are we missing the importance of stories – who tells them, to whom, why and how – in the open science debate?’

Perhaps Sutton’s closing message summed up this symposium: ‘We can’t just bounce ideas around in a liberal echo chamber – we have to reach people who we are not reaching.’ I feel that symposia like this highlight the good work that is already going on around open science, and act as a catalyst for sharing and promoting new initiatives. The scientific world in Europe and beyond is changing – rapidly, and for the better. ms

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‘If young people don’t see themselves in psychology…’

In a discussion on advancing the leadership of psychology in Europe, former Society President Nicola Gale said psychology and psychologists have much to offer in terms of leadership and in tackling many of society’s intractable problems. Yet psychologists, having often set out on a career path to support wellbeing, do not always embrace leadership opportunities.

Dr Waikaremoana Waitoki (University of Waikato), President Elect of the New Zealand Psychological Society (NZPsS), has been working to ensure the rights of the country’s indigenous people and psychologists are reflected by, and embedded in, the society’s work.

Waitoki said that as an indigenous person from a colonised country she hoped to establish approaches in the NZPsS that reflected the fact New Zealand’s indigenous people were the first people of the country.

Each of the society’s policies and practices are set up to recognise the ‘spirit and intent of the treaty of Waitangi’. Waitoki pointed to the importance of leadership in addressing iniquities and ensuring the needs of indigenous people are reflected in psychology, and that indigenous psychologists feel a sense of belonging in the NZPsS. The version of psychology many of us are taught is endemically western and thus not always applicable or relevant to people from non-western communities.

Waitoki said that following the horrific terrorist attacks on Mosques in Christchurch, this

Dr Waikaremoana Waitoki

became obvious – it was difficult to find helpful psychological material which was specific and relevant to the Muslim community. While Māori people make up around three per cent of the psychological workforce in New Zealand they have the highest suicide rate in the world – Waitoki asked what we can do if our psychology is not applicable to nonwestern people. Good leadership, she suggested, can show the next generation what they can aspire to do. ‘If young people don’t see themselves in psychology they’ll move on to other things.’

Incoming BPS President David Murphy has been deeply involved in encouraging and developing leadership skills and confidence in trainee clinical psychologists at the University of Oxford. Leadership development can be seen as a toolbox, giving someone the skills to lead, or more like watering a garden, giving people development opportunities and constructive feedback. Helping people to see themselves as leaders is a key component in increasing people’s motivation to lead. Motivation to lead has been studied in various populations – very high levels can be found among US Army Officer cadets and business students, but in Murphy’s Clinical Psychology students levels were below average, with no difference between genders.

The leadership development programme Murphy introduced at Oxford runs for the three years of its Clinical Psychology Doctorate programme and encourages students to recognise the leadership skills they may not have realised they had. He surveyed students before and after and found positive gains in their leadership identity and motivation to lead, which were maintained over time.

What can we do to persuade psychologists that leadership may suit them? Gale ended by suggesting we should ask trainees what kind of future they hope for, the part they’d play in creating it and how they would make a difference. er

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Practical examples of positive prevention

Key source: ‘Improving the psychological wellbeing of children and young people’ – edited book with examples.

Let’s be honest, attending psychology conferences can be pretty bleak in austere times. So many societal issues, so little time. Opening this BPS-organised symposium, Julia Faulconbridge said that prevention, health promotion and early intervention services have been hit hardest by cuts. Can psychologists genuinely be expected to ‘lead the change and promote healthy child development’? What enables a parent to be a good one, in the face of a potential ‘developmental cascade’ of issues? Thankfully, just as I was feeling helpless and overwhelmed on behalf of psychologists everywhere, we heard striking examples of psychologists doing concrete work within unified, holistic services, created ‘for people not for problems’.

Michael Ungar’s view of resilence was to the fore – as less an individual trait, more a quality of the child’s social and physical ecology.

The first success story was from Camilla Rosan in the field of perinatal mental health. Up to 20 per cent of women develop a mental health problem during pregnancy or within a year of giving birth; yet in 2015, fewer than 15 per cent of localities provided specialist services for women with

complex or severe conditions at the full level recommended in NICE guidance, and more than 40 per cent provided no service at all. Now, every area of the country has money to set up an evidence-based perinatal mental health service. These cover five pathways – preconception advice, specialist assessment, emergency assessment, psychological interventions, urgent admission to a mother and baby unit. Services have been extended to preconception to 24 months after birth; and access expanded to a whole family approach.

Rosan called for still more to be done to support the resilience of family functioning during ‘challenging times’ around birth. ‘We need to train practitioners to be “perinatal competent”. We must prioritise antenatal and postnatal parents for assessment and intervention – babies can’t wait.’

Next, Dr Jenny Taylor was fascinating on embedding psychological principles throughout services, and in casual conversations taking place in informal settings.

She gave examples such as Pause, a programme focusing on women who have had more than two children removed by social services.

It has been effective in reducing the number of pregnancies, saving millions of pounds per year. More broadly, Pause is helping women to understand what a positive relationship would look like.

Similarly, the ‘FAMILY’ programme for children at risk of entering care has been teaching social workers to use collaborative formulation; and Music And ChangeUK has engaged marginalised young people at risk of offending in ‘streettherapy’. Such ‘opportunities for purposeful conversations’ might not be labelled as therapy or conducted in a usual context or time slot. They are, however, showing that ‘being a psychologist’ can involve so much more than the traditional model of one-to-one therapy; and it can involve encouraging other professions to adopt our foundational principles. That might include looking beyond symptom clusters to the severity of difficulties in identity and self worth, family and peer relationships, and the ability to be productive and to learn. An end goal has to be nurturing a child’s capacity to tackle developmental challenges and use cultural resources to maximise growth. js

Turning the tanker of child mental health

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‘Attainment at what cost?’ was the question posed in a panel discussion organised by the British Psychological Society. Psychologists from Wales, England and Scotland were all represented at the event, which considered the balancing act between educational achievement and the wellbeing of children and young people.

Developing policy is no small task; implementing that policy is an even more daunting one. Consultant Clinical Psychologist Dr Duncan Law, previously London and South East Clinical Lead for Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) for Children and Young People, introduced some of the policies in place in England and the way he hopes they will evolve.

Law, who works with the Anna Freud Centre which plays a part in putting policy into practice, pointed to one of the main policy drivers in improving children’s mental health care in England, the Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health initiative, part of the NHS Long Term Plan. One part of that is the introduction of Child Wellbeing Practitioners and Educational Mental Health Practitioners – roles which emerged after the

acknowledgement that 70 per cent of children in England with a moderate to severe mental health problem never see a mental health practitioner in person.

Of course, as with any policy initiative, it is important to find out whether it makes a real difference, and in England the data on the effectiveness of mental health interventions is poor. Law has been involved with gathering data to find out if these new roles are helpful to children and their families, using a system called POD which allows young people to enter data into an iPad. So far the data suggests that the guided self-help used by these two new types of practitioner is helpful, but only if a child is able to access sessions and do work in between those sessions.

Glasgow’s Principal Educational Psychologist Alison Crawford introduced Glasgow for the international audience by pointing to the city’s industrial past and the high levels of child poverty in its present. There are 16 national priorities in Scotland, including the aims for children and young people to be successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and

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the psychologist september 2019 news Jess Hurd/reportdigital.co.uk

responsible citizens, and ensuring children have the best start in that.

These priorities are backed up by having the framework ‘Getting it Right for Every Child’ embedded in Scottish law. Scottish Education also has a Curriculum for Excellence which covers children and young people aged three to 18, and ensures that wherever a child is in the education system teachers are required not only to consider educational attainment but also health and wellbeing.

Crawford explained the curriculum celebrates children’s achievements in their wider communities.

For example if a child volunteers or takes part in sport, that is counted as part of their wider achievement. When considering any extra support children might need this is considered not just in individual terms but in a way that also takes into account the system surrounding a child.

‘Additional needs may be temporary or lifelong… we need planning to be flexible enough to accommodate a wide range of needs. We have a wellbeing assessment for children, when they need support we go back to that and think about a child’s wellbeing to ensure we understand a child’s needs in terms of an ecological model.’

In Scotland there’s a saying ‘We’re aw Jock Tamson’s bairns’, meaning everyone is an equal part of the same family. Crawford said we cannot rest with equality but instead must move towards equity – ensuring resources go to those who need them most.

In Glasgow one third of children live in poverty, having a drastic impact on their wellbeing. Crawford showed a heartbreaking graphic from the Child Poverty Action Group which gathered comments from children on how poverty made them feel – words included insecure, judgement, bullying, and worry.

Considering child poverty alongside Adverse

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Childhood Experiences (ACEs), Crawford said, sums up the challenges that lie in Glasgow and Scotland and raises the question of where resources should be directed. Nurturing approaches have been suggested in schools to address the impact of poverty and ACEs, approaches which can make the link between wellbeing and attainment.

Consultant Clinical Psychologist Liz Gregory is Head of Child Psychology for the Aneurin Bevan Health Board, which covers five areas. Each of those areas, which include Newport, Monmouthshire and Caerphilly, has their own distinct culture, identity and way of working.

Gregory has worked at the service for 25 years and led it jointly for more than 17. In her areas, she said, there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach. She and her colleagues have been on a mission over the years to promote the relational, developmental and contextual understanding of children’s distress – and it’s not an approach that has been accepted easily.

While many interventions and services are based on individualised treatment, it is only recently Gregory and her colleagues have put their heads above the parapet to bring this different way of thinking to the attention of policy makers. Part of this involved the development of the Iceberg Model – a way of describing all the factors which are important to child wellbeing. It points out that services in clinics and hospitals will only reach a certain population but there is an enormous amount of unmet need underneath that iceberg. ‘Some of the children in the most desperate need are right at the bottom of the iceberg.’

At a Senedd committee meeting Gregory was asked to give evidence and spoke about the iceberg model and the need for broader thinking on children and young people’s mental health. Happily the chair of that meeting was

In Glasgow one third of children live in poverty

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excited by the idea, and has been pushing for these values to be implemented in Wales.

Around this time research on ACEs was gaining recognition. While Gregory warned against the idea that ACEs are the one and only answer, she was glad to see a recognition that the experiences of children affect their lives. She also pointed to the importance for traumainformed work with children, ‘We need to move to a more trauma and relational informed way of intervening with families if we’re going to turn the tanker in terms of child mental health.’

Gregory has been working on developing services in the area to help reach populations who don’t traditionally make use of mental health services. Some of the services in Gwent include an infant mental health service, Gwent

Attachment Service, and community-based Family Intervention Team in Caerphilly.

Traditional mental health services require a person to be in the right place and have the right criteria to receive support. Schools offer good environments to support children going through difficulties but it is key that the whole school takes responsibility for supporting mental and emotional wellbeing. In schools, Gregory said, the things that matter are feelings of belonging, autonomy and efficacy – for children, teachers, parents and support staff. Gregory said it seems that thinking in Wales is moving in the right direction, for example the Welsh school inspection body Estyn recently published a report which recognised the importance of school culture and relationships on children’s wellbeing. er

On the global stage ‘Let’s elevate the status of psychology, let’s generate some knowledge, let’s think big.’ So said Sarb Bajwa, Chief Executive of the British Psychological Society, in this BPS-organised session on ‘psychology taking a global remit’.

The topic bringing together

representatives from membership organisations across the world was climate change: picked for its societal importance, timeliness and recent shift in the debate from natural science and economics towards the role of human factors and psychology.

Reading on climate change

Mental health and our changing climate – impacts, implications and guidance https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2017/03/mental-health-climate.pdf Psychology and global climate change: addressing a multifaceted phenomena and set of challenges https://www.apa.org/science/about/publications/climate-change ‘Speaking of psychology’ podcast https://www.apa.org/research/action/speaking-of-psychology/climate-change Ordem dos Psicologos and the Portugese National Commission for UNESCO: Behaviours for Sustainable Development Ummundomelhor.pt BPS behaviour change briefing on energy consumption https://www.bps.org.uk/news-and-policy/changing-behaviour-energy-consumption Climate change in The Psychologist archive https://tinyurl.com/psychclimchange

Further conference reports online

You can find much more coverage from the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations European Congress of Psychology in Moscow via https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/europeancongress-psychology-moscow 14

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‘We’ve picked the low-hanging fruit’, said Bajwa: ‘We need to understand why there’s a gap between expert opinion and public response, and place psychology at the heart of policy making to help bridge that gap between fact and fiction.’

Bajwa recommended guidelines and resources produced by the American Psychological Association, represented here by Amanda Clinton.

‘US populations do get climate change,’ she said, ‘but whether or not we’re voting in accordance with that is another matter…’ Perhaps a focus on the next generation is key, and Frances Mirabelli from the Australian Psychological Society showcased their ‘Psychology Week’ project with its focus on young people and resources for parents.

‘We are all responsible for taking action.’ This can mean ‘beginning small’, according to Francisco Miranda Rodrigues (Portugal), and Koen Lowet (Flemish Association of Clinical Psychologists) emphasised the need to gradually build a ‘coalition of the willing’.

As well as addressing an issue of clear importance for the future of our planet, Bajwa emphasised that a global campaign could champion the values and skills which are central to our profession. ‘We should focus on the hierarchy of values that determine individual actions and responses.

We need to do more to produce the evidence, to show thought leadership.

That’s how we will elevate the status of psychology.’ js

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the psychologist september 2019 news

Organised by BPS Conferences

Conference

Date

Venue

Website

Social Psychology Section

28–30 Aug

Park Inn by Radisson, York City Centre

www.bps.org.uk/social2019

Cognitive Psychology Section & Developmental Psychology Section

4–6 Sep

Best Western Plus Stoke on Trent Moat House

www.bps.org.uk/cogdev2019

Careers in Psychology, Sheffield 2019

16 Nov

Cutler’s Hall, Sheffield

www.bps.org.uk/cip2019

Careers in Psychology, London 2019

30 Nov

Institute of Education, London

www.bps.org.uk/ciplon2019

Division of Sport & Exercise Psychology

2–3 Dec

voco, St John’s Solihull

www.bps.org.uk/dsep2019

Division of Occupational Psychology

8–10 Jan

Crowne Plaza Stratford-upon-Avon

www.bps.org.uk/dop2020

Division of Clinical Psychology

22–23 Jan

voco, St John’s Solihull

www.bps.org.uk/dcp2020

Division of Forensic Psychology

16–18 Jul

voco, St John’s Solihull

www.bps.org.uk/dfp2020

Stories of Psychology: Psychology, Society and the Public 7 November 2019, Friends House, Euston Road, London How have past and current psychologists interacted with the public to provide an understanding of social issues and anxieties, such as the threat of war, economics, technology and political upheaval? Historians and psychologists will be considering these issues in front of an audience of members, academics and the wider public.

The first session will consider the changing messages given and the second will focus on the medium used by public psychologists. A round table of media psychologists will discuss their current and future role.

Cost: £18 including buffet lunch (registration is essential).

For more information and to register www.bps.org.uk/stories An event in conjunction with the: BPS History & Philosophy of Psychology Section and Senate House Library

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STORIES OF PSYCHOLOGY

2020

2019

BPS conferences are committed to ensuring value for money, careful budgeting and sustainability

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SOM

OR J

Seeking accuracy before balance Our Deputy Editor Annie Brookman-Byrne reports from the World Conference of Science Journalists in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Escaping the balance trap

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Impartiality is considered a central tenet of good journalism. In practise, this often means presenting two sides of a story to ensure balance. While this works in stories about politics, ‘balance’ in science reporting can misrepresent the extent of scientific agreement.

Naomi Oreskes, an historian of science, gave an overview of her impressive work uncovering the fabrication of anthropogenic climate change controversy when scientific consensus was in fact very high.

The ‘merchants of doubt’, as Oreskes labelled them in her 2010 book with Erik Conway, created the impression of scientific doubt through strategically exploiting editorial requirements for balance. These individuals created reports questioning human impacts on the environment to match the layout and thickness of genuine scientific reports, such that non-experts would not know the difference. A key strategy was to present propaganda to journalists and editors as the other side of the story, despite the lack of any real debate within the scientific community. TV programmes were monitored, and stations were pressured through intimidation to pull shows that did not include ‘balance’.

Many of the key individuals involved in fabricating this controversy were those who previously argued that there was scientific debate around the effects of tobacco.

They successfully manipulated the media and the public in both cases by arguing that the evidence is not clear, that more data is needed, and that perhaps tobacco and climate change are actually good for us. Tobacco lobbyists reasoned that you can’t say smoking causes cancer, since you can’t point to one cancer and say that it was definitely caused by smoking. Similarly, it is hard to point to one climate-related event and say it was caused by climate change. Oreskes argued that what scientists can do is

say that such events are a certain number of times more likely to happen due to climate change.

The motivation of the merchants of doubt was the protection of their financial interests in large industries.

Oreskes noted that if industry had an interest in antivaccination, there would be a much greater demand for ‘balance’ in the scientific reporting of vaccinations too. As it is, those who are anti-vaccination are typically individuals without the strategy to target journalists and seek equal representation.

While the book was published almost ten years ago, many of these issues are pertinent today. Oreskes had advice for science writers grappling with the issue of impartiality. First, the concept of balance should be rejected in science reporting. The goal should be accuracy, not balance, as presenting two sides is misleading in many cases. It is perfectly reasonable, said Oreskes, to interview politicians, lawyers, think tanks or ethicists, so long as they are not included for balance in contrast to a scientist. The science element of the story should be as accurate as possible, and balance should be sought in other dimensions, such as a right-wing perspective on policy implications of climate change in contrast to a left-wing perspective.

Many scientists are uncomfortable talking to the media. Oreskes told the journalists in the room that their job is to get scientists to talk. The take-home message for scientists then, is to talk to the media, particularly if the news outlet is truly seeking accuracy, rather than pitting scientists against non-scientists. Journalists and scientists alike have a role to play in ensuring appropriate reporting. Moving beyond the balance trap has the potential to increase public confidence in science and allow for faster policy action on important scientific issues.

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the psychologist september 2019 news

Ending the paralysis

Solutions journalism is a response to the sometimes overwhelming onslaught of negative news that greets us every morning. Many of us have had the experience of feeling completely helpless, or even indifferent, in the face of the biggest issues facing the world today. Solutions journalists are trying to change this.

Traditional journalism is a watchdog, seeking to report and expose. Solutions journalism, explained Nina Fasciaux, is a guide dog, seeking to highlight responses to key problems. Climate change is one obvious topic that can lead to feelings of apathy or a lack of engagement, with news stories typically covering only the negative aspects. A solutions journalism approach to writing about climate change would go further and cover a response.

Clearly there is no single solution to climate change, and Fasciaux suggested identifying one precise issue: rather than writing about climate change in a broad sense, a journalist might focus their story on water access, for example.

It is key that solutions journalism pieces are rigorous and evidence-based. The solution should be a concrete example of replicable work in real communities, said Elizabeth McGowan. The example reported should have evidence of impact and effectiveness, with discussion of limitations or caveats. Solutions journalists hope presenting these insights will help others learn about solutions and empower them to act.

This approach not only has the potential to encourage reader action, it also offers a new way of storytelling.

Taking the example of shootings in America, Fasciaux explained that writing about a solution would provide a richer story than the usual details of date, time and place.

Solutions journalism is a tool for writers to bring a new angle to an old story; to tell a fuller version of the story. A bonus of this approach for editors is that it increases user engagement – pieces presenting solutions tend to have more readers, who stay on the page for longer, compared to pieces about problems.

The Upside is a new series in The Guardian that takes a solutions journalism approach. Headlines including ‘Tree planting “has mind-blowing potential” to tackle climate crisis’, ‘From bleak to bustling: how one French town solved its high street crisis’ and ‘“A tidal wave of problems”: texting on the mental health frontline’ demonstrate the stories this type of journalism can tell.

Fasciaux argued that simply exposing problems and hoping for change is not enough. People need to hear about solutions in order to escape the dread and make positive decisions. Solutions journalism can increase feelings of hope and encourage action. As McGowan said, solutions journalism presents an opportunity to ‘end the paralysis’.

Respecting indigenous perspectives

Instances of scientists engaging with indigenous populations have historically not been positive. Scientists have both ignored and stolen the rich knowledge held by indigenous people and studied communities as objects of curiosity, explained Véronique Morin.

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Colonial research methods have negatively impacted relations between indigenous people and scientific researchers, leading to feelings of distrust. Suzy Basile described the major misstep taken by many researchers of disappearing with data and never returning with information or results for the community. Scientific approaches, including this failure to share results, have not aligned with the values and priorities of indigenous populations. Nancy Crépeau explained that indigenous people typically want useful research with implementation possibilities. Reciprocity is therefore important. Researchers have also failed to seek appropriate permissions from within the community – official bodies have not been asked before research has commenced.

This history of poor practices has led to the recent emergence of guidelines for scientists who intend to engage with indigenous populations.

These guidelines, including a toolbox of research principles, have been created in a Canadian context.

Basile described a backlash from researchers who initially asked why rules were being imposed on them. It is becoming more accepted in Canada that there are guidelines to follow, but a major challenge is that researchers from Europe are not given the same information: they turn up expecting to be able to conduct whatever research they want.

Personal stories from the indigenous speakers demonstrated the poor treatment of indigenous people by scientists and wider structures. Basile recalled finding a book about the First Nations with photographs of her family in it. She took it home and none of her family knew they were in the book. This was the turning point when Basile knew there needed to be change. For Crépeau, this moment came when she was discouraged from completing her teacher training in an indigenous community, where she intended to later teach, because the schools were considered poor quality. Crépeau decided to pursue further studies in order to change structures that lead to these educational inequalities.

Inga Hansen, from Greenland, had similarly grown up not realising she was colonised, but looking back felt that she had been indoctrinated to become more Danish.

Morin explained that the pressure to publish in science can be detrimental to research with indigenous populations. Protocols and consultations take time, so researchers attempt to bypass them. There is also a perception among scientists that indigenous people have no knowledge about science and no valid questions to explore. This, said Morin, is a facet of racism.

