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PSY 496: Applied Project Communication Competency: Presenting Mental Health Information Ashford University

Project on presenting mental health information.

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    Running head: PRESENTING MENTAL HEALTH INFORMATION 1 Final Project Communication Competency: Presenting Mental Health Information Ashford University PSY 496: Applied Project Instructor: University attached: Date: Discuss the development and significance of forensic psychology, highlighting both its historical context and modern - day applications. In your response, include an analysis of the educational and training advancements within the field, as well as the emerging competency standards required for practitioners. How do portrayals in popular media impact the public’s understanding of forensic psychology? Be sure to reference at least three scholarly sources to support your arguments. Word count requirement: 1,500 - 2,000 words.

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    PRESENTING MENTAL HEALTH IN FORMATION 2 Introduction As the final project of this course, the requirement was to prepare a fully functional website containing the following information, each of the parts in a tab or page that was linked within the website. This word document has compiled all the written information that was in the website to be submitted for the convenience of grading for the instructor. The website of my final project is: http://tonygusm.wix.com/guzmanpsy496finalpro I. Home Page Greetings readers, My name is Antonio or Tony Guzman from San Diego, California. I am 28 years old and a former Marine only two years ago where I was privileged enough to be able to explore and travel the world and gained a lot experiences , that up till now , still did not seem a all possible to happen. After being in the marines I continued on and provided my service to the National Guard. Additionally I have also worked as an Analytical Linguist for the government where I came across working on many criminal cases, something I’m truly passionate about as I get to work first hand with issues that affects the society and community directly.

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    PRESENTING MENTAL HEALTH IN FORMATION 3 Having introduced my passion within this topic, I have also taken the initiative to further improve myself by obtaining a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology so as I could progress into a Master’s program in Forensic Psychology, which would help me reach my goal of an ultimate career, becoming an Agent for an agency. The skills that I have gained in my undergrad program in Ashford University as well as the work experience that I have accumulated I believe I could apply in the work force in my career of choice. Upon graduation I hope to get confirmation of my application to a Criminal Analyst internship and continue enriching my experiences as well as knowledge and skills on the related field of Forensic Psychology and it also deepens my understanding of this field that I would like to be a part of. I would like to be able to have a passenger seat experience of filed work and learn from the great minds within this field and acquire the useful skills on my own through a firsthand experience. - Tony II. Literature Review The topic of my interest is Forensic Psychology, which is the application of psychological knowledge into law and justice related matters in order to better evaluate competency of the interviewed eyewitness or interrogated suspects and criminals so as a just and deserving sentence to be carried out by the convicted criminal . As highlighted within the article by Piotrowski in 2012, the attention and focus that forensic psychology has received is in a stationary state with moderate attention within this field but it should

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    PRESENTING MENTAL HEALTH IN FORMATION 4 not be neglected and receive a decline as I believe this field to be of critical importance in the process of evaluating the reliability of verbal evidence that were collected from all related personnel regarding the case being dealt. Compared to the early past, the field of Forensic Psychology has surely observed a growth of popularity with individuals showing interest on participation at some point possibly to be partly due to portrayals in TV shows or such entertainment programs being routinely showed on the television at home or by the great convenience of internet, viewed from tablets or mobile phones on the go. Although it should be noted that not all portrayal of the characters from televised drama are accurate to their real responsibilities within the real world and the entertainment companies should be more responsible and not indirectly spread inaccurate portrayals of the professional figures as it probably affects the choice of the younger generation of a future career that they would need to start working towards from a young age. The program shows does however accurately shows the impact that the role of forensic psychologists plays in affecting the decisions within a court case by their professional evaluation that is able to provide substantial evidence that is accepted by the people of the court for consideration that is eventually reflected in the decision that they make at the end. According to Otto &Heilbrun in 2002, the American Psychological Association (APA) has just recently in 2001 officially states forensic psychology as a formal distinguished specialization although it has a long history dating back to a lineage as early as 1900, that has witnessed rapid growth throughout (Otto &Heilbrun, 2002 as cited in DeMatteo, Marczyk, Krauss & Burl, 2009). DeMatteo and colleagues in 2009 has further continued to elaborate the a proof of the growth can be seen in the focus and

