Researchers have investigated the efficacy of a gratitude intervention for decreasing body dissatisfaction (BD) in an internet treatment-seeking sample and demonstrated it worked equally well to decrease BD as cognitive restructuring. We extend this research by testing the efficacy of a gratitude intervention on BD, along with common sequelae of BD: dysfunctional eating, negative mood, and depressive symptoms. Females were randomly assigned to Gratitude, Cognitive Restructuring, or Control conditions. Pre- to post-intervention period comparisons found the gratitude intervention to perform better than the other conditions at increasing body esteem, decreasing BD, reducing dysfunctional eating, and reducing depressive symptoms.
Students attending rural academic institutions often have no immediate access to psychiatrists to supplement on-site Counseling Center (CC) services. Because the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) could not cost-effectively provide on-site psychiatry services to Georgia Southern University (GSU) students, the two institutions explored telehealth services delivered by supervised Psychiatry residents using Web-based videoconferencing on MCGs virtual private network. GSU counselors completed client severity rating forms. CC clients in ongoing therapy who were judged to be in need of psychiatric services were referred to the Tele-clinic (TC). CC counselors referred the most challenged students to TC according to total distress score on intake, clinician intake assessment of client difficulty, and client need for medications. After seeing the clients in TC, MCG residents also completed GSU CC client severity rating forms. Post-intake and satisfaction surveys already in use at the GSU CC were completed both by CC clients not in TC and by CC clients jointly enrolled in TC. TC and CC populations were compared by gender, race, past mental health treatment, past psychiatric hospitalization, and past and current use of psychotropic drugs. Telepsychiatry conducted using low bandwidth videoconferencing successfully supplemented GSU CC mental healthcare, especially for clients with the most serious problems, and did so without travel from campus and within the milieu of daily student life. Cost-effective telepsychiatry services can successfully supplement management of students with mental health issues who attend rural, smaller, and/or resource-challenged academic institutions.
We designed a cooperative learning classroom activity to enhance students' ability to understand psychological disorders and distinguish among anxiety, mood, and psychotic disorders. We employed a group interviewing approach with the instructor (or a graduate student) serving as the pseudo-client. Students interacted with a pseudo-client to arrive at a diagnosis. Evaluations of this activity indicated that students learned about various psychological disorders as well as better understood the process of clinical interviewing and diagnosis.
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