Science journalists have great power to influence the public’s understanding, according to Crépeau, playing an important role in improving relations between scientists and indigenous people. Basile made the case for collaborations between journalists and indigenous communities; building partnerships to ensure the indigenous perspective is heard and respected.

Scientists too should collaborate with indigenous people, recognising the knowledge, values and priorities of these communities.

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School targeted by protesters wins BPS community award

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A Birmingham school which has been targeted by protestors over including LGBT people in the curriculum has received a British Psychological Society (BPS) award for its commitment to inclusive education. Anderton Park Primary school has experienced months of demonstrations by campaigners, including parents, over teaching LGBT-equality or even mentioning same sex relationships.

The head teacher, Sarah HewittClarkson, and staff of the school received the BPS Community Engagement Award at the 2019 Psychology of Sexualities Conference.

Protests broke out outside the school’s gates after the government issued draft guidance on its new legislation on relationships and sexual education which will come into effect in 2020.

Hewitt-Clarkson told the Birmingham Mail that the school, even before this guidance, had been teaching the same equality ethos for many years. She also said the events of the last few months had ‘crushed her soul’, she and her team at the school have been receiving psychological support from Birmingham City Council’s crisis team.

Dr Adam Jowett, chair of the Psychology of Sexualities Section, said it had been an honour to present Hewitt-Clarkson with the award.

‘Inclusive relationship education is vital for promoting the psychological wellbeing of young children who may later identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans (LGBT), as well as children who have same-sex parents or LGBT family members. LGBT young people are at a heightened risk of being bullied and experience poorer mental health as a consequence. Teaching children about different types of families and challenging gender stereotypes from a young age is key to tackling this. We fully support the work of Anderton Park School and their commitment to inclusive

education deserves recognition by psychologists.’

In a statement Hewitt-Clarkson said she was delighted and humbled to receive the award. ‘Knowing others have been supporting us from afar has kept us going when it’s been tough. Equality is always appropriate; there is no age limit.’

Earlier this month the BPS published practice guidelines for

psychologists working with gender, sexuality and relationship diversity.

They are based on best practice and the literature in the area and may be useful in disciplines such as counselling, psychotherapy, psychiatry, medicine, nursing and social work.

The guidelines can be read here: tinyurl.com/y3b55bk2

Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson receives the award from Dr Adam Jowett

Developing a therapeutic family The Walden model, a community psychological service led by Heena Chudasama and Martin Seager, has won the British Psychological Society’s Division of Counselling Psychology annual award for Community and Carer Involvement.

Chudasama told us: ‘It has been an honour to have been nominated for and received this award… There have been a number of people who have benefited from this consistent service (coming up to three years now!) which has been “life saving” and “life changing”. It seems to

have organically developed into a therapeutic family and a “safe place” for our service users. There are a number of psychologists, trainees and psychotherapists who would like to be able to replicate this model in their communities. We are currently looking to find a location in Cambridge who are able to house the project and two psychologists in Cambridge are keen to run the project.’

Read more at https://thepsychologist. bps.org.uk/walden-model

08/08/2019 11:36

the psychologist september 2019 news

Walker rides to world record Environmental psychologist Dr Ian Walker recently smashed a world record cycling 4,000 miles from Nordkapp in Norway to Tarifa in Spain in 16 days, 20 hours, 59 minutes. We spoke to him before he set out on his solo, unsupported, journey through 10 countries in which he was aiming to beat the former record of 21 days, 14 hours and 23 minutes.

Walker’s (University of Bath) ride happened to coincide with a heatwave across Europe with temperatures reaching almost 40 degrees at times.

Throughout his journey he had to maintain a pace of almost 25 kilometres per hour and needed to eat up to 12,000 calories to fuel his record attempt.

In a statement following the ride he said it felt amazing to set a difficult target and actually achieve it.

‘The best thing was probably riding through remote areas under the darkest night skies I’ve ever seen. The worst part was probably forcing myself to get moving after just three hours’ sleep each night.’

Formerly an ultradistance runner Walker became interested in ultradistance cycling in 2016. Two years later he had won the 4,300 km North Cape race (cycling through 11 countries in under two weeks from Lake Garda in Italy to Norway’s North Cape), the Trans Wales bike trial and completed the 2017 Transcontinental Race.

‘When I came across the Transcontinental Race there was something about the sheer scale of it that grabbed me. I’d done running events which last, at the most, for two and a half days. When I saw this cycle race would last for as much as two weeks I thought I’d like to do something that was all-encompassing but that stretched on for so much longer.’

Walker told me he draws on his psychological knowledge to help him through, for example thinking of his routes in terms of small chunks. ‘The way I tend to ride long rides now, which is something I’ve discovered quite recently, is I tend to think of it as 100 kilometre rides. One hundred kilometres takes around four hours – that’s not too bad. It’s actually just 63 of those and all I need to do at any given point is just do the next 100 kilometres. You absolutely cannot think about the whole thing because that does become overwhelming.’

Acceptance is another important lesson Walker has learned from both health psychology and competing in ultradistance events. ‘In chronic pain research, if something’s not physically going to be fixed, the only healthy solution to that is to accept it. When you’re spending a week in pain that acceptance does help.

I have come across quite a few non-psychologist riders who have reached the same conclusion through trial and error and who say the same thing without coming at it with a health psychology background.’

One occasion where acceptance certainly came into play was during the Transcontinental Race when Walker found himself, at three o’clock in the morning, wandering accidentally into a muddy Serbian motorway construction site. ‘My tyre punctured, I couldn’t get any inner tubes to

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stay together and it was just this incredibly low moment.

Everything feels bad at three in the morning anyway! In that instance it was just telling myself “there’s literally no alternative, I can’t just stop here”. The only possible thing that can be done is to keep moving. Sometimes just facing yourself with the reality like that is quite important.’

When the lead-up to such a ride is so daunting, and the potential for misery so high, I asked Walker why he is drawn to these monumental challenges in the first place.

‘If you want to know how well something works you’ve got to test it. We’d all quite like to know “am I the sort of person who can manage to do something really hard?”

This is a way of finding that out. It’s also about learning to cope. You can practice how you become resilient by putting yourself in difficult situations at a time of your own choosing – in a way that people often have forced upon them.

‘I think in a way sport scratches an itch for people like me because unlike everyday life, unlike being a psychologist, you can tell how good you are at it.

The nature of modern work means we never know how good we are at what we do; with sport, you know how good you are.’

Another side effect Walker has found since challenging his body and mind in this way is an appreciation of the simple pleasures of life. ‘Finding somewhere quiet to sleep, finding food, being back to the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid, you really do appreciate the basics of life when you put yourself in situations like that.

It brings a sense of calm.’

Along the way Walker not only provided his followers with some excellent Twitter updates but also managed to raise £2,877 for Roadpeace, a charity for victims of road crashes.

See the online version of this piece for some other psychologists who hold world records.

If we’ve missed you or someone you know out, do get in touch at psychologist@bps.org.uk.

08/08/2019 11:36

Difficult conversations in the SpeakEasy Annie Brookman-Byrne and Jon Sutton report from psychology-themed events at Latitude Festival in Henham Park, Suffolk.

A familiar scene played out on Latitude Festival’s SpeakEasy stage to introduce ‘The Psychologist Presents… Screentime Debunked’. Our editor Jon Sutton, in a natural role of exasperated and concerned parent, implored his son Reg to stop sitting in front of a screen playing Fortnite (pictured, right). ‘Get out, climb a tree or something, like I did when I was a child’. Luckily Professor Andrew Przybylski (below) from the Oxford Internet Institute was on hand to uncover the myths around screen time, reassuring the audience that most of the newspaper articles warning of its negative effects are not based on good science.

Screen time is poorly defined and poorly measured.

It encapsulates a huge array of activities, and Przybylski likened scientific measurement of ‘screen time’ to measuring nutrition according to time spent eating.

Even if there are negative effects of screen time, they are likely to be minimal and often worth the sacrifice – a couple of minutes of missed sleep is probably a price worth paying for keeping your five-year-old entertained watching Peppa Pig while you put your two-year-old to bed. Przybylski argued that focusing on screen time may detract from genuine challenges but also opportunities associated with the modern digital world.

Przybylski included plenty of practical advice, and the Q&A session extended into open science, parenting in general and our attitudes towards childhood. ‘Maybe’, he concluded, ‘we just need to let children chill the hell out’. See our website for a transcript of the session.

The festival hosted plenty of other sessions with psychological content...

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Death and grief in the digital age

Death has changed. According to Dr Paul Perkins, speaking in a session called ‘We need to talk about dying’, we don’t talk about death as much as we used to because dying is so hidden. Dr Elaine Kasket, our suggested speaker, agreed that death is further away from us but argued that it is simultaneously closer to us through digital identities that continue after death, such as Facebook memorial pages.

Olivia Potts described the discombobulating experience of grieving today – while there used to be rules around grieving, including when to leave the house or what to wear, there is now ‘no textbook from which to grieve’. Potts also expressed concern that we may be lonelier in grief since it is more likely that we’ve moved away from our home towns where support networks may be based. Choosing to express grief online may elicit a response from the ‘grief police’ who believe grief should only be expressed in certain ways, said Kasket.

We are expected to adhere to the five stages of grief, and yet these are not empirically supported. Everyone experiences grief differently.

All speakers agreed that we need to talk about death more. To make these conversations easier, the charity Sue Ryder has created a free guide to having a better death, including tools and tips to help us to speak to our relatives. This isn’t morbid, it’s kind, said Potts, for loved ones who have to do their best in a traumatic time.

Perkins suggested writing an advanced directive or statement of wishes to make sure relatives and doctors know what you want.

Kasket warned that even if you’ve had these conversations, they may not hold any legal sway in terms of digital possessions and identities. An iTunes library can’t be bequeathed, for example, and once a Facebook page is memorialised nothing can be deleted, even if a password has been shared. There is also the possibility that online material will be deleted by the tech companies who are in control of the data, so Kasket advised curating

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the psychologist september 2019 news physical material if you want others to access information about you after your death.

Death in the digital age isn’t all bad. Kasket has met people who feel they can talk to a lost loved one through Facebook. The internet also grants access to a community of supporters who can share their experiences of grief.

A live recording of Griefcast in The Listening Post at Latitude was a fitting example of how the digital age can promote these conversations and be a source of comfort.

Cariad Lloyd presents this podcast which typically focuses on individual human experiences of grief, through conversations with comedians. In this more light-hearted live recording, Lloyd spoke with three other comedians about their wishes around death and how they would like to be remembered.

The 90 episodes of Griefcast that have been released so far exemplify that everybody grieves differently. For those who don’t know what to say to someone who is grieving, Perkins reassured the audience that people often just want acknowledgement. When Potts was grieving, she found that the best thing people could do was let her do things her way. ‘Let them work it out for themselves and be there when they need you.’

Communicating about climate change

Our response to climate change over the years has clearly been inadequate. Professor Geoff Beattie, talking to Jillian Ambrose in a British Academy discussion on climate change and communication, gave several reasons for this poor response. There is general scepticism about science, coupled with optimism bias, leading many of us to think the science isn’t convincing and that everything will work out okay in the end. The terminology used does not always help communicate the scientific reality, with ‘global warming’ a pretty appealing prospect to many Brits. While we like to think of ourselves as rational, automatic implicit decision-making processes drive what we do.

Even when we are concerned about climate change, we don’t take actions to modify our lifestyle, said Professor Philip Hammond. While Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg’s school strikes for climate may have led to a feeling that change is happening, Hammond warned that a similar feeling arose in 2006-2007, leading to ‘a moment of tremendous disillusionment’. The issue had successfully reached the mainstream and yet minimal action was taken. One change that Hammond did identify between then and now is that the tone of the conversation is a lot darker than before – fighting climate change appeared easier previously, through small actions like changing a lightbulb.

Beattie argued that there needs to be a change in how climate change is ‘advertised’. There is too much reliance on fear, which leads people to reject, repress, and query the message, and similarly guilt is not a strong motivating factor. The message needs to be presented more positively, with specific actions that people can take.

Both speakers were cynical about the role of children, such as Greta Thunberg in climate change messages. For Beattie, the use of children in advertising presents the

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problem as an issue for future generations, allowing our selfish tendencies to limit the action we take. Hammond said that there’s a long history of children being used as a symbol, but that politic engagement is avoided by focusing on individuals.

Messages that rely on ‘deadlinism’ – the sense that we need to act now otherwise there’s no future – are ineffective. According to Hammond this approach closes down debate, when what is needed is a conversation about what kind of society we want. False deadlines are likely to set others up for another round of disillusionment. Instead, said Beattie, we need profound changes to education, to ensure public understanding of science. If people were convinced by the science, they would be more likely to act. Individual action is not enough through, and Hammond argued that individual countries taking action is also not enough. The absolute challenge, according to Beattie, is making good behaviour the new norm. This is a global challenge, requiring alignment and connection across social groups. For Hammond, the only way to see real change is through a reformulation of the relation between science and politics.

Beattie’s psychological background led him to focus on individual engagement with this issue, while Hammond was more interested in wider political actions.

However, both argued that how climate change is spoken about is a critical piece of the puzzle in ensuring that action is taken.

Never work with children, animals or comedians…

Also appearing in the SpeakEasy were Emily Dean and Kate Spicer, beautifully encapsulating the transformative power of dogs; comedian Robin Ince, with a hilarious breakneck tour of themes from his recent book I’m A Joke And So Are You (sprinkled with anecdotes involving psychologists such as Sophie Scott and Charles Fernyhough); and a Salon London session with psychotherapist and author Philippa Perry, ‘The book you wish your parents had read’, discussed her new offering How to Family. Perry reframed many everyday incidents of childhood behaviour: parenting can feel very different if you can truly appreciate that ‘What we all want more than anything is moments of connection with each other’. Your child’s attempts to grab these moments must be recognised as such. ‘Don’t listen to the content’ of what your child says, Perry advised: ‘Listen to the mood’. Also, try to ‘define yourself and not the child… none of us like being defined by another person’. So, if you want to leave the park because you’re bored, tired and cold, tell your child that: see if it goes down better than ‘You’ve had enough now’.

The science at Latitude was a small but important part of an incredible weekend… long may it continue.

08/08/2019 11:36

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07/08/2019 14:50

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07/08/2019 14:50

Five ways to get better at a new language Emma Young

Find our Research Digest at www.bps. org.uk/ digest Editor: Dr Matthew Warren Writers: Emma Young and Jesse Singal Full reports and much more on the Digest website

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The last time I tried to learn a foreign language, I was living in an Italian suburb of Sydney. My hour a week at a local Italian class was inevitably followed by a bowl of pasta and a few glasses of wine. As an approach to language-learning goes, it was certainly more pleasurable than my German lessons at school. Despite the wine, it was also surprisingly effective. In fact, getting better at a new language doesn’t have to mean hard hours on lists of vocab and the rules of grammar. It turns out that what you don’t focus on matters, too. And a glass of wine may even help…

Listen to the language, even if you don’t have a clue what’s being said – and you’re not even paying close attention

One challenging aspect to learning a new language is that it may contain distinct speech sounds that, as a nonspeaker, you can’t even tell apart. This isn’t a problem for young children – they only need to spend time around the new language to learn to hear the different sounds, simply through passive exposure. It’s long been thought adults can’t do this, but a study published in 2019 brings a more optimistic message and has implications for the best approach to adult language learning.

The researchers asked native Finnish-speakers to listen to Mandarin speech sounds while engaged in other tasks, and to do this for two hours a day on four consecutive days. Critically, even when they were instructed to ignore the sounds and focus on a silent movie, recordings of their brain waves (via EEG) suggested they were getting better at differentiating between the different Mandarin speech sounds. ‘For the first time, these results demonstrated that mere passive exposure to sounds can induce plastic changes related to change detection in the adult human brain, which was

previously thought to happen only in infancy during the sensitive period’, the researchers wrote.

The researchers added that this suggests passive training may help real-life language learning. They recommend listening to a language you want to learn while you’re doing something else (as long as it’s not too cognitively demanding) – while working out at the gym, or while cooking, perhaps.

A passive approach to learning could also be especially beneficial to older adults in the context of remembering new vocab. A 2013 study led by Lynn Hasher at the University of Toronto showed that older adults have a greater tendency than younger adults to process distracting information. While this isn’t usually helpful, it does make them more likely to remember background information. This suggests that after a session of deliberately learning new vocab, hearing those words played in the background could help with learning.

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the psychologist september 2019 digest

Don’t try too hard with the grammar

Not only can children easily perceive the difference between a vast range of speech sounds, but they learn the grammar of a language more easily than adults too.

It used to be thought that this advantage ends at about the age of seven. However, again the picture has become more optimistic of late. For instance, in 2018, a team involving Steven Pinker at Harvard University concluded that in fact, the advantage lasts about a decade longer.

Once we reach adulthood though, it does become harder to get to grips with grammar and also the structural components of words in another language.

Part of the problem could be that adults’ more highly developed cognitive skills work against them.

Consider a 2014 study by Amy Finn at MIT and colleagues that found the harder adults worked at the structure and use of units of an artificial language – such as root words, suffixes and prefixes – the worse they did. To learn this language ‘morphology’, ‘at least in this artificial language we created, it’s actually worse when you try’, Finn comments.

These findings supported a theory, put forward in 1990 by the linguist Elissa Newport, that adults struggle with this aspect of language-learning because they try to analyse too much information at once. So what can you do? If you’re listening to another language, don’t overanalyse it, Finn suggests. There was a condition in her study in which some of the participants had to complete an undemanding puzzle or do some colouring while they listened to the artificial language – and it’s telling that it was this group who performed best at acquiring the new grammar. It’s hard not to conclude that if you act like a child, maybe you’ll learn as effectively as a child, too…

Choose the right time of day – or night – to learn

Outside more formal educational settings, a lot of language classes tend to take place in the evenings, but it’s worth considering experimental findings that suggest this isn’t an optimum time for everyone, especially older people and teenagers.

For example, in a 2014 study, Lynn Hasher and her team found that older adults (aged 60-82) were better able to focus, and tended to do better at memory tests, between 8.30am and 10.30am, compared with 1pm and 5pm. Scans of their brains suggested this was because by the afternoon, their ‘default mode network’ was more active – a neural state indicative of daydreaming.

Among young adults, however, other neural networks more associated with focused attention remained active into the afternoon.

Evening learning probably isn’t ideal for teenagers

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either. In a study published in 2012, Johannes Holz at the University of Freiberg, and colleagues, found that 16- and 17-year-old girls performed better on tests of factual memory if they’d learned the material at 3pm than at 9pm.

However, another study, published in Psychological Science in 2016, suggests that evening learning can be beneficial – especially if you follow it with a decent night’s sleep, and a follow-up session the next morning.

French-speaking participants were split into two groups: one learned the French translations of 16 Swahili words in the morning, returning for a second booster session that evening; the others learned the translations in the evening with a booster session the following morning.

The group that learned the vocab in the evening, slept and then studied again the next morning out-performed the other group on all kinds of memory tests. The overnight group showed virtually no forgetting after one week (unlike the same-day learners, who’d forgotten, on average, 4-5 of the translations), and by the second session, they’d forgotten less than the same-day learners and were quicker to relearn anything that they hadn’t remembered.

The researchers suspect that sleep soon after learning allowed for a greater consolidation of these memories than for the other group.

The results suggest that scheduling two study periods, one for close to bed-time, the other for soon after waking, is an effective way to learn.

Take long breaks

The idea of taking as long a break as possible between learning some vocab and revisiting it sounds counterintuitive. However, it’s worth considering a phenomenon called the ‘spacing effect’ when planning your study schedule.

According to research published in 2007 by Doug Rohrer and Hal Pashler, you should aim to time the intervals between learning something and revising it based on when you’ll really need to recall it (for an exam, say, or a holiday) following a 10 per cent rule – i.e. you should space your revision periods at intervals of roughly 10 per cent of the total time you’d really like to retain those memories. If you’ve got a test coming up in a month, say, then you should revise what you learn today in about two or three days’ time. But if you want to remember something over the longer term, so that your performance peaks in a year’s time, then it’s sensible to revisit that information once a month. Why this rule should work isn’t clear, but it’s possible that having long gaps between learning, revision and retrieval tells your brain that this is knowledge you’ll be coming back to, so

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it’s worth holding for the long term.

The 10 per cent rule is only a rough guide, though.

More recent research suggests the spacing effect works best when it is adapted to each individual’s progress. In a study, published in 2014 in Psychological Science, Pashler and his team devised individual spacing plans for middle school pupils learning Spanish, based on the material’s difficulty level and how well the students did on early tests. They found that these individualised plans boosted test performance at the end of a semester by 16.5 per cent, and led to 10 per cent better scores than the ‘one-size-fits-all’ 10 per cent spaced study plan.

Other research has backed up this counter-intuitive idea that, rather than being detrimental, taking a long break from a language that you’re learning might actually be beneficial. A study published in 2012 involved 19 people becoming proficient at speaking and comprehending an artificial language and then taking a three- to six-month break. Michael Ullman at Georgetown University and his team found that the group did just as well in grammar tests after this break as they had done right after first learning the language. In fact, after the break, their brain activity while processing the language looked more like the kind of activity you see when native speakers are processing their first language. Ullman thinks taking a lengthy break from an already learned second language can help the representation of the language to shift from a form of ‘declarative memory’ to ‘procedural’ – akin to

playing an instrument or riding a bike. This was a small study involving an artificial language so more research is definitely needed, but as the researchers noted, their findings have ‘potentially important consequences for second language acquisition’.

Have a drink…

Alcohol is not exactly known for its brain-boosting properties. It impairs all types of cognitive functioning, including working memory and the ability to ignore distractions. So you’d think it would make it harder for someone to speak in a foreign language. However, a study published in 2017 by Fritz Renner and colleagues found that it doesn’t – if anything, it can be beneficial.