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    PRESENTING MENTAL HEALTH IN FORMATION 5 development that was done in terms of the educational and training programs that has been developed throughout the years for the convenience of the students as well as professional individuals to have access to as well as empower themselves. With that in mind DeMatteo and colleagues (2009) constructed the article on summarizations of the various programs curricula that are available and identifies the core set of individual skills that are important for consideration in preparation of a doctoral - level forensic psychology curricula so as the students that graduate from it will be fully prepared to face the real world with more options of roles to be assumed by forensic psychologists. The article by DeMatteo et al . in 2009 has also stated that a recent cause that drives more general clinical practitioners into the field of forensic psychology was due to the changes in the health care reimbursement system for psychologist and also forensic services are not usually bounded in terms of finance by managed care making the forensic option more appealing and pose as a better choice to them. The article reported that the authors have mainly evaluated and summarized the trend within the tertiary education programs as well as training programs that was made available by professional academic establishments and institutions through the evaluation of surveys being collected from the past as well as recently (DeMatteo et al., 2009) . They noted a definitely trend in the varieties that were made available throughout the years and many high - ranking psychology departments have found to offer at least one law - psychology course within their establishments and forensic psychology is found to be most popularly among them (DeMatteo et al., 2009) in terms of undergraduate training in forensic psychology. For the case of graduate programs, they noted that the programs could be categorized by program focus; such as clinical forensic psychology or non - clinical forensic psychology,

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    PRESENTING MENTAL HEALTH IN FORMATION 6 by training models; such as clinical scientist practitioner and nonclinical scientist - scholar, as well as the degree awarded; such as doctorate or masters, all programs has the possibility of being conducted from the span of 2 to 7 years in total in order to obtain the completed title; an astounding 10 years is recorded for students that conducted joint - degree programs (DeMatteo et al., 2009). As concluded by the article, there are a total of seven area of competencies that a student should develop in order to better adapt to the educational curricula and it was suggested that a model curricula be constructed with these seven points as the key backbone of the program so as graduates of better qualifications could graduate and give back to the community with their knowledge and skills acquired from the program (DeMatteo et al., 2009). The seven areas include, Substantive psychology; aimed to equip the students with core knowledge on the basic areas of their major discipline, Research design; prepares the student for the basic conduct of a research or have quick understanding of the results presented in a research, Conducting research; students themselves be wholly involved in performing and conducting the research for the culmination of a doctoral dissertation, Legal knowledge; all matters related to legal aspects such as competence to stand trial and mental state at the time of the offence, Integrative law - psychology knowledge; to equip the students with the knowledge of the process and all the roles of each individuals within the court process, Ethics and professional issues; the basics as well as specialized issues related to forensic matters, and finally Clinical forensic training; that prepares clinical forensic psychologists to face the challenges found in the real world.

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    PRESENTING MENTAL HEALTH IN FORMATION 7 As much as it is important to have the best curricula developed in order to train better and more adeptly prepared individuals that graduate from tertiary institutions and enter their respective forensic psychology related career in order to give back to the community, with the spot light in these recent decade being placed on the field of forensic psychology, it would also be wise to monitor the standards of currently practicing psychologist within the field as well so that the quality of forensics psychologists would not decrease following the recent hype of focus within the field. As highlighted in the article by Varela & Conroy (2012) the growth of forensic psychology that was immense in the past three decades, has pushed forward a necessity to develop a taxonomy of competency standards required in order to evaluate a practitioner of their competency within the field of forensic psychology to be applied onto the real world. They have also highlighted that the field of forensic psychology has been specialized and a generalized competency standard that is common among practitioners and researchers of the general field of Psychology are necessary within the forensic field but a specialized specialty competencies have been developed for subspecialties of forensic psychology, which are important for all applications within forensic work (Varela & Conroy, 2012). The article by Varela & Conroy (2012) has also begun by shedding light on the emergence of forensic psychology as a specialty within the field of psychology , stating that it had begun in the efforts of the great Hugo Munsterberg in 1908 to have the psychological findings be acknowledged as a force to be reckon with by the judicial system and the court room. Collective works within the field of forensic psychology such as scholarly articles, scientific research and professional courtroom practices has blosso med and well known acknowledged top class journals such as Criminal Justice and

