PSYCH 694 Week 1 Survey of Applied Specialties Example

Five Problems in One Waiting Room: Mapping Applied Psychology Specialties From a Flagstaff Community Health Center

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSYCH/694: Specialty Areas in Applied Psychology

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The health center, its patients and staff are composites written for a model paper; historical and workforce information comes from the sources listed.

In one week at our community health center, five problems crossed my desk that each belonged, in a different way, to psychology. Sorting them by specialty turned out to be a useful way to understand how applied psychology is organized and where I might fit with a master's degree.

The Setting

I am a case manager at a federally qualified health center in Flagstaff, Arizona, serving about nine thousand patients a year, many of them uninsured, rural or Navajo and Hopi families who travel long distances. The center offers primary care, dental care and integrated behavioral health with two licensed clinical psychologists, a licensed professional counselor and a social worker.

Problem One: A Teenager's Panic Attacks

A fifteen-year-old came to the clinic three times with chest pain and shortness of breath; medical tests were normal. Our clinical psychologist diagnosed panic disorder and began cognitive behavioral treatment. Clinical psychology focuses on assessing and treating mental disorders across severity levels, and counseling psychology, closely related, has historically emphasized adjustment, development and strengths with less severely impaired clients. Both typically require a doctorate and license for independent practice.

Benjamin (2005) traced clinical psychology from Lightner Witmer's psychological clinic at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896, which served children with learning and behavior problems. For decades, clinical psychologists worked mainly as testers. World War II and the needs of returning veterans, along with federal funding through the Veterans Administration and the new National Institute of Mental Health, pushed the field toward psychotherapy. The 1949 Boulder conference set the scientist-practitioner model of training, a later conference endorsed the practitioner-focused doctor of psychology degree and state licensure laws spread from the 1940s until every state had one.

Problem Two: A Third Grader Who Cannot Read

A mother asked for help because her son was falling behind in reading. His school psychologist will assess him for a learning disability and help design an individualized education program. School psychologists work in schools, assessing learning and behavior, consulting with teachers and supporting students' mental health; most hold a specialist-level degree and state certification. Educational psychology, by contrast, studies learning and teaching more broadly, often in research or university settings.

Problem Three: Uncontrolled Diabetes

A fifty-two-year-old patient with type 2 diabetes keeps missing medication doses and has an A1C above ten percent. Our psychologist works with him on problem solving and motivation in brief sessions during medical visits. Health psychology asks how thoughts, habits and social circumstances shape whether people get sick and how they cope, then puts the answers to work in prevention and care, often beside physicians.

Problem Four: Burned-Out Medical Assistants

Turnover among our medical assistants reached forty percent last year, and exit interviews pointed to workload and poor scheduling. An industrial and organizational psychologist would study the work, selection, training, leadership and climate and recommend changes. I-O psychologists usually work in organizations or consulting firms, and many practice with master's degrees.

Koppes (1997) documented the women who helped build industrial and organizational psychology in its early decades, including Lillian Gilbreth's work on motion study and management, Marion Bills's research on clerical selection and turnover and others who developed employment tests and applied psychology in business despite barriers to academic positions. Their work shows that applied psychology in organizations is nearly as old as clinical practice.

The burnout among our medical assistants is as much a psychology problem as the panic attacks in exam room two.

Problem Five: A Custody Dispute

A patient's ex-husband is seeking custody of their children, and the court has ordered a psychological evaluation. A forensic psychologist will conduct it. Forensic psychology applies psychology to legal questions, such as custody, competency to stand trial and risk assessment, and the forensic psychologist's client is often the court rather than the person evaluated.

Who Does This Work?

Michalski and Kohout (2011) described the workforce of psychologists who provide health services, drawing on licensing and survey data. The workforce was aging, with many psychologists approaching retirement, was increasingly female and remained far less racially and ethnically diverse than the population it serves. They noted concerns about whether supply would meet growing demand, especially in underserved areas.

Those findings describe our region exactly. Our two psychologists are both over sixty, and few psychologists in northern Arizona speak Navajo or share patients' backgrounds.

Where Specialties Overlap

In practice, specialties blur. Our clinical psychologist does health psychology with the diabetes patient. A school psychologist may provide counseling. An I-O consultant might study burnout among nurses using health psychology's research on stress. The specialties differ more in training emphasis, settings and professional identity than in rigid boundaries.

Where I Fit

With a master's degree, I cannot practice independently as a psychologist. I could pursue a counseling license with additional coursework and supervised hours, work in I-O roles or contribute to health psychology programs as a coordinator or researcher. Mapping these five problems, and talking with our two psychologists about their own careers, clarified that the work I find most meaningful, helping patients manage chronic illness, belongs to health psychology.

Ethics Across Specialties

The five problems also raise different ethical questions. In the custody evaluation, the psychologist must make clear to the mother that the court, not she, is the client and that what she says will appear in a report. In the burnout project, an I-O psychologist would need to protect medical assistants who criticize supervisors. In the reading assessment, parents must consent and understand how results will be used. The same ethics code governs all psychologists, but who the client is, and what confidentiality means, shifts from one specialty to the next.

Specialties That Did Not Appear

The week did not bring problems for every specialty. Sport psychologists help athletes manage performance anxiety and recover from injury, neuropsychologists assess how brain injury or disease affects thinking and behavior and community psychologists work with neighborhoods and organizations on prevention. A rural health center will meet some of these needs, such as neuropsychological assessment after a stroke, by referral to specialists in Phoenix, which highlights how unevenly specialists are distributed.

What I Learned About Training

Comparing specialties also clarified how different the paths are. Clinical and counseling psychologists typically complete five to seven years of doctoral study, a year-long internship and postdoctoral supervision before licensure. School psychologists usually complete a specialist degree with a supervised internship. Many I-O psychologists work with master's degrees, and many forensic psychologists first train as clinical psychologists before specializing. Each path reflects what the work demands, and each costs years and money, which matters for a case manager deciding whether to return to school while working full time.

Conclusion

Five problems in one waiting room illustrate the range of applied psychology: clinical and counseling treatment, school assessment, health behavior change, organizational improvement and legal evaluation. Their histories, training and workforce trends differ, but in a community health center they meet daily.

References

Benjamin, L. T., Jr. (2005). A history of clinical psychology as a profession in America (and a glimpse at its future). Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1, 1-30. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.1.102803.143758

Koppes, L. L. (1997). American female pioneers of industrial and organizational psychology during the early years. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(4), 500-515. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.82.4.500

Michalski, D. S., & Kohout, J. L. (2011). The state of the psychology health service provider workforce. American Psychologist, 66(9), 825-834. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026200