German volunteers learning Dutch who’d drunk enough vodka to achieve a blood alcohol level of 0.04 per cent (approximately equivalent to just under a pint of beer for a 70kg male) were rated by independent Dutch speakers as speaking the language more proficiently during a short-test (they had to argue in Dutch for or against animal testing), compared with the other participants who’d only drunk water beforehand.

Why? Perhaps because some people feel anxious when talking in a foreign language, and this was ameliorated by the alcohol. However, as Renner cautions: ‘It is important to point out that participants in this study consumed a low dose of alcohol. Higher levels of alcohol consumption might not have [these] beneficial effects.’

New PsychCrunch episode up and running

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Poor sleepers may be hoping that with the gradual liberalisation of marijuana laws around the world, a new drug to help them sleep will soon become legally available. Bad news, then, from a new diary study of people who take cannabis as a sleep aid. While the drug seemed to improve some aspects of sleep, including longer sleep duration, it also led people to feel more tired the next day. The researchers said that their results “highlight daytime fatigue as a potential adverse short-term outcome of cannabis sleep aid use, despite its proximal sleeprelated benefits”. (Health Psychology)

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The latest episode of our PsychCrunch podcast – number 17 – is now available via the Research Digest blog, iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and other outlets. Our presenter Christian Jarrett speaks to several international experts about how to make running less painful and more fun.

He hears about various strategies including ‘cognitive reappraisal’ and the benefits of taking part in organised runs.

He also learns that some of us are genetically disposed to find running less enjoyable than others, and why that isn’t an excuse for giving up. The guests in order of appearance are: Dr Grace Giles (US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center, Natick), Dr John Nezlek (SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Faculty in Poznan and College of William & Mary, Williamsburg VA), Dr Marzena Cypryańska (SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw), and Professor Eco de Geus (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam).

Previous episodes of the Digest have covered everything from how to sleep better to how to study more effectively – find the full archive via the Digest blog or on iTunes.

With many thanks to Routledge Psychology for their continued sponsorship of the podcast.

07/08/2019 14:57

the psychologist september 2019 digest

The human impact of having too few nurses The UK population continues to grow, while nursing numbers have remained static for several decades.

Compounding matters, The King’s Fund and Nuffield Trust have reported a 25 per cent increase in nurses and midwives leaving the NHS from 2012 to 2018, from 27,300 to 34,100. In short, in the UK, we now have far fewer nurses relative to the general population than we used to.

What does this mean for patients’ care experience?

The situation sounds bad, but how bad? Common sense would suggest that patients will experience poorer care when nurses are overstretched, and there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to support that interpretation.

But there are also positive stories, and claims about greater efficiency compensating for fewer staff.

Now a study in BMJ Quality & Safety provides direct observational evidence suggesting that lower nursepatient ratios really do result in poorer healthcare interactions.

Jackie Bridges at the University of Southampton and her colleagues observed how patient-staff interactions varied across six NHS physical healthcare wards in England depending on the ratio of nursing and healthcare assistants to patients. In total, the researchers carefully rated 238 hours of care, which included over 3000 interactions between 270 patients and healthcare staff.

Overall, 10 per cent of those interactions were rated as negative – specifically ‘negative restrictive’, such as patients being moved without warning or sworn at; and ‘negative protective’, such as patients having to wait for medication. Crucially, the researchers found that the odds of a negative interaction increased significantly as the number of patients per registered nurse increased.

Lower numbers of registered nurses working on a ward were associated with more negative interactions regardless of whether or not healthcare assistants (support staff without a nursing qualification) had been brought in to make up the numbers. Having more healthcare assistants on shift only helped if there were enough registered nurses to supervise them.

As this was a purely observational study, rather than experimental, some caution is required, as the authors note: ‘a causal inference [about staffing levels] cannot be directly made’. Nevertheless, this is such a helpful piece of research, that’s clearly consistent what nurses have been saying for years: that they need enough of them on shift to be able to ensure that patient care is high quality.

This isn’t to ‘do down’ healthcare assistants, who are undervalued enough, but it is highlighting the importance of good quality supervision. It also doesn’t mean that nurses go round looking over the shoulders of their more junior colleagues, but is consistent with the argument that patient-carer interactions will be more universally positive when there are sufficient nursing staff to deal with queries, show more junior staff what to do, talk through dilemmas, model excellent patient care, and acknowledge difficult feelings that caring roles can bring up.

The study reminded me of the time I’ve spent working

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in mental health wards, a job which was adrenalinefuelled and unpredictable but which I loved, and where I worked with brilliant nursing colleagues who were often rushed off their feet.

Media coverage of care quality in the NHS often blames individuals, and especially nursing staff, for failures. Poor care is never excusable or acceptable, but it is important to recognise that there are perfect storms of working condition which make it more likely.

Negative cultures in organisations, lack of staff resources, destructive leadership, can all play their part.

The Francis Report, published in 2013, highlighted the devastating effects of a lack of compassionate care and the need to have cultures where people feel they can speak out about poor care, and where compassionate care is supported.

Much has been done since to champion compassionate leadership and compassionate care, but this new study shows how, in the aftermath of austerity and with not enough staff to go round, it’s harder for these principles to be put into practice. For any of us – nurses included – if we are stressed, tired, under emotional pressure and not given enough time, we tend to behave less nicely.

It’s not news that a lack of time has a negative impact on caring behaviours.

There’s been much about staff wellbeing in the papers recently, with initiatives to offer mindfulness, yoga, exercise classes and the like. Interventions on an individual level can be hugely helpful and useful to know about. At the same time, it’s not good enough to offer interventions to reduce unnecessary stress caused by an uncaring system.

High quality compassionate care in hospital settings requires sufficient nurses to deliver the care and to supervise their junior colleagues. Anything less is setting up staff to fail and setting up patients for a greater likelihood of negative care. Nurses need to be cared for too, by their employer and by their colleagues, and a bare minimum is making sure there are enough colleagues on shift for it to feel safe. This new research adds to a body of evidence that takes the blame off the nurse and squarely places the responsibility on the system to do better.

Lucy Maddox Psychologists in Germany have compared the way that young children drew a human figure in the 1970s with the way that young children performed the same task in 2015. They found that girls in 2015 were more likely to draw a female figure and that they were also more likely to depict it as stereotypically feminine via its hair, clothing and accessories.

The researchers said that this revealed two parallel effects of society’s changing attitudes to gender: greater gender equality combined with an increasing acknowledgement of the differences between the genders. (Sex Roles)

07/08/2019 14:57

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Memory Based Evidence Independent Review Group (IRG)

The Society is seeking to appoint Members to join the above Independent Review Group from Autumn 2019. This is an exciting opportunity to provide expert review of a new BPS guidance document for non-psychologists on Memory Based Evidence.

We are looking for members who are established senior experts in the field of memory (as an academic, an applied practitioner or both). We are looking for up to 15 members from across the Society and every effort will be made to ensure the group has range of experience across domains and contexts of research and practice.

The key role of the Group will be to: l To review the draft guidance prior to its release for wider consultation l To review the final draft guidance following the completion of the consultation exercise l Make recommendations to the Research Board regarding the publication and release of the document To apply, please request a Statement of Interest form upon which to outline your relevant skills and experience from Louise Newton on louise.newton@bps.org.uk

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Statements of Interest must be received by 30 September 2019. It is anticipated that the first meeting of the IRG will take place in November 2019.

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the psychologist september 2019 president

David Murphy ‘I feel I can make a positive contribution at what is a critical time’ David Murphy took over as President of the British Psychological Society at the AGM in July. Here, Dr Roman Raczka (the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology England Lead) interviewed him for the DCP London newsletter, with additional question [starred] for The Psychologist Could you say a little about your career history? as director of the Oxford clinical psychology course Although I’ve been in Clinical Psychology nearly which was an amazing experience, although it was 30 years, I still feel I’m developing, and I feel very tough for staff and trainees after my co-director fortunate about that. I trained at the Institute of colleague, Paul Kennedy passed away suddenly and Psychiatry and fell in love with working in physical unexpectedly in 2016. health… I also fell in love with my wife Maleha, who Since leaving Oxford last year I’ve been working on was a fellow trainee, but that’s another story! My first a large-scale longitudinal research study of leadership job was in a spinal injuries unit which was pretty development based at the University of Edinburgh, much ‘in at the deep end’. It was emotionally tough, which is a fascinating new challange, plus of course but, unusually for a psychologist, I didn’t only see being President Elect of the BPS! the people who were deemed to be ‘not coping’. I saw everyone. So I learned how people can find ways to What interested you in the role of BPS President? cope with a life-changing injury that they could never This year actually marks the 20th consecutive year have imagined. I think that helped me to always try that I have held roles with the Society. It all began and look for people’s strengths in my work, even when when I answered an advert to join the committee that’s a challenge. that dealt with registration of I went on to work at Charing international clinical psychologists, “The aim is to create Cross Hospital for many years, because I thought it would be and during that time worked in interesting to learn about training an organisation that is a number of different medical in other countries. It was indeed truly fit for purpose and specialities. I later came back to interesting, but one thing led to able to meet the high neuropsychology. In 2001, I was another, and I ended up as Director seconded as a project manager of Professional Standards for the expectations we have of to help set up what is now Care DCP, Chair of the BPS Professional the Society going forward” Practice Board and now President.

Quality Commission. As well as developing the review methods, All of my Society roles have I also took part in reviews of over a enabled me to connect with parts of dozen different acute trusts across England. That really the profession that I wouldn’t have done otherwise and helped me to be able to see healthcare as a complex meet so many fantastic people. I stood for President system with lots of different moving parts that work as I feel I can make a positive contribution at what is a together, or sometimes not! critical time. It’s a real honour to take the role, and of I went on to be head of service in an acute trust for course a big responsibility to do my best to represent the next 13 years, where together with many brilliant and serve all the members. colleagues we developed a lot of great services. I was also psychology teaching lead for Imperial College What are your priorities for the BPS for the next medical school… that was a fun challenge, as med year? [Editor’s note: This answer has been updated students can be a tough audience! I then had the from the DCP London newsletter] opportunity to go into clinical psychology training People have been asking me this question regularly

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over the past year… every time, I say that the more important question is ‘What are the key issues facing the BPS at the moment and how can I help?’

Certainly the transformation programme that the BPS has embarked on this year is a major priority. It will be by far the biggest in the nearly 120 years history of the Society and is estimated to cost nearly £6million.

The aim is to create an organisation that is truly fit for purpose and able to meet the high expectations we have of the Society going forward. My job as President and as Chair of the Board of Trustees is to work with our CEO Sarb Bajwa and the Senior Management Team to ensure that the programme is delivered efficiently and effectively, and that it achieves the results that we want it to. Specifically, that it results in significant improvements in our ability to achieves the objectives of the Society and improves the engagement and experience of both the 60,000 members and the 120 or so BPS staff, without whom we wouldn’t have a Society.

Of course, we also need to make sure we focus externally, and the Society is playing a really important role in enhancing the existing psychological workforce and the development of new psychological roles, particularly in the NHS. I think there is also more to do to join up and support the incredibly valuable work being done to teach Psychology in schools, which I think can sometimes be a bit overshadowed by our focus on the profession of psychology. Teaching psychology in schools is incredibly important, not

just as a first step in a career in psychology but also to provide a foundation of psychological understanding in young people who are going on to careers in many other areas. I used to teach psychology to medical and dental students for many years and am passionate about the importance of psychology to these professions but an understanding of psychology, and psychological methods, can play an important role in education for a huge range of careers.

Finally, promoting inclusion of people from the whole range of diverse range of backgrounds in the Society is something close to my heart. We’ve made some good steps, and there are some inspiring examples across different member networks, but I think we’ve still got some way to go to identifying and addressing all the barriers to inclusion and ensuring that people from diverse backgrounds are fully represented and included across the Society and feel the BPS is their BPS. What are your main concerns/challenges in the role?

Making a positive contribution. A challenge for BPS has always been the breadth of different interests of the membership and what people want from the Society, so it’s incredibly important that we are collaborative. We must listen to and understand different perspectives.

It’s not easy: the Society is much broader than other similar organisations such RCPsych, BABCP and now ACP, but in the words of the famous African proverb

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08/08/2019 11:51

the psychologist september 2019 president

education, criminal justice, health are all too important to rest on our laurels, and since psychology is still such a young discipline there’s plenty more development ahead. I often say to trainees that 95 per cent of what What is your vision for the future for mental health they learn today has been developed since I was a in the UK, as an applied psychologist or clinical trainee 30 years ago, and much of what they will need psychologist? to know in their careers isn’t known yet. Continuous Although as BPS President, my focus is on Psychology development is critical. as a whole, I personally feel very positive about the I think the emphasis on science and evidence does future of Clinical Psychology in the UK… I think also need to be underpinned with human values, or that comes from having spent so much time over the virtues, such as compassion, honesty, respect, justice past several years with trainees who are the future of and humility. These weren’t things that were really the profession, and I’m constantly overwhelmed by talked about when I was training but thankfully, they what a talented, inspiring bunch they are. The NHS are much more so now. I have always tried to base is certainly facing significant challenges at present, my practice and teaching on the best research and such as the crisis in young people’s mental health, but evidence, but the best evidence in the world is of no I really believe that clinical psychologists can draw on use to you unless you are guided by the right values. skills and ways of thinking to be able to make a huge contribution to meeting these. However, we do need to These are the things that service users and students step up (or ‘Lean in’ as Sheryl Sandberg would say) and notice, even if we think they don’t. My most valuable possession by far is a book I was take a system-wide perspective, not given when I left Oxford last year just focusing on our own corner that contains messages from all of or measuring success in terms of “I think the emphasis the clinical psychology trainees number of psychology posts. That on science and evidence and staff. Although I tried to make might be a means to an end but does also need to be sure we were using the best training it’s not an end in itself. We need to methods and using the most up focus on reducing suffering, and underpinned with to date evidence, that wasn’t what doing so sooner rather than later, human values” people remembered and valued but also preventing suffering and the most. What they wrote about nurturing resilience at both an were things that most of the time individual and community level.

I couldn’t even remember doing: a time I’d stopped to ask them how they were doing, a time I reassured What values or traits do you try to embody? (*) someone when they were having doubts about getting That’s a very important question and something I through, a time I gave some positive feedback even tried to ensure every one of my trainees thought I time I just smiled and said ‘good morning’. This deeply about when I was a clinical psychology course book sits in pride of place alongside all my researchdirector. Elvis Presley is quoted as saying ‘Values are based books to remind me of what’s important, and like fingerprints; nobody’s are the same but you leave ‘em over everything you do’, and I really believe that to as reminder of my ‘best self’ that I aspire to live up to everyday… especially during the time I have the be true. privilege and responsibility of being BPS President.

My psychological journey started from quite a ‘scientific’ beginning. I studied Psychology and What other interests do you have?

Zoology as an undergraduate and my clinical Spending time with my family, both of our children psychology training at the Institute of Psychiatry was are at University now, so any time spent with them is very much grounded in the scientific method. My particularly precious. I read whenever I can, I usually clinical career has also been exclusively in medical have at least 3-4 different books on the go at any one settings, which has also been a significant influence time, I read a lot of biographies and travel writing. I’m on me. I do value taking an evidence-based approachknown to be a bit of an obsessive book buyer, to the generating and testing hypotheses… ironically, I think point of what the Japanese call Tsundoku. However, medical students are often taught more about the selfconfirming biases that can affect clinical judgment than I maintain that I’m only following the wise words of St Edmund of Abingdon ‘Study as if you were to live we practitioner psychologists. for ever, Live as if you were going to die tomorrow’.

I also have a strong value for continuously I’ve also played football twice a week for many years, developing, both in terms of my own development, which is not only a great stress reliever but also a great developing others and in terms of our developing reminder of the importance of team work, particularly psychological understanding and improving effectiveness of interventions. I gave a talk at Rochester when you’re far from being the fittest or most talented player! I’ve been off injured for several months which University in New York State a few years ago and has been frustrating, but I’ve taken the opportunity to their single word motto really struck a chord with take up Tai Chi which I’m enjoying, although I’m still me – ‘Meliora’, which translates as ‘ever better’. The desperate to get back to football! areas psychology where psychology is applied, from ‘If you want to go fast go alone… if you want to go far, go together’.

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The notion of schooling the good citizen used to be simple; if schools were delivering on academic goals and pupils left with a basic notion of right and wrong, we’d consider it a job well done. Fast-forward to the present day‌

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the psychologist september 2019 schooling the good citizen

Breaking down barriers Pooky Knightsmith on school-based approaches to mental health

S

chools are becoming ever-more responsible for schooling students in a far wider sense than education.

When it comes to mental health we’ve moved from tentative awareness-raising to proactively tackling stigma. We’re empowering the next generation to be unafraid of mental illness in themselves or others and to seek help as needed – often directly through school.

School-based mental health approaches can broadly split into three categories: curriculum-based, pastoral and whole school.

Education) compulsory from September 2020 with the introduction of statutory ‘Health Education’ – which includes both physical and mental health. There is an important role for psychologists here, helping schools to determine what shape their health education curriculum should take to meet the needs of their pupils and how best to deliver this. There is also a knowledge gap that we can help to fill – school staff will be expected to deliver this new curriculum despite no background knowledge about mental health.

Pastoral approaches Whilst the school curriculum is largely about awareness raising and promoting wellbeing, schools are also becoming increasingly involved with Curriculum-based approaches recognising and responding to A broad and balanced curriculum mental ill health in pupils. Schools that prepares pupils for life and are encouraged to train at least not just for exams is increasingly “…school staff will be one staff member in Mental Health embraced by schools, parents, expected to deliver this First Aid through both local and pupils and policy-makers. Many new curriculum despite national initiatives, and many schools now include lessons aimed at boosting resilience, promoting no background knowledge schools choose to train their whole staff in basic mental health literacy. wellbeing and giving pupils an about mental health” As well as recognising pupils in understanding of mental health need of support, school staff are issues. Developing and delivering increasingly providing support appropriate curriculums is to pupils who aren’t reaching the thresholds of overbeing done both from the bottom up, with teachers stretched CAMHS services through services like creating their own resources, and top down, with the Department for Education commissioned ‘Guidance on Place2Be, which places teams of counsellors in schools.

The Department for Education first provided guidance preparing to teach about mental health and emotional for schools about the role school counsellors can play wellbeing’ for key stages 1 to 4 having been freely in 2015 and has updated this since, in ‘Counselling in available since 2015. A government-funded RCT of a Schools: A Blueprint for the Future’. range of programmes aimed at pupils aged 5 to 16 is There has also been a movement towards breaking currently underway, from brief mindfulness exercises down the barriers traditionally found between health through to longer programmes – notably ‘The Guide’, a multi-session programme aimed at improving mental and education, with many schools now choosing to employ specialist staff or developing stronger links health literacy of teens which has gained a solid to CAMHS services. Through a government ‘mental evidence base in Canada and is being adapted for use health services and schools link pilot’, now in its in the UK. second phase, schools have been encouraged to A key issue with regards to delivering curriculumdevelop a single point of access with CAMHS to better based approaches in the past has been a lack of time – enable collaboration between schools and mental academic subjects tend to take precedence. This is set health services. This commonly sees a primary mental to change though, as the Department for Education health worker placed in schools for all or part of the recently shared plans to make many elements week; supporting pupil mental health and developing of PSHE (Personal Social Health and Economic

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Are schools the right place?

It has been suggested that schools are increasingly expected to fulfil basic parenting requirements: Ofsted’s chief inspector Amanda Spielman recently highlighted the increasing number of children starting school without basic self-care skills such as toileting. She said it should not be the responsibility of schools to fill the gap. Is the same true of wellbeing and mental health?

Should it really be the role of schools to fulfil what would once have been considered a parenting task? In many instances, schools are both providing this input for pupils and also providing input for parents through programmes like Family Links and Parent Gym. A benefit of a school-based approach is that with the right support, schools can choose and deliver universal evidence-based approaches in a way that parents cannot. Schools can also work to meet the needs of every child, including those who do not have consistent trusted adults in their lives and who are most likely to miss out on this input, but arguably are in most need of it.

Even if we accept that schools provide a good Whole school approaches vehicle for universal interventions, are they the Increasingly, schools are moving towards a whole right place for targeted interventions for pupils with school approach to mental health. This encompasses diagnosable mental health issues? The government’s both the pastoral and curriculum elements as well as move towards the development of school-based considering staff wellbeing and the school culture and mental health support teams has been met with a ethos. Schools are drawing on lessons learned from mixed response, with critics suggesting that a year of improving safeguarding practices, and many now have training is far too little to enable a lead governor for mental health skilled delivery of mental health as well as a staff member who interventions and that schools takes the lead on mental health or “With the right guidance are not the right place for these wellbeing. Government research and support, schools interventions to be delivered. But has shown that more than half of and school staff are well with CAMHS over-stretched to schools have a mental health lead the point that (according to NHS already in place. The new Green placed to make England’s 2018 figures) only one Paper looks to build on this by a difference” in four children with a diagnosable encouraging all schools to appoint mental health issue is receiving a mental health lead who will be professional input, something, provided with funded training. somewhere, has to change.

In 2015 Public Health England commissioned a What about the teachers? Our teachers are highly ‘Promoting children and young people’s emotional stressed and over-stretched – with figures from the health and wellbeing’ framework for schools and Education Support Partnership’s ‘Teacher Wellbeing colleges wishing to implement a whole organisation Index’ suggesting more than half have considered approach to mental health. This drew on NICE leaving the profession due to health pressures, with guidance and what was found to be working well one in three quitting within five years of starting. Are in schools who had been earlier to respond to pupil they appropriate role models for pupil mental health? mental health needs. This guidance is due to be Does loading more responsibility onto them risk updated in line with current research and government further fuelling the current issues? Arguably a whole recommendations, but is still widely accepted as a school approach to mental health should promote good starting point for schools. It also forms the basis the wellbeing of both staff and students; but care of The Carnegie School of Mental Health’s ‘Mental Health in Schools Award’; a process for developing and must be taken to ensure staff mental health needs are recognised and met and that they are given appropriate recognising best practice currently being undertaken guidance and supervision in order to enable them by over 300 schools across the UK. to best support their pupils, and protect their own Many schools are developing wellbeing or mental wellbeing too. Supervision is something that schools health teams to oversee the implementation of a are only just beginning to recognise a need for – whole school approach – psychologists can form an psychologists can play a key role in helping schools important part of these teams, acting as a critical, questioning friend and helping to identify and fill skills to develop and implement supervision and reflective practice for key staff. and knowledge gaps. staff skills and supporting the referral process where young people require more significant input.