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    PRESENTING MENTAL HEALTH IN FORMATION 8 Behavior and Behavioral Sciences and the Law were established and dedicated to the distribution of the research materials that are regularly accessed by the mental health and legal constitutions to keep up to date with the recent advancement within the related field (Varela & Conroy, 2012). With such an impact onto and contribution from the field of forensic psychology it is only a matter of standard procedure to keep the competencies of practicing individuals in check with certain guidelines and referring checklists that has been developed following the bloom of the field of forensic psychology. Varela & Conroy in 2012 has listed out the developed competencies for six functional domains inclusive of assessment, intervention, consultation, research, supervision - training, and management - administration, further categorizing them into competencies with relation to knowledge, skills, and attitudes in tabulated forms. It is noted that there are more competency evaluations for the functional domain of Assessment and Intervention, and Consultation and Management Administration are considerably less (Varela & Conroy, 2012). All of the listed points are extremely relevant and applicable to the field of forensic psychology and especially with the specialty competencies that has specified criteria regarding certain issues within the functional domain that was listed. The article was prepared as an aim to provide practicing forensic psychologists with a convenient access of the list of competencies, the authors have concluded with an expectation of the list to be updated with more addition in the future by the coming generation of forensic professionals. Other than the aspect of working professionals that should be taken note of, the types of practices being applied should also be reviewed for the efficacy of the assessment being applied as well as the efficiency of the practitioner on applying the

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    PRESENTING MENTAL HEALTH IN FORMATION 9 techniques. McL aughlin and Kan in 2014 have conducted a practice survey with aims of providing information about the current trends among forensic psychology evaluators and estimates how “typical” practices follows best practices. The article has discussed the use of assessment tools in evaluations of four common cases of forensic mental health assessments being dealt by forensic psychologists, which are competency to stand trial, mental state at time of alleged offence, nonsexual violence risk, and response style/malingering and provided and updated information about the assessment tools (McLaughlin &Kan, 2014). A large number of forensic evaluators, 102 out of 115 in profession psychological practice has shown to apply assessment tools during their assessment session with the client, and there are 4 types of assessment tools available, multiscale inventories, forensic assessment/relevant instruments, cognitive/neuropsychological instruments, and projective techniques, among which multiscale inventories is extremely popular among the evaluators being applied in evaluations of mental state at time of offense and the remaining three assessments however is commonly applied with the forensic assessment/relevant instruments assessment tool (McLaughlin &Kan, 2014). With relation to application on all four forensic issues, projective techniques are recorded to be the lowest in comparison to oth er tools (McLaughlin &Kan, 2014). An online survey with three sections was performed onto the large sample of forensic evaluators, where the first section was performed to obtain personal information, inclusive of age, race, gender, graduate training and such information from the participants and also the estimated portion of the participant’s practice being dedicated for the conducts of forensic related practices within their professional establishments as

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    PRESENTING MENTAL HEALTH IN FORMATION 10 well as their frequency on performing such practices (McLaughlin &Kan, 2014). The second section is a personality measure following the Goldberg Five - Factor Markers and the third section is the main survey containing four subsections, each dedicated individually to the four forensic cases, in order to get the evaluators responses on the use of the four listed types of assessment tools (McLaughlin &Kan, 2014). The article ended with a stressed importance of remaining updated on the latest advancement and development in terms of research and literature being published with regards to the application of assessment tools and its efficacy with no bias on the evaluator’s experience, training, or duration of degree attained (McLaughlin &Kan, 2014) . McLaughlin and Kan in 2014 has also noted several limitations of their study, which includes the recruitment of their sample population was done a way that might not be able to represent the “average” conduct of a forensic evaluator, to which they suggest a further improvement to be made about this would be to recruit participants in person instead of what they have done which was recruitment through e - mailing (McLaughlin &Kan, 2014). There was also the concern that the study did not choose to specify on the application of one specific type of assessment tool on overall to the other forensic issues or specify one forensic issue to be tested with a few assessment tool but instead had different tools tested on different forensic issues (McLaughlin &Kan, 2014). A final concern noted by the authors are inclusion of their rationale on the choice of assessment tools as well as rationale of rejection within the survey that they have not included to perform, as this would be able to provide more information on the standards of care (McLaughlin &Kan, 2014).

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