Helping People
My article is for anyone who is looking to know what is a typical day in the life of a psychologist and how to help a patient feeling better or solve his problems. I will explain steps by steps the process that psychologist in private practice use when it comes to diagnosing and doing a therapy. It has been three years now that I study in Psychology and I think I have enough knowledge to inform people who do not know a lot about this amazing subject.
1. Step 1 : book an appointment.
The first step to provide psychological help to a patient is to book an appointment. The patient can either contact you from a reference or a publicity that you post online. You have to offer different availability because people have different schedules. For example, you can offer people to come on weekends and evenings on some day of the week.
2. Step 2 : Welcome and meet the patient.
The next step is to welcome the patient to his appointment. You have to show confidence and make the patient feel comfortable to talk. It is a great idea to be in a calm and warm place, with low lightning and a comfortable chair to sit to reduce the anxiety that can bring the first meeting with a psychologist. Calm music in the waiting room and offering beverages can also be a great idea to calm the stress of talking about yourself to a stranger.
3. Step 3 : start a therapy.
After that step, you have to get to know your patient. That means the psychologists need to start the conversation focusing on the basics like the occupation or the age of the patient. The psychologist's has to know why the patient is asking for help and a little background on his health in general. After that, they can start the therapy depending on the different mental health issues the patient has. A therapy to provide help to a patient, and help him to feel better can be a short or a long process depending on the needs of the person. That means that you will get to know the person and work with him trough time and talk with him for a period of approximately one hour normally each weak or each two week.
4. Step 4 : provide solutions and diagnostic.
While and after all the process of therapy, the psychologist has to provide solutions to his patient. To do that it is important that he can diagnose mental disorders with the help of the DSM-5, which is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The manual defines and classifies mental disorders in order to improve diagnoses, treatment, and research. With all the information the psychologist is collecting from his patient, he is then able to diagnose depending on which symptoms the person has. For example, to suffer from bipolarity the patient has to suffer from at least four symptoms on a list of six, like to have hypomania. The psychologist is then capable of proposing a diagnostic and provide solutions to help his patient. For example, someone who suffers from anxiety can use desensitization with the help of his psychologist as a form of therapy. Desensitization is a treatment or process that diminishes emotional responsiveness to a negative stimulus after repeated exposure to it.
5. Step 5 : maintain and continue the progress.
Like I said earlier, a therapy can be a really long process and some people may need to see a psychologist almost all of their lives. For example, a person who suffers from depression and anxiety may need many years to get rid of these issues and to maintain a good mental health in general. A lot of time, patients needs to be seen more frequently at the beginning of the therapy and the better they feel, the less they will see the psychologist. Everyone has difficulties from time to time and it is important to have someone that can help you feel better and that will not judge you.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I hope that this blog post can help someone who is wondering what is like to help a patient to solve his problems. A typical psychologist's day is pretty much always the same in private practice and it is something important to consider if you ever thought to choose this field of study. I also hope that with all my blog post on psychology, that it can help anyone who is looking for information related to this subject.
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