This idea is built on by a new government Green Paper, ‘Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision’, produced jointly by the departments for Health and Social Care and for Education. This calls for mental health support teams which will straddle between schools and education, made up of staff specifically recruited and trained for this role. The first wave of trainees commenced their training in January 2019 and will work in trailblazer areas across the UK to provide mental health support to school pupils and decrease mental health wait times.

The role of psychologists here can be to help schools understand the local landscape and rapidly changing referral pathways. We can also help schools make the best choices for students in need of therapeutic input.

There is no ‘one size fits all’ solution, but school staff are often unaware of the range of options available.

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the psychologist september 2019 schooling the good citizen

the Royal Foundation-funded Mentally Healthy Schools website, which signposts quality-assured resources that teachers can use with confidence. This plea was made anew at a recent Ministerial roundtable, with the Association of School and College Leaders welcoming the introduction of statutory PSHE but stating that teachers need training and qualityassured resources if they are to confidently teach about topics like mental health.

The agony of choice A marketplace that was once bereft of options is now flooded with programmes designed to spot, Pooky Knightsmith has a PhD support, measure or otherwise in child mental health from the impact on pupil mental health.

Institute of Psychiatry, is the We encourage school leaders to be author of five books and is the critical consumers; but working current vice chair of the Children far from their area of expertise and and Young People’s Mental keen for results, with a genuine Health Coalition. passion for supporting their pupils, pooky@inourhands.com What next? they can be easy prey for canny The change of pace is fast and marketeers. schools need our support if they are not to crumble Psychologists can help here as schools need under the pressure, or risk harm because they are clear signposting towards what works. Beyond working beyond their area of expertise. But our being provided with the skills to tell a good or safe children are in crisis; more input is needed. With the programme or resource from one that should be right guidance and support, schools and school staff avoided, teachers are asking for concrete advice. Help are well placed to make a difference; but we need to them to become more critical consumers, and if you’re work together. We need to actively break down the aware of evidence-based resources or programmes barriers between health and education; between us and that have a positive impact, then share the good them. We must work collaboratively to find new ways news. Time-poor and worried that they may do more forward, with our children at the heart. harm than good, teachers welcome initiatives like

When the bough breaks: Identifying emergent practice for families

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Children and families need professionals, individually and together, to be offering help in effective, innovative and creative ways often in difficult and pressured contexts.

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07/08/2019 15:05

Imagine all the people Siân Jones considers contact interventions and prejudice towards immigrants in schools

In our increasingly globalised world, recent years have seen a sharp rise in anti-immigrant sentiment and in social exclusion of immigrants, including among children in schools. Research suggests that interventions grounded in imagined interaction between social groups may improve relations, and reduce prejudice. But have studies shown that such efforts can change behaviour towards immigrants?

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he division-free world that John Lennon imagined in 1971 seems like a far cry from the one we see today.

The wake of the EU referendum in the UK in 2016 saw a 42 per cent rise in hate crime towards immigrants (peaking the day after the result was announced). This rise was attributed by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to negative portrayals of immigrants by politicians and the media. An anti-immigrant rhetoric continues in US and European media today (Moore & Ramsay, 2017), and this anti-immigrant sentiment has penetrated schools (Taylor, 2015).

Concurrently, research has found a high degree of loneliness amongst adolescent immigrants, with 20 per cent of one sample reporting feeling that they do not belong (Oxman-Martinez et al., 2012). It is known that immigrants may be particularly vulnerable to anxiety and depression arising from prejudice directed towards them (Strohmeier et al., 2011). Moreover, when negative discrimination targets someone’s race or ethnicity, the psychological impact may be greater, as an immigrant identity is an unchangeable and core part of that person’s identity (McKenney et al., 2006).

These risks to wellbeing surrounding prejudice, together with research showing that high quality contact with immigrants benefits harmonious group relations for everyone (e.g. Vezzali Capozza et al., 2012) mean that timely, evidence-based interventions aimed at reducing prejudice towards immigrants in schools are needed.

In spite of increasing research on the content of intergroup attitudes in children and adolescents, interventions to reduce prejudice in childhood are not

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the psychologist september 2019 schooling the good citizen Ana Rosa Louis www.destroymodernart.com

commonly implemented, and seem rarely to draw upon developmental or social psychology (Killen et al., 2011). Instead programs focus on the use of print and multimedia-based intervention programs without addressing the social context or developmental nuances in which the interventions are set (see Paluck & Green, 2009). This is despite there being a burgeoning body of social-developmental research, which highlights that Gordon Allport’s intergroup contact theory from the 1950s might usefully be applied to anti-immigrant prejudice in schools, hints at the mechanisms that underpin that prejudice, and at the interventions that might promote harmonious intergroup relations.

Contact theory is based on the now wellestablished premise that positive contact (meeting Allport’s conditions of co-operation, common goals, equal social status, and institutional support) between members of different groups can promote positive intergroup attitudes. Contact may be direct; for

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example, involving cross-group friendships between individuals. However, it can also be indirect: can knowing about or simply imagining fellow group members’ amiable relationships with those from other groups bring about the social inclusion of immigrant youth?

Extended contact interventions Extended contact is based in other fellow group members’ positive relationships with a member of a different group (Wright et al., 1997). Evidence is growing that it may help to reduce prejudice in schools where direct contact is not feasible. Along these lines, in a 2006 study Lindsey Cameron and colleagues read stories to British children about other British children interacting positively with a refugee child. Attitudes toward refugee children were more positive among children in the intervention condition, compared to their counterparts in a control group. Beyond this,

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Loris Vezzali’s team examined the effects of extended contact among Italian primary school children. Here, extended contact was linked to reduced implicit prejudice, but only for those who themselves had fewer immigrant friends.

This finding parallels research in the UK which showed that an extended contact intervention markedly reduced explicit prejudice in a non-diverse location but had little effect in an ethnically diverse area (Cameron et al., 2011). Further, a study of children from an ethnically diverse community in Germany (Feddes et al., 2009) found that direct but not extended contact between German and Turkish children was associated with positive outgroup ethnic attitudes. In other words, the evidence on extended contact suggests that it reduces biases against ethnic minority groups or immigrants particularly effectively when direct contact between different groups does not occur.

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The power of imagination The other form of indirect contact, known as imagined contact, is – in the words of Richard Crisp and Rhiannon Turner – ‘the mental simulation of a social interaction with a member or members of an outgroup category’. What might this add to interventions intending to reduce prejudice?

Unlike direct or extended contact, imagined contact does not require someone to be living where they have contact with outgroup members, or where other outgroup members have a good relationship Key sources with someone in the ingroup.

Rather, it is practical where Cameron, L., Rutland, A., Turner, R., intergroup bias is likely to take et al. (2011). ‘Changing attitudes with shape without being challenged (e.g. a little imagination’: Imagined contact Rutland et al., 2005). This means effects on young children’s intergroup imagined contact has the potential bias. Anales de Psicologia, 27(3), to be of use in low diversity settings 708–717.

Killen, M., Rutland, A., & Ruck, M. where children experience anti(2011). Promoting equity and justice in immigrant prejudice. childhood: Policy implications. Social There is now a growing body Policy Report, 25(4), 1–25. of research demonstrating the Paluck, E.L., & Green, D.L. (2009). effectiveness of imagined intergroup Prejudice reduction: What works? A contact in attenuating prejudice review and assessment of research and practice. Annual Review of Psychology, among young people (e.g. Stathi 60, 339–367. et al., 2014; Cameron et al., 2011).

Turner, R.N., West, K., & Christie, Z. Regarding immigrants, Vezzali’s (2013). Outgroup trust, intergroup team published a three-week study anxiety, and outgroup attitude as in 2012 where Italian children mediators of the effect of imagined imagined an outing with an intergroup contact on intergroup behavioural tendencies. Journal of immigrant child in different social Applied Social Psychology, 43, 196–205. settings. Afterwards, compared to Vezzali, L., Stathi, S., Giovannini, D., et a control condition, children in al. (2015). The greatest magic of Harry the imagined intergroup contact Potter: Reducing prejudice. Journal of condition had firmer intentions to Applied Social Psychology, 45, 105–121. meet immigrant children and less Full list available in online/app version. implicit prejudice towards them.

When it comes to adolescents,

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Turner et al. (2013) showed British students aged 16–17 years a picture of an asylum seeker from Zimbabwe. Those who imagined contact with the asylum seeker reported a stronger inclination to befriend asylum seekers than did a control group.

In my research (Jones et al., 2017) my colleagues and I have examined the effectiveness of a novel form of imagined contact with immigrants. We reasoned that contact will be more effective when it actively involves the child, as opposed to learning about intergroup interactions through books or television.

Developmental research tells us that children will pay more attention when key features of the world are perceptually salient and the social group memberships taking part in an interaction are rendered highly visible (Cameron, Rutland et al., 2006). We carried out imagined contact via pretend play with toys, meaning that children imagined their interactions in a 3D space.

We found that the attitudes of British children aged between 5-9 years from an ethnically and culturally diverse area were moderated positively by imagined contact with an immigrant.

Together, these studies suggest that imagined contact may be an effective and flexible strategy that is easily adaptable to the age group being targeted.

Beyond imagination The study of imagined contact holds promise for the reduction of anti-immigrant prejudice. Studies show that outgroup attitudes become more positive and friendship intentions stronger following such interventions. However, there is one gap in the literature that it will be important for future research to address: the nature and power of children’s

The mayor of Camini (centre back) in Calabria with children from Syria, Pakistan and Calabria

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the psychologist september 2019 schooling the good citizen

imaginations has arguably yet to be fully harnessed.

Sofia Stathi and her memberships were mixed, yellow co-researchers uncovered and blue. In another condition, something of the potential for all children were assigned to the channeling children’s imaginations ‘blue’ group. Direct contact between in their 2015 study. They showed immigrants and Italian children that stories about extended in the small groups was also contact are valuable even when manipulated as another factor in the contact does not involve an Siân Jones is in the Division the research design. Children in all ingroup member, or real-life social of Psychology and Sociology conditions were asked to cooperate groups. In their study, primary at Queen Margaret University, towards a superordinate goal. school children read passages that Edinburgh. SJones@qmu.ac.uk Results showed positive effects presented themes of prejudice of both direct (mixed groups of from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Italian and immigrant children) and imagined (mixed books, over a six-week period. They found this was groups of ‘yellow’ and ‘blue’ group children) contact effective in weakening prejudice towards immigrants: on reduced stereotyping of immigrants, and intentions an indication that the collective power of children’s to help them if they needed it. Importantly, for imaginations may be exploited to enhance the positive considering the collective power of imagination, there impact of imagined contact. was no evidence that direct contact has stronger effects There’s also evidence that combining the power of than imagined contact in this study. children’s imaginations may be a fruitful endeavour.

Both of these studies show that children’s In one study, Italian and immigrant primary school imaginations may be exploited to enhance the positive children aged 8-10 years worked in small groups influence of imagined contact on anti-immigrant of three to six children (Vezzali et al., 2015). All attitudes. Perhaps the potential of contact interventions children were given a minimal group classification. to reduce prejudice towards immigrants is now limited To test the effects of imagined contact, children were assigned to the ‘yellow’ or ‘blue’ group and small group only by the researchers’ own imaginations…

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Resilience means the capacity to deal with threat. But in terms of radicalisation, this initially involves recognition of something as a threat, as something harmful. Instead, radicalisers will present something as an opportunity – to be a hero, to contribute to a mission, to have adventure, to join a new family. The first task in education is the fostering of recognition, including awareness of how extremism is a threat to society as well as to the individual.

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the psychologist september 2019 schooling the good citizen

Building resilience to radicalisation Lynn Davies on efforts to create a world where ‘everyone is an insider’

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n many countries, schools are tasked with a duty to prevent violent extremism. This involves both the safeguarding role and often surveillance too – identifying those at risk. The latter is hugely contentious, as it can lead to stigmatisation and unjustified referrals, even if there are also examples of young people who have been picked up in time by caring teachers and supported by mentoring. This brief article focuses on the resilience aspect, which should be targeted at all students, not just those seen as ‘vulnerable’.

There are many different ways to start a conversation on extremism.

In a major review for the Segerstedt Institute last year on ‘what works’ in educational initiatives in counter-extremism, I looked at 23 countries and identified 20 different entry points. Clearly, much depends on the country content and the age of the students. Some are direct, some indirect, some foundational. Direct programmes will focus on Islamist radicalisation, theological interventions on the understanding of the Koran, or the ideology of far right extremism. More indirect approaches will focus on community cohesion, mutual understanding, inter-faith dialogue, inter-group contact, conflict resolution and antiracism, in order to build trust so that hatreds cannot be sparked by ignorance or suspicion. Foundational approaches include rights education, Philosophy for Children (P4C), citizenship education, religious education, psycho-physical and PSHE (personal, social and health education) and ICT/digital literacy. They also include a raft of approaches around critical thinking and multi-perspectivity, such as integrative complexity and value pluralism, or using history – and different versions of history – to understand propaganda. In countries where the motivation to join extremist groups is augmented by poverty or unemployment, initiatives will try to improve economic opportunities and civic engagement.

Clearly, schools will often use a combination of all these. One cannot prescribe. Our organisation ConnectFutures is engaged in training and research around extremism and exploitation, and we’ve developed a range of face-to-face courses for teachers, students and parents as well as online modules for teachers. We have to update these continually and try to evaluate what has impact on different audiences.

From our research on the backgrounds of former extremists (Islamist and far right) we’ve made films of former extremists talking about their experiences, why they joined and why they left. We’ve also recently made films of two mothers whose sons died from terrorism – one in the Manchester Arena bombing and one who went to join ISIS and was killed by a drone.

As with similar organisations using testimonials, we find the use of film (and where possible, live presentations from victims, survivors or former extremists) immensely powerful. Even with younger students, we do not shy from showing visuals of the recruitment material used

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eras. Understanding the spread

by ISIS or neo-Nazi groups, to of extremist ideology means not generate discussion on what just knowing that extremists they are appealing to, and how cherry-pick bits of sacred texts, to see through different sorts of and replacing these with the nicer manipulation. We put such work bits, but acknowledging that together with training about gangs sacred texts of all persuasions have and guns, showing how grooming inherent dangers in their call for techniques can be similar, and often unquestioning acceptance of the using ex-offenders to talk about Lynn Davies is Emeritus divine word. A critical religious their experiences of the myths of Professor of International education is a key part of critical the romance of gang life.

Education at the University of thinking generally.

But while we are given good Birmingham.

Resilience to extremism is, feedback on the training days, the l.davies@bham.ac.uk then, the opposite to demanding assemblies etc., we’re aware (as I safe spaces empty of people you found in my study) that one-offs do not like, or arguing for no platforming. There are no substitute for a whole school approach. This is no right in international law not to be offended. means a school ethos whereby students know their Dealing calmly and coolly with offence is a key part rights and respect the rights of others: a report on of resilience to extremism, so that anger and hate the impact of UNICEF’s Rights Respecting Schools and the urge for revenge are not intensified. For full finds them being commended in inspection reports resilience, schools have the seemingly paradoxical task for keeping students safe from radicalisation. A whole of being edgy places for discussion and controversy school approach means a constant focus on critical while being safe places for students to feel comfortable. thinking, dialogue and discussion, and teachers This is operationalised prepared to tackle controversial issues. in mechanisms such Uncomfortable views from students should “Belonging is not about as ground rules for not be silenced, but surfaced, so that they can discussion, but entails at be challenged and the distinctions between wearing the same a deeper level a strategy freedom of speech and hate speech explored. uniform, or singing the to ensure all students – Responsible digital citizenship means school song” and staff – feel included learning to use social media for constructive and valued. This provides ways of relating to each other, not trolling, emotional resilience, harassment or cyberbullying. Across all which relates to self-esteem as well as empathy. subjects, the habits of the search for evidence, and One key aim for schools is for everyone to be questioning what one is told, is a bedrock (even if an insider, as captured in his 2016 book by Andrew it seems to undermine the authority of the teacher Moffat, an openly gay assistant headteacher at a or religious leaders). I’m reminded of my favourite predominantly Muslim Birmingham primary school. graffiti… it read ‘Question Everything’ and someone The motto across the whole school is the deceptively had written underneath ‘Why?’ simple ‘No Outsiders’. No-one is an outsider, of whatever ethnicity or religion, LGBT+ identity, refugee or asylum seeker status. The phrase comes from the Religion South African rights activist Desmond Tutu who The elephant in the room here is religion. How to said ‘Everyone is an insider, no matter their beliefs, talk about religious extremism without inciting whatever their colour, gender or sexuality’. Given Islamophobia? How can religious texts be questioned? the more recent protests by some parents against One obvious approach is even-handedness, the curriculum developed from this concept, it is ensuring that all sorts of extremism (Islamist, clear that more work needs to be done to explain the Christian, Buddhist, Hindu as well as far right), are Equality Act, its implications and the benefits for social acknowledged. Surrounding that is the need for a cohesion. dynamic secularism in education, one that recognises In terms of extremism, a feeling of belonging to and respects all religions, but does not place them the school can act as a bulwark against the lure of above critique. I argue in my book Unsafe Gods that belonging to a group, gang or cult. In our extremism young people need to understand how religion can training we emphasise students looking out for each be implicated in conflict and extremism (as well as sometimes healing after conflict). Again, a rights-based other, and telling someone if they are concerned that a peer is at risk. Belonging is not about wearing the approach will help in recognition that religions don’t same uniform, or singing the school song, but about have rights, people do. all students actively welcoming and according that Coming from a cross-cutting secular approach sense of belonging to each other. All are citizens of the gives the licence to stand back from one’s religion, school, with the same rights and responsibilities and admit when it is misogynistic or violent and explore duty of care. which parts are social constructions from particular

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the psychologist september 2019 schooling the good citizen

Technical Support in Psychological Research Award 2020

Technical Support in Psychological Teaching Award 2020

The Award seeks to recognise excellence work by psychology technicians in at least two of the following areas of skill: l Using technology l Interpersonal communications l Instruction/research l Problem solving l Innovation l Special skills l Project management l Evidence of publications

The Education and Training Board and the Association for Technical Staff in Psychology are delighted to invite nominations for an annual award. The award recognises the valuable role that technicians play in supporting the student learning experience within their psychology departments.

The Award seeks to recognise outstanding contributions of psychology technicians in at least two of the following criteria: l Technological skill l Interpersonal communication skills l Instruction/teaching skills l Admin/finance skills l Problem solving l Innovative skills l Special skills

Single or team nominations should take the form of a narrative report evidencing at least two of the criteria above. This should be a maximum of 1000 words supported by testimonials from staff or students as appropriate.

Applications should be submitted by the Head of Department by 1 November 2019.

Single or team nominations should take the form of a narrative report evidencing at least two of the criteria above. This should be a maximum of 1000 words supported by testimonials from staff or students as appropriate.

Applications should be submitted by the Head of Department by 1 November 2019.

For further information please contact emma.smith@bps.org.uk

For further information please contact emma.smith@bps.org.uk

The Research Board and the Association for Technical Staff in Psychology are delighted to invite nominations for the annual award recognising the valuable role that technicians play in supporting research within their psychology departments.

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the psychologist september 2019 schooling the good citizen

‘It’s a real critical period around gender’ Sarah Davidson is Consultant Clinical Psychologist for the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

Our editor Jon Sutton poses the questions.

In your experience, is the next generation more ‘up to speed’ on gender identity issues than our own generation?

Inevitably, I think they are. Time is absolutely a context, and I think that is particularly the case for gender identity. I think that you can see evidence of that in legislative frameworks, through the Equalities Act for example; through how people are describing and labelling themselves. How they are experiencing themselves and being represented within different media, in schools, work, in communities and in the world. That’s all evolving. I would say particularly rapidly. There are so many different factors and variables right now, that are creating a real critical period around gender.

even the language to engage with the debates.

I end up feeling scared that I’m going to say (or publish) completely the wrong thing.

I think that’s an insightful concern… so do I! I’m wondering if that’s part of the generational aspect, and if the young people that you talk to are far more able to talk about it.

I think language changes over time for every generation, so we have to be careful in saying it’s something about this generation in particular.

But certainly I think there’s something about social media which has potentiated and exponentially increased some of that evolution.

In terms of the people presenting, is that the main It does feel like a watershed moment. factor? Is it about awareness?

Yes. In recent years we’ve seen very large increases in No. My go-to phrase is always ‘multi-factorial’. the numbers of young people being referred to gender Social media has operationalised the change in identity services, particularly in Europe and North language and understanding, that’s a very significant America. Round the globe actually, including Australia variable. But that’s among many different variables. and South East Asia. People are presenting with greater Language is associated with the people that have the dissatisfaction with their identity, but we’re also seeing power and the privilege, who are not unitary groups. a change in who those groups are. I’ve been working There are different groups who are differently defining in the Gender Identity Development Service for more and re-defining this area, and even wishing it not to be than 13 years now. Our referrals defined. The language is contested, have increased from less than 50 as well as the treatment pathways “The language is a year to well over 2000 a year, and the pathways of ‘doing gender’, and we’re also seeing significant contested, as well as the performing gender, being gender. increases in people who are There are so many different groups treatment pathways and assigned female at birth, especially constructing what is possible. the pathways of ‘doing those referred in their adolescence, compared to those assigned male I’m interested in how peers relate gender’, performing at birth. So there are shifts in to those presenting with gender gender, being gender.” the characteristics of people we identity issues. are seeing, and also how they Yes, more broadly we know that describe themselves and in what the Equalities Act recognises they want to achieve. A breakdown of the binaries. people with different protected characteristics. Gender It’s a complicated picture, some would describe it as a is recognised as being more than just binary. That’s ‘queering’ of the picture. fundamental, a seismic change, to be recognised as non-binary, or gender fluid, or pan gender. To be able As you say, it’s complicated, and if I’m honest I to self-define rather than be defined by the powerful sometimes feel like I don’t have the knowledge or authorities. That has huge implications for authorities

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and particularly schools, who are socialising agents.

