The telephone has long been a vehicle for delivering psychological services such as referral information and crisis intervention. Recently, the use of the telephone as the primary vehicle for delivering psychotherapeutic services has been promoted. This article considers the advantages of telephone psychotherapy, especially those claimed as positive features of pay-per-call telephone lines, and finds that they may be less helpful than claimed. Telephone therapy is claimed to offer ease of access, increased sense of safety and privacy, and lower cost relative to face-to-face treatment. On the other hand, telephone therapy increases the difficulty of providing for patient safety in crisis situations, increases risks to privacy, and may ultimately be more expensive than conventional psychotherapy. In addition, serious questions have been raised about the degree to which effective treatment can be carried out without direct experience of the other person in the encounter and without a specifically designated and designed location in which to carry out treatment and how the best interests of the client can be served.No contemporary psychologist can function without the telephone; although not unique in the current array of telecommunication devices, the telephone is a particularly persona], direct, and ubiquitous communication vehicle. The telephone has long been professionally acceptable as a tool for answering initial inquiries, scheduling, and managing crises; however, professional consensus judges telephone contact to be no substitute for direct, face-to-face interchange between therapist and client. Should this judgment be challenged? In an era that emphasizes access to service and immediacy of response, perhaps it is time to consider psychotherapy by telephone as a viable mode of service delivery. Certainly, many therapists have experienced pa-LEONARD J. HAAS received his PhD in clinical psychology from the
The Publications and Communications Board has opened nominations for the editorship of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General for the years 1990-1995. Sam Glucksberg is the incumbent editor. Candidates must be members of APA and should be available to start receiving manuscripts in early 1989 to prepare for issues published in 1990. Please note that the P&C Board encourages more participation by women and ethnic minority men and women in the publication process and would particularly welcome such nominees. To nominate candidates, prepare a statement of one page or less in support of each candidate.
Although this chapter uses the term managed care, it should be recognized that the term is a bit too widely used and covers several separate categories of financing arrangements. Actually, designed benefits, independent practice associations, preferred provider organizations, and health maintenance organizations are also forms of management, with greater or lesser intrusiveness into the procedures of treatment. 2Although we use the terms time-limited, brief treatment, and short-term therapy interchangeably, we hope it is recognized that these terms are not synonymous. Budman and Gurman (1988) suggested the term time-sensitive for their approach, and given our aversion to specific session limits. this is our term of choice.
Twenty patients received multichannel cochlear implants between April 1984 and May 1986 at the University of Utah Medical Center. All patients have been followed for at least 1 year postimplant. Preimplant screening included audiometric testing, electronystagmogram (ENG), promontory stimulation, computed tomography (CT) scanning, and psychological evaluation. Based on postimplant audio-only CID sentence discrimination scores, these patients were divided into three groups: good (CID greater than 79%), intermediate (CID, 21% to 79%), and poor (CID less than 21%). Preimplant factors that correlated with CID scores were hearing loss duration, previous use of hearing aids, lip-reading ability, tinnitus, positive ENG calorics, preimplant pure-tone average, promontory stimulation threshold, and understanding of the project. Only previous hearing aid usage approached statistical significance (p = 0.05). A larger patient sample is needed to verify these results.
This article reviews key philosophical and legal underpinnings of mental health professionals' obligation to obtain informed consent from consumers of their services. The basic components of informed consent are described, and strategies for clinically and ethically appropriate methods of obtaining informed consent are discussed. Emerging issues in informed consent involving duty to assess and protect against client dangerousness, obligations to third parties, and issues of deception are considered as well. The article proposes that part of the process of obtaining informed consent is the cultivation of a treatment environment that emphasizes beneficence and client autonomy.
Issues in the Preparation of Interns: Views of Trainers and TraineesDirectors of training and representative interns at each of the 170 American Psychological Association-approved internship sites were surveyed about orientation procedures. Respondents rated the importance, initial intern awareness, and orientation coverage of 18 items concerning aspects of professional functioning. Interns and directors of training agreed on the rank ordering of items but differed in the values they gave each item. Interns thought that their initial knowledge was greater than attributed to them by directors, and directors claimed their orientation was more complete than interns reported. Implications of these findings for intern orientation are discussed.
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