They must respond to that shift in viewpoint.

of organisations are trying to work with school to challenge some of that. To enable people, regardless of how they identify, to have the education opportunities they should have.

So how are they responding to it, in your experience?

On the whole, really well. Of course schools face many challenges. People who identify differently to How does psychology inform that work? a majority are also at risk of having higher levels of Psychology has a lot to say about making visible bullying and stigma that needs to be addressed at the experiences of discrimination and maltreatment. systemic and structural level, not at an individual level. Identifying stressors, the cyclic spiral that develops I’ve seen some schools struggle as a result of some of the with how to deal with it at that difficult contexts and rules that level rather than making it an get constructed. The impact of “The knee-jerk level is individual or family issue. Some those on behaviours, emotions, to work at the individual of the amazing schools manage beliefs. The impact on health and level, but then you are to be aware in supporting staff to wellbeing for those individuals have the most appropriate language focusing all your resources and those around them. Noticing or the most appropriate level of those spirals exist, on a very small unit, with where curiosity, flexibility, making punctuating them, providing appropriate adjustments to facilitate the risk of maintaining the psychoeducation, enabling more access to lessons, the curriculum positive narratives… there’s a whole problem constructed in and the social world. host of literature drawing from the individual” There are also some young different psychological models and people who really struggle as approaches. a result of the very difficult experiences that they have with peers, with adults, And that work can be done directly and indirectly? within their communities. That’s a real concern.

Exactly. As a service, we feel it’s important to work Gendered Intelligence, and many other organisations at different levels and with different agencies and such as the Intercom Trust, Allsorts in Brighton, lots organisations. For example, Gendered Intelligence

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works with the schools and the system. They work with government departments, professional organisations such as the Football Association, to try to challenge some of the ideas around sport, which can be very gendered and restrictive. They may work publicly with conferences, but also with individuals, group work, mentoring gender diverse young people to enable access back into education. So it’s at all levels.

Any successful intervention has to be at each level – multi-factorial.

That sounds expensive.

I would disagree. What could be expensive is if you worked at one level. The knee-jerk level is to work at the individual level, but then you are focusing all your resources on a very small unit, with the risk of maintaining the problem constructed in the individual.

Meyer’s minority stress model talks about the need to not locate issues within an individual. You could spend a lot of expensive therapy working with individuals, when you need to work with the socialising institutes - the schools, the colleges, the Departments of Health and Education - and then where necessary do the individual and group interventions.

I guess I was just thinking that in my experience of schools, when resource in terms of money or time are stretched, they may have a tendency to default to the binary... ‘all boys do this, all girls do this, let’s just crack on’. They’re not necessarily set up for nuance, fluidity and non-binary. Or is that my imagination?

Right there, you’ve answered your first question – that’s the difference! That’s what was, not what is.

The majority of schools are now much more clued in.

Not all of them, but most are aware of the challenge, the unhelpfulness and the difficulty of having boys’ and girls’ anything - uniform, toilets, PE. As soon as you start to do that you create difficulties for people who do not identify in that way.

Is that evidence that what you are doing with organisations like Gendered Intelligence is working?

Are we seeing more ‘good citizens’ of the future?

Yes, I think we’re seeing more role models with different experiences to share, different identities and stories. By challenging the heteronormativity of the dominant world view, and providing alternative voices and experiences, it’s complicating it but it’s much more enabling for a wide group of people.

That’s progress.

What would your recommendations be to continue that progress? What would you like to see happen in the next five years or so?

My main one is a wish for this area to be less polarised.

Notwithstanding all the work I have described, it feels we’re as polarised as ever around very key discussions, such as the most appropriate approaches, and at what ages. My hope would be for us to be much more connected and less adversarial.

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‘The majority of schools are now much more clued in… aware of the challenge, the unhelpfulness and the difficulty of having boys’ and girls’ anything.’

Is that because those discussions and debates are generally taking place between adults? Do we need to draw more on the young people themselves and their growing acceptance of various different aspects of gender?

It’s complicated. Some of it is around the different positions that people become invested in, which are all about not being something, or being against something else. I was just reading a fabulous article by my colleague about how even in ethics, there’s no such thing as an absolute truth. We forget that, in our search for what’s best. We forget how contextually overlaid our experiences are, our beliefs are, our judgements are. Even when you talk about evidence-based practice, people talk about it being objective. But there is nothing that is purely objective, particularly in the world of psychology. The more we can recognise that and move forward together, rather than in opposition… criticising so personally and vehemently…

I’m aware we’re in Brexit year… how can we progress, when there are such lines of absolute dissent, that are expressed so bitterly and personally?

I guess it comes down to that natural affinity to express in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’, but it’s about defining ‘us’ in a more inclusive way.

Exactly. Human beings are connected in myriad ways, we are social beings who do best when we are connected in positive, affirming relationships. That doesn’t mean that we can’t disagree, and have challenge and conflict. But to be so polarised… it can’t be helpful for people to feel inhibited to speak about something, that’s a stimie for us to develop.

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Ana Rosa Louis www.destroymodernart.com

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the psychologist september 2019 schooling the good citizen

Teaching individuals gender equality and respect Dan O’Hare is a Chartered Educational Psychologist working for an English Local Authority and as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Bristol.

He currently volunteers with TIGER, a Bristol-based cooperative, mostly delivering workshops in schools.

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n my experience as an Educational Psychologist (EP) in the South West of England, you don’t have to look too far to discover the gendered nature of a school.

Pupils still walk ‘boy-girl, boy-girl’, teachers deliver instructions to groups of children based on their assumed gender – ‘Can all the boys stand up’. In meetings I’ve heard ‘Boys will be boys’ or ‘She’s a typical little girl’, as if such descriptions provide a definitive answer to why a young person might be behaving in any particular way. Curriculums are often restricted based on gender, perhaps most notably PE curriculums. If you’re pursuing vocational studies? Then expect a careers focus on carpentry, mechanics, beauty and health, and childcare… no guessing what is aimed at who!

Having also worked as a youth worker with a LGBTQ+ youth group before training to be an EP, I was acutely aware of the range of negative impacts that gender norms, stereotypes and gendered violence can have on children and young people who may not identify with the standard ‘boy-girl’ binary.

At the time of joining TIGER, many schools I worked with through my EP role seemed unaware of how pervasive and insidious assumptions and norms about gender were within classrooms, playgrounds and indeed curriculum materials. As an EP, schools often want you to ‘solve a problem’ they have, and a significant proportion of time in schools can be spent on individual casework. There is often little time available to support schools on a journey of enhancing their understanding of gender equality and respect.

Yet, the need to think about issues of gender equality is evident in figures from a range of sources (incuding the Girls’ Atittude Surveys from Girlguiding, the Department for Education, and Samaritans).

81 per cent of girls aged 11-21 say they have experienced or seen some form of sexism. 70 per cent of girls have reported experiences of sexual harassment at school or college. 87 per cent thought they were judged more for their looks than their ability or skills.

As for boys, they make up 78 per cent of permanent

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exclusions from schools, and men are over three times as likely to take their own lives as women.

TIGER’s view is that by talking about gender, sexism, discrimination and mutual respect from a young age, we might contribute in a small way to changing these figures.

Conscious incompetence On joining the coop, I experienced a sense of anxiety about what I might be able to bring to the group; a sense of conscious incompetence. Here were highly passionate, incredibly knowledgeable activists and educators who could identify a gendered assumption in a sentence quicker than you can say ‘blue or pink?’ I was also explicitly aware of my status as a cis white guy, and all the privilege that has brought me throughout my life – a lot of it probably hidden to me.

The group had already established relationships with a number of schools in Bristol and delivered workshops on topics such as ‘Gender in the media’, ‘Sexist Bullying’ and ‘Porn and consent’. Underpinning all of these workshops is the aim of challenging and critiquing general and ‘common sense’ narratives about gender; challenging structures, rather than reproducing them. It was the first time I had worked with a cooperative. This organisational structure represents TIGER’s ‘values in action’, with a focus on power dynamics, critical dialogue, democratic working, and reflexivity. That’s a way of working that is appealing and familiar to many EPs. Expertise in schools systems After a short time volunteering with TIGER it was clear that an EP’s substantial level of expertise regarding school systems would be a useful addition to the existing skill set. This represented the first significant contribution I was able to make to the group – sharing my knowledge and understanding of current legislation, policy and guidance on areas such as The Equalities Act, The Children and Families Bill, The SEND Code of Practice, The Human Rights

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Act, The National Curriculum and Ofsted Inspection Frameworks. Further, we were able to begin to consider the best ‘point of entry’ for TIGER in schools.

In the early stages of TIGER’s work, most connections with schools were established via a particularly keen and interested member of staff.

While this ensured a friendly welcome, it often meant very little ‘buy-in’ from senior members of school staff and little access to funding.

EP understanding of school roles and responsibilities was a valuable Key sources contribution to TIGER as we discussed the various priorities Tiger: http://www.tigerbristol.co.uk/ that Special Educational Needs Dr Dan O’Hare: https://edpsy.org.uk/ Coordinators or Pastoral Leads might have. We were also able to Morgan, G. (2016). Organisational critically consider how the work of change: a solution focused approach.

TIGER fits with the wider agenda of Educational Psychology in Practice, 32(2), 133-144. promoting children’s wellbeing.

Nolan, A., & Moreland, N. (2014). The Reactive approaches to children process of psychological consultation. who experience mental health Educational Psychology in Practice, 30(1), difficulties receive a lot of attention, 63–77. and there is less focus on work that Pearpoint, J., O’Brien, J., & Forest, M. can be done to actively promote (1995). PATH: A workbook for planning positive possible futures. Toronto: wellbeing – this is where we decided Inclusion Press.

TIGER has something key to offer.

We have long argued that we must Full list available in online/app version. challenge the societal and structural inequalities shown to lead to

mental health difficulties. Framing TIGER’s work as an approach schools can adopt to promote wellbeing was therefore an exciting opportunity.

Using theory to enhance and simplify Schools are complex environments with complex issues. Teachers don’t have a lot of time. So the second substantial contribution I was able to make was to support my colleagues in developing a structured, simplified offer to schools, grounded in Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems. This theory identifies a number of interactional systems that influence how an individual grows and develops e.g. from home and school environments (microsystems) through to political or economic systems (macrosystems). It was clear that TIGER’s work had much to contribute not only at the level of individual children but also at the level of whole school or whole local authority. Organising the complex work of TIGER along these system-level ‘categories’ provided a clear structure for the activities that we carry out and helped to shape our understanding of what we were doing, why, and for who. The microsystem level could include training and awareness raising for teaching staff and sports coaches, alongside parent workshops.

The ‘individual child’ level saw workshops for young people, a Gender Equality Ambassador scheme, and participatory and inclusive work, by young people,

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the psychologist september 2019 schooling the good citizen

often influencing TIGER policy.

The introduction of a theoretical framework to help structure the work of the cooperative supported our thinking about other local and national priorities and initiatives. This has led to a current focus on self-image, resilience, children’s wellbeing, Dr Dan O’Hare is an educational empowerment and autonomy. psychologist and DECP Although broad topics, they are Committee Member @edpsydan distinctly psychological. TIGER’s dan@edpsy.org.uk work focuses specifically on how gender interacts with, intersects or nitty-gritty of day-to-day TIGER work. Several coop impacts on all of these issues for young people. members commented that the working relationship has allowed them to spot unhelpful patterns in their work with schools and indeed within the cooperative, Problem-solving together meaning that steps could be taken to improve what we Key to the effectiveness of my work with TIGER do. has been the application of consultation skills. It’s As policy, legislation and attitudes around gender a ‘joint-problem solving’ approach where neither shift, TIGER will need to be increasingly flexible the ‘consultee’ or the ‘consultant’ have power over and adaptive to meet the needs of children, young the other; the expertise of all involved is pooled people, and teachers. Two important factors that to determine an appropriate course of action in a seem guaranteed to influence the work of TIGER are ‘problem situation’. the new Sex and Relationships curriculum, and the Many of the members of TIGER are incredibly shift in thinking away from the dominant ‘withinpassionate about the work that we do and I noticed person’ understanding of children’s mental health and early on that new ideas or plans were being generated wellbeing. These contextual changes are already being at a rate faster than existing practices were honed and considered by TIGER and have prompted discussions refined. I think it’s fair to say that one of the main about whether our vision, as it stands, is still relevant, reasons that ‘solutions’ to different school or societywide issues were being developed so rapidly is because and whether we have clear aims for the future.

Returning to the ‘E-word’ (eek!), us educational many of the cooperative members see the work of psychologists have expertise in organisational change TIGER as professional, but also personal and political. management. Morgan (2016) demonstrated that we This means that there is never a lack of motivation or can support change within organisations by using energy, but early on there wasn’t always a clear idea as particular tools to develop a sense of ownership, to what problem the latest solution was solving. control and a commitment to action. One of these The process of problem identification has been a tools is the Planning Alternative Tomorrows with key role for me throughout my time at TIGER. Using Hope (PATH) process (Pearpoint et al., 1995) – a team discursive strategies such as empathy, deep listening, approach that supports people to identify and begin to questioning, wondering, challenging, focusing plan their way towards a preferred future. Introducing and summarising (Nolan & Moreland, 2014) has this process to TIGER, to act as a starting point for supported TIGER members to develop new insights our next stage of change, is what I hope to contribute about their work. By slowing down and developing a in the short term. PATH is an open, democratic, shared understanding of the problem at hand and a transparent, messy and dynamic process and so shared language with which to discuss the ‘problem’, would seem pretty fitting for an innovative, not-forour work has become more focused and perhaps more profit cooperative that aims to create sustainable and relevant for schools. sustained change in school systems and cultures.

So is it having an effect? Is TIGER promoting gender equality and respect? It seems like it. Students, Looking ahead parents and teachers alike have reported that TIGER’s And so what next? Over the past two years my work work has opened up the possibility for sensitive with TIGER has become increasingly ‘indirect’ – conversations about difficult topics that might not working primarily with those staff who dedicate the have otherwise been addressed at school. It’s this majority of their time to the cooperative. Working opportunity for dialogue which seems to be most in this way with the people most concerned with valued. In the current climate, an opportunity to change is familiar ground for an EP, and it was a shift understand others’ beliefs, values and opinions from prompted by the needs and suggestions of other cooperative members. They were clear that they valued a position of mutual respect is and can only be a positive thing. the ‘objectivity’ of someone who is not involved in the

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Civic and political engagement in young people Martyn Barrett and Dimitra Pachi look beyond voting, at what schools can do to encourage active citizenship There is a myth about young people’s attitudes to politics – that they are politically disengaged. In fact, there are many different ways in which people can be civically and politically engaged, and much that psychologists can do to encourage this.

Ana Rosa Louis www.destroymodernart.com

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outh of voting age are less likely to be registered to vote in elections than older generations. Youth that are registered to vote do so less frequently than older generations.

And the percentage of youth who vote in elections has been in steady decline since the 1970s (International IDEA, 2004; Macedo, 2005; Putnam, 2000).

However, civic and political engagement can be about so many activities – voting is certainly not the only way. Some forms of participation, called ‘non-conventional’ political actions, sidestep the electoral arena.

Examples are participating in political demonstrations, protests and marches; signing petitions; writing political articles or blogs; and liking and sharing political articles, images and videos on social media. Other forms of participation may be focused more directly on providing direct help to other people in need, solving community problems, or raising money for charitable causes – these are sometimes termed ‘civic’ rather than ‘political’ actions because they avoid the conventional political arena entirely (Barrett & Zani, 2015a).

Furthermore, the evidence is clear that, while young people’s commitment to voting is indeed in decline in many democracies today, large numbers of young people are nevertheless strongly committed to non-conventional and civic forms of participation. So whereas in the past, issues of concern might have mobilised them into voting for particular parties or candidates in elections, these issues today

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the psychologist september 2019 schooling the good citizen

related to students’ knowledge about government and politics, the teaching method is also important – more knowledge is acquired if students are allowed to discuss and analyse political issues in relation to contemporary events, rather than having to memorise historical facts or facts about government organisation and processes. might be tackled instead through consumer activism, However, the relationship between education and protests and demonstrations, activity on social media, civic and political engagement is even more widecharitable fund-raising, or voluntary work in the ranging than this. Zukin and colleagues (2006) community (Barrett & Zani, 2015b; Forbrig, 2005; discovered that students who attend schools that Kiesa et al., 2007; Marsh et al., 2007). provide training in civic skills (e.g. letter writing The reason for this pattern is not hard to find: politicians and political institutions are often perceived and debating) are more likely to be involved in organisations outside school, to sign petitions, to by young people as having little interest in their participate in boycotts, to follow concerns and interests. Needs go political news, to engage in unmet. As a result, youth lose trust, “Having an open charitable fund-raising and to and feel marginalised and excluded attend community meetings. from the conventional political classroom climate is a Students who participate in arena. They seek out alternative major and consistent classroom discussions about forms of participation to support predictor of young volunteering are more likely to the political and civic causes that matter to them. people’s levels of political volunteer regularly, to work on community problems, to participate That said, young people’s knowledge, political in charity fund-raising, and to try disengagement from conventional interest, and intentions to and influence other people’s voting. politics is a worrying trend. The Furthermore, having an youth of today will eventually vote in the future” open classroom climate at school become the older generation of appears to be one of the most tomorrow, and voting behaviour important factors that can enhance students’ civic and in later life is related to the voting habits developed in political engagement. An open classroom climate is youth (Geys, 2006). Another worry is that, if youth characterised by students having the opportunity to fail to vote in sufficient numbers, politicians who are raise controversial social and political issues that are elected to positions of power will be far more likely of interest, to discuss these issues openly, to listen to a to undervalue or even ignore the views of youth, range of different perspectives and opinions, to make substantiating young people’s views of politicians, and up their own minds, and to express opinions which creating a vicious cycle. differ from those of other students and from those of So the question arises: can anything be done to the teacher. All of this takes place within a classroom break this cycle? environment in which students are respectful towards one another and tolerant of the views of others.

Having an open classroom climate is a major and The role that schools can play consistent predictor of young people’s levels of political There is now a wealth of evidence to show that knowledge, political interest, and intentions to vote education is a powerful tool for boosting young in the future (Schulz et al., 2010; Schulz et al., 2017; people’s political and civic engagement, including Torney-Purta et al., 2001). their engagement with conventional politics. Indeed, As well as studying in a democratic environment, it has been known for many years that irrespective of having the opportunity to participate in school whether education is measured in terms of level of councils and parliaments is another important way attainment or years of education, the higher the level in which students can obtain first-hand practical of education the more likely it is that a person will experience of the democratic process, representing have high scores on measures of civic and political others, and expressing views and perspectives to engagement (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Emler & people in positions of authority. Participation in a Frazer, 1999). For example, Verba et al. (1995) found school council is an additional significant predictor of that adults’ political knowledge, political interest, civic political knowledge and intentions to vote in national skills, and civic and political activity are all related to elections in adulthood (Schulz et al., 2017; Torneytheir educational level.

Purta et al., 2001).

Part of this relationship stems from the enhancement of the specific political and civic knowledge, skills and behaviours that are directly Volunteering and service learning targeted by the school curriculum. However, in Another action that schools can take to promote addition, Niemi and Junn (1998) found that while the civic and political engagement of youth is to the contents of the civics curriculum are indeed

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provide institutionally organised opportunities for volunteering. The benefits of volunteering have been well documented (Billig, 2000; Hart et al., 2007; Hatcher et al., 2017). For example, the amount of time that school students spend doing volunteer work predicts how likely they are in adulthood to vote, help others in difficulty, participate in community action programmes, and participate in volunteer and other civic activities.

A distinction may be drawn between volunteering and service learning. Volunteering involves giving time freely without financial reward to causes or to help other people, and it includes philanthropic or charitable activity. Service learning, by contrast, emphasises learning and reflection. It is an Key sources institutionally required, coursebased, educational experience Our recent book: Barrett, M. & Pachi, in which students participate in D. (2019). Youth Civic and Political service activities that benefit the Engagement. London: Routledge. community beyond the school; afterwards, students are required Barrett, M. & Zani, B. (Eds.) (2015).

Political and civic engagement: to reflect on their service activity Multidisciplinary perspectives. London: to develop their academic learning Routledge. and to gain further understanding Barrett, M. (2016). Competences for of course content. Service learning democratic culture: Living together as differs from volunteering in that it equals in culturally diverse democratic is a formal component of academic societies. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing. study and is initiated by the school, Barrett, M., de Bivar Black, L., Byram, and it explicitly requires learning in M. et al. (2018). Reference Framework of pursuit of educational goals.

Competences for Democratic Culture [3 As such, service learning is volumes]. Strasbourg: Council of Europe an experience that can be made Publishing. mandatory by schools. The most Forbrig, J. (Ed.) (2005). Revisiting youth political participation. Strasbourg: beneficial effects occur when Council of Europe. service learning courses support Kiesa, A., Orlowski, A.P., Levine, P., et students in developing their al. (2007). Millenials talk politics: A study autonomy, involve activities that of college student political engagement. are authentic and significant for College Park, MD: CIRCLE. the students themselves, offer Marsh, S., O’Toole, T. & Jones, S. (2007).

Young people and politics in the UK: them real responsibilities and Apathy or alienation? London, Palgrave. challenging tasks, provide them Morgan, W. & Streb, M. (2001). Building with opportunities for in-class citizenship: How student voice in discussion, and provide them with service-learning develops civic values. opportunities for reflection; that Social Science Quarterly, 82, 154-170. means the quality of these courses, Niemi, R.G., & Junn, J. (1998). Civic education: What makes students learn? in terms of content and processes, is New Haven: Yale University Press. of paramount importance for their Schulz, W., Ainley, J., Fraillon, J., effectiveness. Courses with these et al. (2017). Becoming citizens in a characteristics lead to higher levels changing world: IEA International Civic of political interest and commitment and Citizenship Education Study 2016 to undertake action in the future International Report. Amsterdam: IEA. Zukin, C., Keeter, S., Andolina, M., et (Levesque-Bristol et al., 2010; al. (2006). A new engagement? Political Morgan & Streb, 2001). participation, civic life, and the changing American citizen. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Full list available in online/app version.

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Martyn Barrett is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Surrey m.barrett@ surrey.ac.uk Dimitra Pachi is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Winchester Dimitra.Pachi@ winchester.ac.uk

Practical implications The implications of research into the effects of the school on young people’s civic and political engagement are clear. In the UK, the House of Lords Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement recently examined ‘The ties that bind: Citizenship and civic engagement in the 21st century’, and they took note of the contribution that school education can make towards nurturing active citizens.

We hope that the research we’ve reviewed provides clear indications of the types of actions that schools can take in order to promote young people’s active citizenship, and to help them re-engage with the sphere of conventional politics.

More generally, psychologists have a vital role to play in informing practical action within this area. For example, developmental psychologists, through the use of longitudinal and cross-lagged panel designs, are extremely well-placed to identify the optimal educational practices and interventions that can promote the future civic and political engagement of young people. Furthermore, social and political psychologists, who have developed sophisticated conceptual models of the psychological resources and processes underlying democratic engagement, can identify the competences that schools should be attempting to enhance in their students. Indeed, the Council of Europe has recently developed a Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (Barrett, 2016; Barrett et al., 2018) which draws directly on the work of developmental, social and political psychologists alike. This Framework, which is aimed at enabling schools to enhance the democratic and intercultural competences of young people, is currently being implemented within the national education systems of 17 European countries.

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the psychologist september 2019 schooling the good citizen

Spearman Medal 2020

The Research Board invites nominations Criteria: The award is made for outstanding published work in psychology and this must have been carried out by the candidate within 8 years following the completion of a PhD. Candidates need not be members of the Society, but they must be resident in the UK.

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Nominations: Must include a detailed nomination statement outlining the candidate’s contribution to psychology; a copy of the candidate’s current full CV, along with what are considered to be the candidate’s two most outstanding and significant publications to date.

Award: The Spearman Medal and a commemorative certificate will be presented at the Society’s Awards evening in 2021.

Spearman Medal winner 2019: Dr Stephen Fleming The Award Committee may decide not to make an award in any given year.

For the full criteria and link to the electronic nomination form please contact carl.bourton@bps.org.uk Nominations must be received by 5pm on Friday 1 November 2019.

* For further information and Discounts go to http://psychsource.bps.org.uk/

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Ana Rosa Louis www.destroymodernart.com

A recipe for taste connoisseurs Can schools teach children lessons in healthy eating? Helen Coulthard looks at the evidence‌

With poor diet being cited

by Public Health England as the leading cause of death in the UK, learning the skill of healthy eating could save your life.

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s a society we have a lot of knowledge about what makes a good diet, and have consumption targets such as consuming five portions of fruits and vegetables each day. Most people are aware that consuming a good diet is associated with increased wellbeing in the short term, and the prevention of chronic illness in later life. Despite this knowledge, in 2016 Public Health England reported that nearly one-third of all children aged 2-15 years in the UK were classified as at risk of being overweight or obese. In addition, the incidence of type 2 diabetes in children is increasing each year.

These trends are set against a backdrop of the modern food environment: a challenging one, where processed and packaged foods are advertised, endorsed and valued. Psychologists such as Jane Wardle have called this the ‘obesogenic environment’, as it encourages consumption of readily available high calorie foods. Yet schools present a somewhat different environment: one increasingly akin to a bubble, where the images, messages and structure can be protected.

Interventions can be controlled, implemented at low cost, and the participants are available and willing.

This is in stark contrast to the world outside the gates, where takeaways and sweet shops cluster around

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the psychologist september 2019 schooling the good citizen

lunch and an additional fruit snack, both of which are free in key stage 1 (under the age of 8 years).

However, provision and consumption are two very distinct concepts, and a considerable amount of healthy nutritious food ends up in the bin rather than children’s tummies. In addition, many parents and children still opt for packed lunches, which tend to be The national curriculum less regulated and nutritionally poor.

Healthy eating has been in the national curriculum for Sadly, two rather important factors have many years, with the inclusion of experiential learning through cooking across primary and secondary schools traditionally been ignored in the school canteen; the from 2014. The main aim of the national curriculum is eating environment and children’s eating behaviour.

Moore and colleagues in Wales, found that there are to standardise knowledge and learning across the UK. Yet when I have talked to teachers about the challenges many aspects of the canteen environment that are challenging. There is generally a conveyor-belt system of delivering healthy eating in schools, and fulfilling of queueing for food which is served by a caterer, the national curriculum on food education, the leaving the child no agency to determine what portion message is clear: Delivery is dependent on the school. size they want. Then eating is linked to play; the faster With pressure to meet literacy and numeracy targets, you eat, the more time you get in the playground. aspects of the national curriculum relating to healthy In the UK, we have often been behind our European eating can be sidelined and ignored. counterparts in how the lunch environment is In the UK, food-related teaching has centred on structured. In France for example, the idea of pleasureeducation about healthy eating targets. When I have based and sociable eating is structured into the school carried out sessions with teenagers on their memories day, with longer and less rushed of lessons on healthy eating, the mealtimes. Lunchtime supervisors feedback they give is consistent. are in a difficult position; they have The educational messages taught “…provision and to get children to eat some such as the ‘healthy plate’, ‘five consumption are two very pressure food, otherwise teachers will have a day’ or oral health messages distinct concepts, and a difficulty retaining their pupils’ are remembered. However they attention in the afternoon. However all stated that these lessons considerable amount of they also have to get a large number had not influenced their eating healthy nutritious food of children fed in a short window behaviour. They found these ends up in the bin rather of time. This can lead to a rushed classes uninspiring and boring. It is unlikely that these educational than children’s tummies” environment of pressuring and prompting, which can reduce techniques will have any impact on liking for food. There needs to be the quality of our children’s diets, much more research about how unless the way the information is lunchtime supervisors can be supported to create a taught is radically changed. pleasurable eating environment in the school canteen.

In experimental research Jane Wardle found that most children are motivated to eat according to taste not health. The health risks connected with eating Psychological interventions poor quality food seem far away and abstract to Psychological healthy eating interventions have younger children: consider yourself, would you prefer traditionally been based on the three ‘R’s of evidenceto eat something that may prevent you getting ill in based behaviourist strategies; rewards, role modelling the future or something that tastes delicious? Yet the and repeated exposure. These tend to focus on educational system, and many public health messages, immediate tasting as the goal of any session, with are still organised on the belief that educating children positive role modelling and the use of tangible or social about healthy diets is the key to behaviour change. rewards acting as taste facilitators.

Teaching does not take into account empirical The most successful and well-designed knowledge of children’s representations of food and psychological intervention to date is the Food Dudes, how that links to food choice. created by Pauline Horne and the late Fergus Lowe at Bangor University. Based on a superhero narrative, the intervention involves a series of six-minute The lunch environment cartoons where characters model positive outcomes Outside the classroom, food is an inevitable part of of healthy fruit and vegetable consumption. This is the school day, with children eating a substantial combined with tasting opportunities for target foods proportion of their caloric intake in school hours. at snack and lunchtime, with associated tangible Nutritionally, this has improved in leaps and bounds rewards for successful tasting. The Food Dudes had over the last 20 years, partly due to healthy eating champions such as Jamie Oliver. Children are provided excellent reported outcomes of increased fruit and vegetable consumption both in school and at home. with the opportunity each day to eat a healthy hot schools, and parents are hard to recruit and retain.

So, can schools, who only feed children some of their meals, be a place where healthy eating skills can be taught?

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As a consequence the Food Dudes with food based on narratives was bought by many education such as The Hungry Caterpillar by authorities, including those in Eric Carle. Sensory play games Ireland, the UK, Italy and some US are fun and rewarding, especially states. for younger children. The crucial But there are some problems element is that these games allow with the Food Dudes as a healthy children to explore, and become eating intervention. Firstly, it is familiar with, healthy foods expensive, with schools having Helen Coulthard is a Senior without pressure to try. to buy the intervention package, Lecturer at De Montfort These games can be time including materials and trained University, Leicester consuming, and require staff to deliver the intervention. hcoulthard@dmu.ac.uk preparation, so should be an In addition, although tangible occasional technique rather than rewards, such as giving cups and a daily opportunity. However sensory learning can pens, can be a successful strategy for tasting, there be achieved through more conventional experiential is a fine line between pressurising and encouraging exposure events. Children may feel pressurised to force learning tasks such as cooking and gardening lessons, which both allow hands on interaction with foods down foods they find distasteful in order to secure a without pressure to taste. prize, which goes against the principles of pleasurebased eating. This has led myself and other researchers to create interventions that have focused on interacting with healthy food without immediate pressure to taste. Can schools solve the problem?

It is clear that schools may have a role in transforming There has been a recent shift in looking at sensory the lives of our children through changing their eating education and sensory play as strategies for increasing behaviour. Yet at a time when schools are increasingly pleasure based eating. In France school interventions judged by key performance indicators, is it unfair to have focussed on sensory education or ‘classes de burden teachers with the task of delivering public gout’ (taste lessons), first created by Puisais in 1995. health interventions and having the responsibility of These methods encourage children to explore the ensuring our children’s long-term health? Although tastes, smells and textures of foods, becoming taste connoisseurs. In these interventions, the child becomes schools are attractive as they have a controlled environment, they may also be ineffective, as they do an agent in the process, an expert on foods. This fits not teach parents and children how to navigate and in well with the attitude to food as one of pleasure, make choices in the obesogenic environment. Amanda sensation and discovery.

Spielman, the head of Ofsted, has recently been very Implicit within this approach is that healthy, fresh vocal that schools cannot be held responsible for child foods taste better than processed foods. We have been obesity, citing the food environment and parenting carrying out experiments and interventions using failure as crucial contributory factors. Teachers that multisensory play with real fruits and vegetables, such as restaurant plating games, bingo and making pictures I have spoken to often cite that some parents are difficult to engage with, and these are the parents whose children are most ‘at risk’ for obesity.

In my view, there has to be a unified approach that includes the environment, parenting and schools.

What schools can do is try to move away from a knowledge-based approach to healthy eating, and instead adopt a whole school approach to experiential and sensory learning about healthy food. This approach has the potential to give children a love of healthy food, which will hopefully be sustained throughout their lifespan.

Key source Coulthard, H., & Ahmed, S. (2017). Nontaste exposure techniques to increase fruit and vegetable (FV) acceptance in children. Appetite, 107, 679.

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See online / app version for full list.

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2019 CPD workshops Professional development opportunities from your learned Society Supervision skills: Workshop 2 – Enhancing supervision skills

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Expert witness: Workshop 3 – Court room evidence

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Expert witness: Workshop 4 – Choosing, using and presenting psychometrics in court

4 October

The application of rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT) in sport

9 October

Creating compassionate NHS organisations

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How to help your clients lose weight permanently: The principles and practices of appetite training

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Supervision skills: Workshop 4 – Ongoing development: Supervision of supervision

2 November

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29 November

For more information on Supervision skills and Expert witness training and dates visit: www.bps.org.uk/find-cpd.

You can book on all workshops here: www.bps.org.uk/events. www.bps.org.uk/cpd @BPSLearning #BPScpd

Careers in Psychology 2019 The perfect event for anyone looking to discover where psychology can take them in their chosen career.

Saturday 16 November – Cutler’s Hall, Sheffield www.bps.org.uk/cip2019 Saturday 30 November – Institute of Education, London www.bps.org.uk/ciplon2019 This event is a FREE to attend, please visit the websites for further information and to register. #psychcareers

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S AV E T H E D AT E !

Scpd

the psychologist september 2019 schooling the good citizen

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Jobs in Psychology Whether you are a recent graduate, or a Psychologist looking for a change in career, you can view current vacancies for a range of Psychology roles here, or view the latest roles on the new appointments site www.jobsinpsychology.co.uk The job site is still the number one online resource for psychology jobs. Fully accessible on mobile and desktop computers, the site features increased search functionality, superb ease of use and navigation. For recruiters, there are many more targeting options for you to promote your vacancies to potential candidates. All adverts placed in The Psychologist will have their adverts included on the job site.

Jobs of the month on www.jobsinpsychology.co.uk

Senior Consultant The Myers-Briggs Company United Kingdom Competitive benefits package Closing date: 31st August

Psychologists CBT Clinics Ltd United Kingdom Competitive rates Closing date: 5th September

Lecturer - Developmental Psychology Plymouth Marjon University Plymouth £33,199 - £37,345 Closing date: 8th September

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To view these jobs and more, please visit the BPS job site www.jobsinpsychology.co.uk

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To discuss the opportunities for advertising www.jobsinpsychology.co.uk Research Digest, please contact Kai Theriault on 01223 378051 or email kai.theriault@cpl.co.uk.

Upcoming issues

Display advert deadline

Appointment section deadline

October

28 August

November

25 September 4 October

Publication date

4 September 19 September 19 October

Clinical Psychologist 7/8a equivalent – salary dependent on experience

We are looking for Clinical Psychologists who:

The Hesley Group provides specialist residential services and schools for young people and adults, often with autism, who have a learning disability and complex needs including behaviour which may challenge. Our services are based in the Doncaster area, with planned expansions extending to Wakefield and York.

The people we support have a range of specific needs, including issues relating to: trauma, attachment and loss; emotional health and wellbeing; behaviours of concern; identity and relationship development.

We are looking for Clinical Psychologists to join our Child and Adult Services. Our team of Clinical/Forensic Psychologists and Behaviour Therapists make a key contribution to our capacity to provide effective person-centred positive behaviour support, by working with other members of our onsite multidisciplinary team to provide direct therapeutic input, consultancy to staff, and provision of training for support staff.

• Are HCPC registered • Are experienced in and passionate about supporting people with learning disabilities.

• Have a sound understanding of positive behaviour support and are able to provide wide-ranging psychological assessments and interventions, drawing on a range of theoretical approaches • Have a track record of excellent partnership working with families and other agencies.

In return we offer excellent clinical supervision, CPD and developmental opportunities to support you to develop your therapeutic skills.

We employ a large team of Assistant Psychology Support Workers, with supervision, training and support for this team being be a key part of this role. Post qualification training in supervision would be supported.

For more information about the role please contact Anna Backhouse at anna.backhouse@hesleygroup.co.uk

If you would like to apply for the role please complete an application form on the Hesley Group website https://www.hesleygroup.co.uk/application/current-vacancies-ho07cp19

08/08/2019 12:34

Forensic Psychologists £34,212 - £44,936 (depending on location) England and Wales What does it take to find the real story inside? Whether working with first or frequent offenders, our Psychologists use their dedication and skill to engage, assess and support. They lead the way in helping to turn lives around.

Curiosity and a drive for continual professional development and service improvement are strengths of HMPPS Psychologists; we have a drive to learn, explore and transform our understanding of how applied psychology can help the people in our care. This may be by publishing research, direct assessment and intervention or helping change organisational practice – as Counselling Psychologist, Deborah, explains.

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“We help develop rehabilitative cultures in our prisons where we can help people lead better lives. We recognise that trauma needs to be worked with as well as an offence. It’s rewarding when an individual moves forward and develops skills they didn’t have before.”

Complex assessments. Expert consultancy. Life-changing interventions. If you’re an HCPC Registered Psychologist, find renewed purpose in this unique intersection of criminal justice, the legal arena and psychology.

Visit our website www.psychologycareersinside.co.uk to find out more about what is required to become a dedicated member of our team.

08/08/2019 12:34

Priory Group is now the leading independent provider for behavioural care in the UK. We support the needs of over 30,000 people every year, treating more than 70 different conditions through a nationwide network of over 450 facilities.

Our purpose is to make a real and lasting difference for everyone we support.

WE'RE RECRUITING FOR PSYCHOLOGISTS ACROSS OUR HOSPITALS Suttons Manor Hospital, Romford, Essex

Suttons Manor Hospital, situated in Romford, is a 26 bed specialist low secure service for males who are over the age of 50.

CLINICAL OR FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST Permanent - Full Time or Part Time • Up to £44,000 Pro Rata per annum 22.5 Hours Please call Teika Pininski, Lead Psychologist on 01708 687398.

Ty Catrin, Cardiff Ty Catrin is a low secure mental illness and personality disorder service for males and females.

CLINICAL OR FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST

Permanent - Full Time, Permanent - Part Time • Salary up to £45,000 (Full Time) / up to £41,000 pro rata Hours 37.5 (Full Time) or 22.5 (Part Time) • Call 029 2055 6300 for more information.

What we can offer you: • Competitive salary • Free/subsidised meals and refreshments whilst on site

• Ongoing training and development through our Career Pathways programme

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For more information, or to apply, Text PSYCH to 66777 or call the Recruitment Team on 0116 240 8680 option 2.

Successful candidates must be registered practitioners with the HCPC.

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We are committed to supporting our staff in their personal development and professional supervision and CPD opportunities are provided through this network of specialist clinicians.

Who we are looking for

Educational/Clinical/ Practitioner Psychologist NAS Vanguard School, London Contract: Permanent 0.6 FTE (Term Time only) NAS Pay Scale Grade 6 (£40,201- £48,500) Help make an Everyday Breakthrough happen by joining our team.

A breakthrough can seem like the smallest thing, but it can make the world of difference to someone on the autism spectrum. As the Psychologist at the new Vanguard School you’ll help make Every Day Breakthroughs happen more often and be responsible for delivering high quality psychological assessment and intervention services as part of a transdisciplinary team.

The school is situated in the London Borough of Lambeth. This exciting new development reflects the local authority’s recognition of the need for more specialist education provision in the borough. Vanguard School is a Free School and is part of the NAS Academies Trust, working in partnership with the already established Independent NAS schools

We are seeking a Clinical or Educational Psychologist with a depth of experience and knowledge in autism and MDT working and someone who is also excited by the opportunity of working collaboratively with other professionals and in partnership with the young people themselves and their families, to provide a fully integrated and therapeutic approach to their education. When the psychologist initially takes up the role they will be working with an Executive Principal and a new core staff team in the school set-up phase and will play a specialist role in the admission/assessment processes. Going forward the psychologist will form a transdisciplinary team with a speech and language therapist and occupational therapist to deliver assessment and therapeutic services as part of a whole school team approach.

How to apply

To apply for this role, please visit https://bit.ly/nasvanguard For more information about this role please contact Dr Sarah Lister Brook, Clinical Director on sarah.listerbrook@nas.org.uk or Rachel Barnard, Executive Business Manager on rachelbarnard@thamesvalley.reading.sch.uk Closing date: 11 September 2019

The College of Policing is recruiting for Psychologists and Higher Psychologists: Salary: Higher Psychologist: £28,708 – £34,644 or Psychologist: £22,982 – £27,723 College grade: Higher Psychologist: National 2B or Psychologist: National 2A Closing date: Wednesday, 28 August 2019 Interview date: TBC, interviews will be held at Harrogate Location: These posts are based at The College of Policing, Harrogate, HG3 1UF. Occasional long hours, and some travel and time spent away from home, including weekends will be required About us: The College of Policing is the independent professional body supporting everyone working in policing to reduce crime and keep people safe We have three complementary functions: • Share knowledge and good practice We create and maintain easy access to knowledge, disseminate good practice, and facilitate the sharing of what works.

• Set standards We set standards for key areas of policing which help forces and individuals provide consistency and better service for the public.

• Support professional development We set requirements, accredit, quality assure and deliver learning and professional development, promote diversity and wellbeing, and help to nurture and select leaders at all levels.

About the Roles: The College of Policing’s Selection and Assessment team designs and implements assessments for the selection, promotion and development of police officers and staff across the police service. You’ll be contributing directly to ensuring that those working in policing are the best they can

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be, in the interests of tackling crime and protecting the vulnerable. You will work alongside a skilled, experienced, supportive team, who can support your development and learning in occupational psychology. You’ll be using your specialist knowledge and professional practice to deliver assessment centres, exams and development tools. You will work with officers and staff across the service to ensure our products are the best they can be, and ensure fairness and diversity are at the heart of what we do.

About you: For Higher psychologist roles, you will have experience of assessment design and delivery, and of supervising and supporting the work of others. You will have worked directly with clients and be able to demonstrate having had significant responsibility for assessment products. For psychologist roles, prior experience is beneficial but not essential. Candidates nearing the end of an MSc qualification will be considered on condition that the qualification is achieved on appointment. For all roles, you will be committed to fairness and diversity and to excellent practice as an occupational psychologist. You will also be able to demonstrate organisational skills, an ability to deliver at pace, and flexibility as well as a strong technical background.

You will have a degree in Psychology and an MSc in Occupational Psychology, or equivalent, recognised by the BPS. BPS occupational test user qualifications are also desirable. Applicants for Higher Psychologist posts should be chartered or actively working toward chartered status. The College can offer support to candidates undertaking the QOP qualification.

Please visit our website for the job description, further details about working for the College, eligibility, and how to apply: https://www.college.police.uk/About/Work-for-us/current-vacancies/Pages/ Current-Vacancies.aspx Both permanent and fixed term positions are being offered. Please indicate in your application whether you are applying for permanent, fixed-term, or either.

08/08/2019 12:34

Changing the culture of birth An extract from the new book by Dr Emma Svanberg

Why birth trauma matters Emma Swanberg Pinter & Martin £8.99

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‘If women are in a perinatal environment where there is positive emotion, optimism, social support, where women actively cope, feel mastery and have a sense of purpose or meaning, they will flourish.’

(Ayers, 2017)

W

hat makes birth trauma so unique among traumatic experiences is that there are such clear ways to prevent or reduce its impact, if we look only at the care people are offered. Having heard these same stories over the past 10 years, it raises questions for me about why we as a society are accepting how frequently women come out of birth feeling bruised. It’s not that birth can be difficult – because we know that people can come out of objectively traumatic experiences without symptoms of PTSD or trauma. In my mind, it’s that we are sending many people

into maternity systems which are traumatising.

This, perhaps, is indicative of how little we value our women, parents and children.

The whole maternity journey gives us a unique opportunity to reach people that we often miss. The clear fact is that, often, we are getting it wrong. 81% of women surveyed by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 2017 had experienced some form of mental health difficulty in the perinatal period, yet only 1 in 5 of them had been referred for support. While 1 in 25 experience PTSD after birth, at least a third of women report some symptoms of trauma. We know that half of women who have perinatal mental health difficulties will not try to seek help. This is despite how frequently we are in contact with health services before, during and after birth. For people who are living with multiple difficulties

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the psychologist september 2019 books and may usually avoid contact with services, this period of time is a particular chance to offer support. As family members and friends, we tend to avoid conversations about birth, and buy into the dichotomies around ‘good’ and ‘bad’ births.

Why don’t women, birthing people and their partners feel confident confiding in us, as healthcare professionals, as friends, as partners? If we can ensure that parents are properly supported prior to, during and after birth, we can change things not just for parents, but their children too.

For this to still be happening, despite increased funding in maternity services and perinatal mental health, indicates that funding is not the problem (or, perhaps, not the only problem). We also need to look at cultures within maternity services – which stretch staff to the limit, and then blame them when things go wrong – and how we talk about birth as a society. At the very least, we need to consider how we can stop causing harm, and then think about how we can further prevent it.

Currently, this means thinking about how birth, preventing birth trauma and offering rapid and quality support to those who have experienced a traumatic birth is being implemented at a local level. National guidelines are one thing – but it is clear that at present these are often not being followed locally. Continuity of carer is one such example. There has been a huge amount of research highlighting the importance of continuous support during labour – making it more likely a person will have a shorter labour, less likely that they will have a c-section or instrumental birth, and more likely that they will be satisfied (Hodnett et al., 2011). Continuity of carer is one of the key recommendations from the Better Births report. Yet, as a recent AIMS statement points out, there is an urgent need to ensure that this recommendation is delivered in realistic and sustainable ways across the country.

There has been a move throughout traumafocused research and practice to think about traumainformed ways of working, so that we are not just looking at individuals, but creating whole systems which acknowledge how trauma can impact on individuals and groups. This moves us away from identifying who is traumatised, and towards policies, protocols and interventions which actively avoid re-traumatising for all involved and support people in their ability to cope.

In maternity, for example, this might be as simple as avoiding internal examinations to assess progress.

Antenatally, there would be a need to ensure that information is shared so that fully informed consent can be gained for interventions (or the choice not to intervene) and women, birthing people and their partners feel a sense of control and agency over their choices (and their bodies). But, more widely, there is a need to ensure that everyone within a service (staff as well as patients) is treated with compassion and respect. This might involve clearer communication between professionals, examining cultures where bullying and fear are common.

In early 2019 we developed a conceptual model to help professionals and parents think about how we can use some of the ideas and issues raised in this book in

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order to prevent birth trauma and reduce its impact on everyone. This model was created in collaboration with the parents and professionals involved in the Make Birth Better network, and you can learn more about it on our website (see ‘Model’).

We are beginning to provide resources, training, consultation and supervision for healthcare and birth professionals, and our training manual highlights the many examples of best practice in trauma-informed birth and maternity care. We believe small changes could make a huge difference. Just by taking on the core values outlined around the edges of the model, we believe we could see a reduction in traumatic birth experiences. In addition, learning particular skills for use during the maternity journey could have a great impact at many different points of opportunity. For example, midwives, obstetricians or anaesthetists who can spot signs of dissociation during labour and use gentle grounding techniques could reduce symptoms of PTSD after birth. Susan Ayers has suggested that, as the meanings attributed to events are so influential in PTSD, if professionals sensitively discussed different possible outcomes before and during labour and birth, women might be less likely to make negative appraisals. If we then quickly and kindly approached families with risk factors for birth trauma after the birth, we could intervene early and ensure that women and their families are not left living with the consequences of a difficult birth.

There are also exciting innovations in this field.

In Blackpool, expert in trauma-informed care Mickey Sperlich has been working with BetterStart to develop trauma-informed and trauma-specific interventions in the perinatal period. In Warwick, Kirstie McKenzieMcHarg, a clinical psychologist working within a maternity service, and her team have developed a simple ‘pink sticker’ system to highlight the women and families who might need additional support. This, alongside wholeteam training in perinatal mental health and birth trauma has seen a 44% drop in women being referred to the psychology service due to birth trauma. In Switzerland, the simple introduction of a computer game (such as Tetris) for women immediately following an emergency C-section birth reduced the number of intrusive memories a week later (Horsch et al., 2017).

There is a groundswell, driven not only by national and international policy guidelines, but by birth activists and women and families, saying ‘#TimesUp’. But to ensure these changes happen, we need to find out what is happening in our local services and encourage our local commissioners. We need to keep talking, keep informing and keep supporting one another.

Where women, partners and staff are supported, birth can be a transformative experience. If we can get this right, we can prevent the spread of trauma through future generations. We can set people up well for their parenting journey. We can turn the birth story into a positive one.

Imagine how powerful that would be.

Read more from Emma Svanberg at thepsychologist. bps.org.uk/why-we-need-make-birth-better

07/08/2019 15:26

A History of Modern Psychology Per Saugstad Cambridge University Press Hb £115 Our Minds, Our Selves: A Brief History of Psychology Keith Oatley Princeton University Press Hb £24

Textbook histories Per Saugstad and Keith Oatley, neither specialists in the history of psychology, both wrote their books in retirement. There is a long tradition of psychologists taking an interest in the history of psychology after they retire, presumably because they have become aware of the passage of time. There is also a long tradition of amateur historians of psychology that dates back to Boring (1929) and beyond.

While Saugstad’s book is described on the cover as a ‘global’ and ‘comprehensive’ history of psychology, it covers only a few European countries and the United States (Brock, 2006), featuring the usual figures such as Helmholtz, Wundt, Galton, James, Pavlov, Binet and Freud. Oatley’s book, on the other hand, differs from other textbooks. It is organised around topics rather than psychologists and their theories, and takes an interdisciplinary approach. Oatley suggests that ‘psychology is better not kept as a separate science, but rather that it needs to be integrated with other disciplines’. He puts this view into practice by incorporating discussion of artificial intelligence, anthropological research, and the work of literary figures like

Shakespeare, Coleridge and Chekhov.

There is a market for this nonspecialist literature because, as surveys have shown (e.g. Brock & Harvey, 2015), most psychologists who teach the history of psychology are not specialists either and can more easily identify with a textbook written by someone in a similar position. The authors tend to present broad overviews of psychology that reflect their particular approach to the subject. Non-specialist books often contain the same mistakes (Thomas, 2007) because they are based mainly on other textbooks rather than historical research. This is why historians of science like Kuhn (1970) refer to a specific genre of ‘textbook history’ that is different from historical scholarship.

There are alternatives. Textbooks by respected historians of psychology in North America include those by Fancher and Rutherford (2016), Pickren and Rutherford (2010) and Walsh, Teo and Baydala (2014).

As for British authors, there are the textbooks of Richards (2010) and Smith (2013) – the latter an eminent historian of science.

These books meet the professional standards that are taken for granted in other areas of psychology, yet

sometimes neglected in the history of psychology.

Reviewed by Adrian C. Brock, honorary research associate at the University of Cape Town References Boring, E.G. (1929). A history of experimental psychology. New York: Century.

Brock, A.C. (2006). Introduction. In A.C. Brock (Ed.), Internationalizing the history of psychology (pp. 1-15). New York: New York University Press.

Brock, A.C. & Harvey, M. (2015). The status of the history of psychology course in British and Irish psychology departments. European Yearbook of the History of Psychology, 1, 13–36.

Fancher, R.E. & Rutherford, A. (2016).

Pioneers of psychology (5th ed.). New York: Norton.

Kuhn, T.S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Pickren, W.E. & Rutherford, A. (2010).

A history of psychology in context. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley.

Richards, G. (2010). Putting psychology in its place: Critical historical perspectives (3rd ed.).

London: Routledge.

Smith, R. (2013). Between mind and nature: A history of psychology. London: Reaktion Books.

Thomas, R.K. (2007). Recurring errors among recent history of psychology textbooks.

American Journal of Psychology, 120, 477–495.

Walsh, R.T.G., Teo. T. & Baydala, A. (2014).

A critical history and philosophy of psychology.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

‘I can name the women I see…’

Katherine Hubbard (University of Surrey) introduces an online extract from her new book Queer Ink: A Blotted History Towards Liberation (published by Routledge).

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‘“An old Victorian oil lamp. The shape of the lamp. Two girls – at each side going to kiss each other. Big breasts, very slim, high heads, only one leg. Red lipstick.” These are the responses to Rorschach ink blot Card number 3 by a woman ‘who was deeply involved in a homosexual relationship’ while at her stay in a psychiatric hospital in London in the late 1960s (Barker, 1970). Similarly, in my own testing experience in 2015, as another woman ‘deeply involved in a homosexual relationship’ I reported: Two figures, two women, stirring a big cooking pot, they’re wearing tiny high heeled shoes, like old Victorian boots that are pointed. Their boobs and bums are sticking out. The red bit in the middle looks like lungs, with the bit joining them in the middle.

I also claimed to see two women in Card number 7 who both looked rather ‘serene’. What strikes me now

as I look at these cards is that not only do I still see these two women, much like the woman in the 1960s, but I can name the women I see. Now when I look at this card, I ‘see’ Evelyn Hooker and June Hopkins. Hooker’s research was absolutely pivotal in the depathologisation of ‘homosexuality’ as a mental illness in the US and Hopkins’ work, comparatively, was the only Rorschach research used for queer affirmative ends in Britain.’

Read more on our website in the full chapter – https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/queer-approachesdepathologisation

07/08/2019 15:26

the psychologist september 2019 books

Observing, sense-making and perspective-taking Should psychology be a loose confederacy of tribes whose common goal is to be free to engage in ‘parallel play’? Or should it aim to contribute to the solution of pressing global challenges: environmental crises, information warfare, nuclear proliferation, poverty, apathy, and whatever is coming next? With this slender book, psychology professor Lisa M. Osbeck throws down a heavy gauntlet. She challenges psychologists of all stripes to take a closer look at the epistemic priorities that unite and divide the psychological community. And, crucially, she beckons psychologists to think outside the discipline, arguing that tomorrow’s problems are not going to be solved by psychologists alone, but through collaborations across a range of fields.

As someone professionally situated outside psychology, but informed by its history, I found this book invigorating. Discussing what type of science psychology is or should be, and whether it is even a science at all, is an old game. Diagnoses of the fragmentation at the heart of psychology, and attempts to heal that defect, started before the field was a recognised profession, and continue today. Osbeck deploys her knowledge of this history gracefully. Her perspective is judiciously grounded in recent work in philosophy of science, science studies, ethnography of science, and history of psychology. In drawing on these specific fields, Osbeck demonstrates the provocative main point of her argument: that psychological science has more to gain today from looking to the arts and humanities than it does from looking to the sciences.

Osbeck invokes William James and his brother Henry as icons of the cross-fertilization she seeks to cultivate between the arts (mainly literature), humanities and psychology. Osbeck’s vision for psychology is inspired

by William James’s statement that the knower is an actor, not a spectator. To remain relevant, she argues, psychological science needs to shift its focus onto its most essential instrument: the activities of the investigator.

Three investigative activities are presented as central to the arts, humanities and also psychology: observing,

sense-making and perspective-taking. Osbeck treats each as a complex, embodied, goal-directed, value-laden practice whose relevance to psychology is in some ways obvious and in some ways surprising. In the process, she engages thoughtfully with a number of major ‘psy’ scientists including Wilhelm Wundt, John Watson, Edith Stein, and others. This is sharp, original analysis.

In a book so compact and dense, it’s crucial to be clear. Mistakes that should have been caught in proof make it hard to follow in some chapters. As a rule, the prose is structured and controlled but not often sparkling or transparent, as if the author may have been undecided about who her audience was. Historians like me might find the style of writing familiar, while psychology students might find it alienating. The question of who Osbeck is writing for goes to the heart of the whole book, and it is surprising that she does not address it directly.

My overall conclusion, without knowing Osbeck’s earlier work, is that the ideas expressed here are new, preliminary, and still under construction, yet they genuinely merit the attention of the wider psychological community. Framing psychological science in terms of observing, sense-making and perspective-taking (and other investigative activities still to be determined), instead of methodological traditions or theoretical frameworks, is innovative and important. Instead of a constellation of armed encampments that barely tolerate each other, what more can psychology be?

In Osbeck’s imagined future, psychology dwells more or less comfortably at the frontier between the sciences, the arts and the humanities. It prioritises collaboration, both intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary. It investigates, and cultivates conditions that give rise to flexible problem-solving, nuanced modelling, and transformative thinking. Above all, it never loses sight of the acting person. What would it take to get there?

Values in psychological science: Reimagining epistemic priorities at a new frontier Lisa M. Osbeck Cambridge University Press £80

Reviewed by Phil Loring, Curator of the History of Medicine, Norsk Teknisk Museum, Oslo, Norway

British Psychological Society Book Award shortlist This year’s shortlist features eight titles across four categories. In the Popular Science category are Alan Baddeley’s Working Memories: Postmen, Divers and Cognitive Revolution (read an interview via tinyurl.com/yy8l8mm7), The Mind is Flat: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind by Nick Chater, and Not Working by Josh Cohen. David Grant’s That’s The Way I Think: Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and ADHD Explained is the only title shortlisted in the Practitioner Text category. Two books feature in the Academic Monographs category: Elisabeth Murray, Steven Wise and Kim Graham’s The Evolution of Memory Systems: Ancestors, Anatomy and Adaptions and Liminality and Experience: A Transdisciplinary Approach to the Psychosocial by Paul Stenner (read an interview at tinyurl.com/y3mxv4n6). In the Textbook category the two shortlisted books are Colin Cooper’s Psychological Testing: Theory and Practice (see April 2019 issue) and Autism Spectrum Disorder: Characteristics, Causes and Practical Issues by Jill Boucher.

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An exploration of far-right extremism in the UK today TV The Left Behind BBC

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T

he Left Behind opens with an attack by a group of young adults on a Halal butcher’s shop, and then goes back in time to show the series of events, from different perspectives, that led up to the attack. The story focuses on the main character; Gethin, a young male facing a

number of daily struggles. Gethin’s mother has died, his father is an alcoholic living on the street, and he lives in cramped conditions with his sister, brother-inlaw and niece. The family is facing eviction, and the lack of affordable housing forces them to accept a smaller, alternative accommodation which leaves Gethin homeless.

In parallel to this part of the story, we are shown a friendship developing between Gethin and Yasmin, a young adult female from a Muslim family who lives nearby. Both are struggling financially on zero-hours contracts, and end up in competition for available shifts where they work. In the background to this we see Gethin’s peer group becoming angry and frustrated with their situation regarding lack of housing and employment, and increasingly their views become more extreme, with local Muslims becoming the focus of their grievances.

This leads to community tensions and ultimately three racially-aggravated acts of violence – one where Gethin

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the psychologist september 2019 culture examine different types of extremists, and may reveal new is the victim and two where he and his friends are the insights that may for example inform those responsible perpetrators. for preventing extremism. Here the concept of ‘reciprocal The story draws on research by Professor Hilary radicalisation’ (or ‘cumulative extremism’) is likely to be Pilkington, author of Loud and Proud, a book informed key, whereby different groups become more polarised by her time spent with the English Defence League. A and escalatory in response to each other (e.g. Bartlett & prologue follows the opening of the programme, stating Birdwell, 2013). This is demonstrated in The Left Behind that: ‘Support for the far-right is growing in Britain’s whereby both parties (Gethin’s and Yasmin’s peer group) post-industrial towns and cities, where work is insecure become divided and more extreme in their views and and housing is in crisis’, and ‘In 2018 there was a 36% behaviours towards each other. increase in the number of far-right referrals to the UK Despite the large literature on extremism and Government’s counter-terrorism programme’. This is radicalisation, more research is needed. The evidence a timely topic to explore, as the increase in far-right extremism is a real social issue that has led to community base has improved significantly, but a recent review by Schuurman (2019) found that the literature is biased tensions, divisions and at times violent attacks with towards understanding jihadism and noted a dearth serious consequences for both victims and perpetrators. of empirical research on those inspired by far-right As the programme states, ‘In 2018 there were 94,098 hate ideologies. This is despite evidence crimes in England and Wales… an that the latter pose an increasing increase of 123% in five years’. and credible threat; as shown, for The question of when, why and “There are complex and example, by the killing of Labour how people become radicalised and multifaceted reasons MP Jo Cox in 2016, which looked to come to conduct extremist-related have been inspired by a far-right violent acts is of obvious interest why individuals become ideology, the vehicle-ramming attack to us as psychologists. Research involved in extremism, on pedestrians around Finsbury Park findings show that not all radicals are and these vary between Mosque in 2017, and the attack on violent, and not all violent extremists two New Zealand mosques in 2018. are radical. There are complex and individuals” The Left Behind makes for multifaceted reasons why individuals uncomfortable watching at times, become involved in extremism, and as it shows a group of young these vary between individuals (e.g. adults expressing extreme racist and Islamophobic see Knight et al., 2017). It is generally agreed within the views. It walks a fine line in terms of outlining reasons literature that people can be influenced by individual, that may be seen to justify these views and associated group and social variables, which include ‘push’ (e.g. actions, and has a tone which at times is sympathetic low economic status, peer pressure, mental health to the perpetrators of violence. As psychologists we issues) and ‘pull’ (e.g. an appealing ideology, financial play a key role in developing and providing an objective rewards) factors (e.g. Borum, 2015). Different behavioural understanding of what drives human behaviour that is outcomes between individuals exposed to similar factors based on a scientific, empirical evidence base. Further can in part be explained by ‘protective’ factors (e.g. research is needed to better understand how, when and employment, family and friends who reject extremist ideas), which can mediate or moderate the impact of push why individuals come to conduct violent acts against others that seem to be driven by a hate and fear of the and pull influences. ‘other’, and how this can be prevented and countered.

The Left Behind highlights a number of the factors known to underlie racism and extremism, such as low Reviewed by Dr Sarah Knight, Principal Psychologist at economic status, competition for resources, feelings of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) and marginalisation and humiliation (experienced by both Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth. sides), as well as Gethin’s personal circumstances that demonstrate a lack of protective factors. These combined can lead to ‘ingroup-outgroup’ thinking and ‘othering’ and act as a catalyst for violence against members of the References perceived outgroup.

Bartlett, J., & Birdwell, J. (2013). Cumulative radicalisation between the Researchers are now exploring the ‘pathways’ into far-right and Islamist groups in the UK: A review of evidence. London: violent extremism as another way of understanding this Demos. phenomenon (e.g. Horgan, 2008). Pathways refer to the Borum, R. (2015). Assessing risk for terrorism involvement. Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, 2(2), 63–87. process by which a person’s ‘story’ can be viewed across Horgan, J. (2008). From profiles to pathways and roots to routes: a timeline, capturing their characteristics, situation, Perspectives from psychology on radicalization into terrorism. Annals environment, and events that they experience. These of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 618, 80–94. can be analysed in order to make sense of the factors Knight, S., Woodward, K. & Lancaster, G.L.J. (2017). Violent versus that may facilitate or impede them becoming involved in nonviolent actors: An empirical study of different types of extremism. acts of violent extremism. Understanding key events, the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, 4(4), 230–248. sequence in which they occur, and the timescales between Schuurman, B. (2019). Topics in terrorism research: Reviewing trends and gaps, 2007–2016. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 12(3), 463–480. these may provide a different lens through which to

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Film 55 Steps Bille August (Dir)

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‘It’s a film about choice and dignity and capacity as human beings’ Helena Bonham Carter was among the guests at the UK’s first screening of 55 Steps, a film which tells the real-life story of Eleanor Riese’s battle in the courts for the right to refuse psychiatric medication. Following the film a panel, featuring the film’s writer and producer Mark Bruce Rosin and human rights lawyer Colette Hughes – played in the film by Hilary Swank – discussed some of the issues mental healthcare and society more broadly faces.

Riese won her case in the California Court of Appeals in 1987 on behalf of herself and other people institutionalised under mental health legislation and forcibly medicated. The Court ruled that people who are involuntarily committed to institutions for short-term crisis care could refuse anti-psychotic medicines if they had the capacity to give or withhold informed consent.

Sadly, not long after her victory in the Courts and at the age of 47, Riese died as a result of the longer-term side effects of the psychiatric medication she had taken.

Bonham Carter said the film had been a long time in the works. While she was initially asked to play the part of Colette, by the time shooting rolled around she was ‘too old’ for the role and was asked to play Eleanor.

Chair of the discussion, Clinical Psychologist Dr Sara Tai (University of Manchester), asked her about her research in making the film. ‘My main thing was not playing illness: she was such an amazing character herself and it was her character I loved… I had the luck to meet the real Mort Cohen [also a lawyer for Riese]… he said she was like a trade unionist in all her work. She wasn’t doing it for herself, she was doing it for every single other person she saw as being abused or disrespected or ignored who she deemed had a right to be heard.’

Rosin, who as a college student had volunteered at a psychiatric hospital, said he’d found out about Riese’s case in 1991 through the lawyer Jim Price. He introduced Rosin to Hughes and Cohen. ‘Through Colette and Mort I got to know Eleanor. What Helena just said about Eleanor was communicated to me, that Eleanor was like a trade unionist and everything she did she did for other

people. The photograph of Eleanor you saw at the end of the film... that photograph inspired me for 25 years to continue working on the film, that and the memories of the people I knew in the mental hospital whom I knew, like Eleanor, had competency beyond just what I thought before I went to work there.’

The discussion moved onto homelessness, mental ill health, and society’s role in supporting people who are struggling and distressed. Sir Norman Lamb MP, former government Health Minister, said the disadvantage suffered by those with mental health problems was a human rights issue. ‘We can say “Oh, awful things happen in America it doesn’t happen here”… well, it does happen here. There are routine breaches of human rights in institutions in this country… There are 3,500 beds in locked rehabilitation units, the Care Quality Commission has said that many of the people in those beds are perfectly capable of living independent lives in the community with support, and yet we lock them up. Now to lock someone up who doesn’t need to be locked up, who hasn’t committed a criminal offence, is an unacceptable breach of their human rights, full stop.’

Professor Peter Kinderman, a Clinical Psychologist and former President of the British Psychological Society, said there was a need to shift debate from medicalised sympathy for people to advocating for their rights. ‘There’s a shift in the zeitgeist which is going on here which is very welcome.’ Kinderman has also been involved in informed consent for mental health patients for more than a decade. He pointed out that in Scotland and Northern Ireland the Mental Health Acts include a clause that people cannot be detained and treated against their will unless their decision-making capacity is significantly affected.

‘In England it’s still the case that under the Mental Health Act you can be detained and treated against your will even if you have the ability to understand and exercise informed consent and I’ve always thought that that is wrong… Let’s have a campaign to get out there and ask

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the psychologist september 2019 culture people whether they want other people to make decisions about their healthcare on their behalf or whether they’d actually like to be given the information and then offered the choice themselves.’

Some of the most poignant comments of the evening came from Hughes, describing the sheer misery many in the US, and elsewhere, are subject to simply as a result of their status in life. After Lamb raised the issue of face-down restraint, often leading to injury or even death, Hughes pointed out in the US around 60 per cent of those killed by police are identified as having a psychiatric disability. ‘We have to take them [the police] out of the loop and have people with the skills and compassion to do this. That means involving people who are labelled as mentally ill in this whole process, bringing their experiences forward, teaching us, the public, what needs to be done. It is known what needs to be done… people need food, clothing, shelter, love, direct services for behavioural issues for substance abuse issues, you cannot wait for six weeks and eight weeks to see somebody.’

Hughes said she believed that Bonham Carter was ‘the only actor on the planet’ who could have played Riese and hoped the film would be seen by those who needed it. ‘There are many, many people who have been helped by taking medications… this isn’t an anti-treatment film, it’s a film about choice and dignity and capacity as human beings. The UN has said we need to restore all legal

capacities to all people and cited specifically people with psychiatric disabilities and the homeless and we have to maximise people’s capacities so they can grow, claim their lives, their experiences and begin to recover in the way that they can.’

The final word of the evening went to a survivor in the audience, Rai Waddingham, who has experience of anti-psychotic medication, detention and seclusion, who campaigns with the Hearing Voices Network in its review of the Mental Health Act. ‘It’s easy to watch that and say it’s America... we don’t do that. We do that every day in England and I want us to feel horrified… How on earth are we thinking it’s okay to do that? Whether or not people are seen as ill, whether or not they’ve made an informed choice, this is not okay… We have alternatives to treat people in distress and we have to fight for them. And if we’re not fighting for them what the hell are we doing here? So I want us all to go and fight.’

Report by Ella Rhodes. To read Peter Kinderman’s review of 55 Steps see tinyurl.com/y24glalf and to read more from Waddingham’s view of the film see a blog post by her here tinyurl.com/y2yeslov The film, which was shown at Toronto Film Festival and in Cologne, was not released more widely but can be bought on several streaming services including YouTube and Amazon Prime.

The monstrous inflation of diagnosis This short series is aimed at a general audience interested in diagnosis in mental health. In the first episode, presenter and Society member Claudia Hammond explores the history of the classification for diagnoses relating to the mind.

It should come as no surprise to psychologists that diagnosis is inseparable from the social context.

Many examples are explored, some more overtly political than others. Defining the expression of female desire, or homosexuality, as mental illnesses fits with historical prejudice against women and gay men. Drapetomania and sluggish schziophrenia are more specific to time and place, and easier to dismiss.

Yet the point is, without the benefit of hindsight, how do we know we’re not making the same prejudicial judgments today?

In the second programme, Claudia considers both the utility, and accuracy, of a mental health diagnosis. The voices of those who have received a diagnosis

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(sometimes several different ones) feature strongly in this episode.

Diagnosis can bring relief, and the key to treatment: it can also bring judgement, discrimination, isolation.

No discussion on this topic would be complete without talking about the DSM, and its monstrous inflation – from around 100 diagnoses in DSM1 to almost 300 in the current DSM5.

This is identified as being an artefact of the power of the pharmaceutical industry in the USA, and the need for all (paid for) treatments to be justified by a diagnosis. It is also argued that historically, the DSM was driven by psychiatrists seeking to bolster their status in relation to other, more scientifically robust specialism: a facet of ‘medical imperialism’. Lucy Johnstone (no relation) articulates an alternative approach, which does not involve giving a diagnosis (‘what’s wrong?’) but rather seeks to understand and help the person with ‘what’s happened’ in their lives.

The third programme looks to the future, and the possibility of

more personalised, individualistic treatments - which we know is the direction of travel in medicine generally. Claudia visits the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge, who are researching a transdiagnostic approach. This focuses on what help the person themselves feels would be of benefit, and effectively disregards their diagnosis. She also talks to Ed Bullmore about ‘inflamed depression’, and to the team at King’s College about work to dissolve diagnostic boundaries between neurodevelopment conditions.

I would have preferred less time on the history, and more on challenging some of the power structures which can inhibit change.

But overall, it is an interesting listen, and a useful reminder to psychologists to reflect on the cultural and social forces which shape mental illness.

Radio D for Diagnosis BBC Radio 4

Reviewed by Kate Johnstone, Associate Editor for Culture

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A history of stigma Kellye McBride on how Foucault’s ideas around confinement and civilisation can help to change views of mental illness

I have struggled with mental health for many years: the fear of being labelled defective or crazy kept me from reaching out and getting help.

Understanding that stigma from a philosophical and historical perspective helped me to make a conscious and muchneeded shift from a moral and individual problem that I needed to keep under control (or else) to enlisting the help of others…

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A

ny student of Shakespeare will tell you of the thematic importance of madness in his tragedies. From the melancholy of Hamlet to the rage of King Lear, madness is often portrayed as a form of insight.

Even in the comedies, the fools are often bestowed with greater wisdom than the principal characters. This is not entirely by coincidence. In Renaissance Europe, the public view of mental illness did not carry the same stigma as it does today; in fact ‘madmen’ were often viewed as harmless transients who wandered across Europe. According to philosopher Michel Foucault, the criminalisation of madness was a relatively modern invention, the Age of Reason as the culprit with rationality as its heralding virtue. But how and why did this happen? And could this shed some light on the current stigma against the mentally ill?

The turn towards a social critique of madness Michel Foucault was born in 1924 into an uppermiddle class French family and educated at the École Normale Supériere, where he studied under Marxist philosophers Louis Althusser and Jean Hippolyte. This is perhaps where Foucault learned to be suspicious of institutional authority and to understand the importance of historical materialism, in which power relations are revealed through an analysis of events.

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the psychologist september 2019 looking back

of discussion. There have been Hippolyte is best known for his prominent examples throughout scholarship on Hegel and Logique Kellye McBride history of the conditions of various et existence, which would have a received her institutions, with empirical analysis serious impact on postmodern Master’s degree to suggest that the process of thought. Althusser was an active from Kingston confinement has done more harm (although at times a strong critic) of University than good in terms of treating the French Communist Party who London and mental illness, for example through was a structuralist Marxist, meaning Université Paris largely unchecked monitoring by that Marxism was a science that 8 Vincennes-St. Denis in staff, treating patients like prisoners, examined objective structures, in contemporary European philosophy. or rampant sexual abuse. contrast to humanistic Marxism.

Twitter: @kellyemmcbride.

But the book also raises On a personal level, the turn Email: kellyemcbrideediting@ important questions as to whether towards a social critique of madness gmail.com the process of confinement itself is not surprising, given that led to these problems, or whether Foucault was gay and struggled shifting negative attitudes towards the mentally ill were with homophobia his entire life. Besides being later to blame. To answer these questions, Foucault notes forced to leave France and Poland for his orientation, that process of confinement in Europe began with the Foucault appeared to have turned most of that hatred monarchy as a means of control, not relief. He writes: on himself. He was prone to self-harm, leading his ‘From the very start, one thing is clear: the [asylum] father to take him to psychiatrist Jean Delay at the is not a medical establishment… It was an instance Saint-Anne Hospital Center in 1948 after a suicide attempt. Delay was credited with being among the first of order, of the monarchial and bourgeois order being organized in France during this period. It was directly to discover chlorpromazine, an antipsychotic used in treating schizophrenia. But despite the psychiatrist and linked with the royal power which placed it under the authority of the civil government alone.’ his father’s best efforts, Foucault remained fascinated Therefore, the asylum could be articulated along with the idea of self-mutilation and suicide. This the same lines as the prison system, intending to keep manifested in his later drug use and sadomasochistic its inhabitants away from society and under the thumb sexual activity. of royal authority. Requirements for confinement were The structuralist, Hegelian, and Marxist influence not always limited to outward signs of mental illness is palpable throughout Madness and Civilization. A either: the poor, unemployed, and prisoners were also great deal of the book was inspired by Foucault’s lumped into this category: ‘It is common knowledge experience working in a mental hospital and from his that the seventeenth century created enormous own difficult history with mental health. In Madness houses of confinement; it is less commonly known and Civilization, Foucault traces how economics and that more than one out of every hundred inhabitants the power of the state influenced the development of of the city of Paris found themselves confined there, the asylum in the 19th century. But the book is also a within several months.’ Absolutism in France and good example of how Foucault broke with the strict other countries in Europe made the conditions for ideology of his teachers, eventually finding his own imprisonment arbitrary, hence the large numbers of way through historicism and what eventually became people confined during this period. post-structuralism.

As Foucault later explains, with such large When Madness and Civilization was finally numbers ‘confinement acquired another meaning. Its published in 1961, it received mixed reviews, praised repressive function was combined with a new use.’ on one hand for being an insightful critique of That ‘new use’ was the cheap labour from ‘those who the asylum, but also largely ignored by the leftists had been confined and thus making them contribute Foucault was inspired by. Fellow post-structuralist to the prosperity of all’. Since many of the newly Jacques Derrida critiqued the work for its supposed confined were the unemployed, putting them to work metaphysical bent, and others were concerned about achieved a dual purpose: it kept the poor from growing the specificity of Foucault’s use of data. Sociologist restless and prone to uprising, and provided the state José Guilherme Merquior stated that there were many with cheap manpower in which they could justify the counterexamples to his claims of uniform abuse in low wages. This is a direct echo of Marx and Engels’ mental hospitals, and that his use of data was riddled theory of the ‘reserve army of labor’, in which times of with errors. While the book was well intentioned, overproduction created periods of unemployment and Merquior insisted that it should not be regarded as a thus a vulnerable workforce. factual analysis.

There was a moral component to justifying confinement as well: unemployment or idleness became synonymous with the idea of sin. Workhouses Confinement or stigma? became ‘houses of correction’ in which the soul Whether or not the ‘evidence’ Foucault put forth in Madness and Civilization is entirely correct, I agree with of the individual would be saved through a strong work ethic. Rather than being perceived as victims Merquior that the spirit of the original work is worthy

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of circumstances beyond their control, this harsh treatment of the poor and mentally ill seemed justified from the 16th to the 19th centuries, as the Enlightenment added yet another reason for confinement: contamination.

Michel Foucault

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to place the insane individual within a moral element where he will be in debate with himself and his surroundings: to constitute for him a milieu where, far from being protected, he will be kept in a perpetual anxiety, ceaselessly threatened by Law and Transgression.’ (Madness and Civilization, pp. 244)

Becoming tainted What better way to control a vulnerable population Foucault suggests that the fear of becoming mad than by having them control themselves? By oneself magnified once the idea of confinement and encouraging patients to become responsible for their madness became synonymous: ‘Suddenly, in a few own treatment and failure when they were unable years in the middle of the eighteenth century, a fear to control it lifted the onus and responsibility from arose… animated, basically, by a moral myth.’ The the general public (and more importantly, the state). fear in question was becoming tainted by madness Furthermore, the notion of ‘curing’ mental illness also through exposure. Confinement was now justified as falls under scrutiny here. Electro-shock therapy, the a moral means of keeping undesirables away from the transorbital lobotomy, and the development of drugs rest of society, but also, ironically, became a breeding like Thorazine were originally developed as cures, but ground for irrational fears about the their effectiveness was measured mentally ill. When combined with based on how well doctors were “…the discourse of the fears leftover from the plagues of able to control their patients the Middle Ages about the spread 19th century became one as a result. Like the previous of disease and contamination, association between sin and in which the individual’s these fears took on a new quality. idleness, the discourse of the 19th sheer willpower had ‘The great reform movement that century became one in which the developed in the second half of the individual’s sheer willpower had to be exhausted lest eighteenth century originated in the to be exhausted lest they relapse. they relapse” effort to reduce contamination…

We see this even now in public preventing evil and disease from discourse of mental health, where tainting the air and spreading their individuals are blamed for not contagion in the atmosphere of the cities.’ seeking help when there is a lack of available public Like the prison system he would later undertake resources. Rather than being treated as a social problem in Discipline and Punish, the need for reform or that affects all of us, ‘madness’ remains an individual, treatment came much later and failed to change private issue. confinement’s initial purpose of controlling a poor or restless workforce. With these structures in place, it is no wonder that stigma of the mentally ill evolved, as A long way to go illness often restricted further mobility and cast them What can we learn from Foucault’s analysis of the in the public view as ‘sinners’. Foucault later referred to history of confinement and the birth of the asylum? this association as the ‘immorality of the unreasonable’, For one thing, we can understand how the stigma of adding that there was also a long history of associating mental illness evolved from the fear of confinement the mad with animals before the Great Confinement. and the moral and individual failing that accompanied The baseness of animality within the ‘great chain of it. Even though mental health institutions are changing being’ had also previously justified this distinction. and conditions have improved dramatically in the past Therefore, the Great Confinement, once a tool of 200 years, we still have a long way forward as far as absolutist monarchies for controlling the poor, became complete public acceptance of mental illness. But if we a medical and moral dilemma that constituted failure keep in mind that the social structures that influenced on behalf on the individual. In the 19th century, this idea came from 500-year-old external fears of when efforts to reform the system surfaced, the idea social unrest, maybe that would lessen the burden of of rehabilitation grew out of religious sentiment and mental illness as a moral or individual failure. Perhaps moral outrage at the conditions in which the mentally instead people will be encouraged to unburden ill were kept. A distinction was now made between themselves or seek help. prisoners and those subject to madness, and the harsh Mental health is a precarious thing for all of us. punitive gestures of chaining the confined were lifted.

Just like our bodies have the capacity to become sick, However, despite liberation from outward methods so too our thoughts and feelings have the potential of control, the discourse of the 19th century was now to consume us or keep us locked into unhealthy dominated by a literature of self-control, turning those behaviours. Whether or not you agree with Foucault’s punitive treatments inward: revisionist historical reading of mental illness in Europe, I think he is right to identify that it takes more ‘Religion was part of the movement which indicated than sheer willpower to change the situation of mental in spite of everything the presence of reason in health in Western healthcare. madness, and which led from insanity to health…

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the psychologist monthyear looking back

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09/11/2016 12:49 07/08/2019 15:39

We dip into the Society member database and pick…

Dr Martina Gerada counselling psychologist in private practice & lecturer at City University of London One book Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, starting with My Brilliant Best Friend, are enthralling.

They drew me in and left a small, Neapolitantown-shaped void in my life when I finished them. I loved them not only because in rainy, cloudy London they took me back to my Mediterranean roots, but because they provided a lens into something that was starkly familiar yet (till then) elusive to me.

The book describes a masculine world of silent coercion and submission that most people living in the Mediterranean after the war would probably recognise, explained through the voices of two intelligent little girls.

What shines through for me in this story is the refreshing honesty about the conspiring and inspiring competition that can exist in strong bonds between women.

am only human…!’ And most times I realise that this is exactly what enables me to do my job well. I cannot know it all, be prepared for it all or always deal with it brilliantly but my ability to connect with another, together with my training and my professional support, will guide me through. It is also a great exercise, to state empathically with colleague-friends, ‘man we have a weird job!’ – this light-hearted acknowledgement is enough to normalise some of our fears or professional stuck-points and, like a mindfulness exercise, it enables us not to get too caught up in them.

One song Can I have one in English, the other Italian?

‘Reprieve’ by Ani diFranco and ‘Processo a me stessa’ by Anna Oxa. They speak for themselves, and if you like them, they will speak to you.

One thing psychologists could do better Band together for political causes that relate to health. I will not say ‘mental health’ because although the distinction is probably important for funds allocation and political slogans, I don’t believe the mind-body separation is an otherwise helpful one. We need to find better ways to organise politically, especially during this time when our NHS is in crisis and the effects of an unhealthy system are being suffered by nurses, doctors and psychologists as well as our patients.

One cultural recommendation A musical play of Bob Dylan songs called Girl from the North Country. It’s coming back to London theatres this December. Go see it!

One piece from The Psychologist In ‘Windows on our inner and outer worlds’ (July 2018), colleagues in the field wrote about the ways in which they relax. I thought it was really refreshing to see an article that spoke of our humanity. It presented an honest account of the toll this profession can take on us, and showed that knowing how to care for ourselves and each other is of utter importance.

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one on one

One unusual thing about my job The job of a counselling/clinical psychological practitioner is an unusual one. We listen to, absorb and process emotions on a daily basis.

We work to make sense of, and rise above, the pushes and pulls of intense and sometimes destructive human experiences. This. Is. Hard.

Some days I catch myself thinking, ‘but I

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One rewarding thing about my job I love being in learning environments.

A balance of teaching and clinical work with patients/clients creates two systems for me that inform and replenish one another.

coming soon… the ‘under’ special, part one; plus all our usual news, views, reviews, interviews, and much more... contribute… reach 50,000 colleagues, with something to suit all. See www.thepsychologist.org.uk/ contribute or talk to the editor, Dr Jon Sutton, jon.sutton@bps.org.uk, +44 116 252 9573 comment… email the editor, the Leicester office, or tweet @psychmag to advertise… reach a large and professional audience at bargain rates: see details on inside front cover maybe you missed… …September 2015, Claire Hughes on the school transition: what matters and why …Search it and so much more via www.bps.org.uk/thepsychologist psy 09_15 pOFC_Layout 1 17/08/2015 11:55 Page 1

One thing about the Society The Society is the one place that can host such a movement to band together. It has the potential to be the voice of and professional home for psychologists. I don’t know enough about why this might not always have worked out – more psychologists seem to have chosen to leave the Society over the past few years.

One piece of advice Cultivate and cherish relationships with work colleagues. They are the bedrock of my professional life, stimulating my thinking, inspiring me to revise and update my practice and nourishing my identity as a counselling psychologist, even when they come from different professional fields.

the

psychologist vol 28 no 9

september 2015

www.thepsychologist.org.uk

The transition to school Claire Hughes asks what matters and why

letters 690 news 698 careers 758 reviews 770

from adversity to buoyancy 718 do schools need lessons on motivation? 722 why do we ‘like’ social media? 724 looking back: the Geel question 776

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Society Trustees www.bps.org.uk/about-us/ who-we-are President David Murphy The British Psychological Society was founded in 1901, and incorporated by Royal Charter in 1965. Its object is ‘to promote the advancement and diffusion of a knowledge of psychology pure and applied and especially to promote the efficiency and usefulness of Members of the Society by setting up a high standard of professional education and knowledge’.

President Elect Dr Hazel McLaughlin Vice President Vacant Honorary General Secretary Dr Carole Allan Honorary Treasurer Roxane Gervais Chair, Education and Training Board Dr Juliet Foster Chair, Practice Board Alison Clarke Chair, Public Policy Board Vacant Chair, Research Board Professor Daryl O’Connor Co-opted Trustees Dr Chris Lynch Professor Clifford Stott Dr Ester Cohen-Tovee Christina Buxton Dr Adam Jowett

society notices

society vacancies

BPS conferences and events See p.15 Stories of Psychology: Psychology, Society and the Public Friends House, Euston Road, London, 7 November See p.15 Technical Support in Psychological Teaching Award 2020 See p.45 Technical Support in Psychological Research Award 2020 See p.45 Spearman Medal 2020 See p.57 Careers in Psychology 2019 Cutler’s Hall, Sheffield, 16 November Institute of Education, London, 30 November See p.61 CPD workshops 2019 See p.61

Memory Based Evidence Independent Review Group (IRG) Members See p.28

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Chief Executive Sarb Bajwa Change Programme Director Diane Ashby Director of Communications Rachel Dufton (Interim) Director of Corporate Services Mike Laffan Director of Finance Harnish Hadani Director of Policy Kathryn Scott Director of Qualifications and Standards Karen Beamish (Interim) Governance Manager Christine Attfield The Society has offices in Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow and London, as well as the main office in Leicester (St Andrews House, 48 Princess Road East, Leicester, LE1 7DR).

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The Association for Psychological Therapies

07/08/2019 15:41