Social Quirk

It's challenging to enter social work school without any background in psychology. My first weeks at NYU's School of Social Work were tough because many folks were already familiar with a lot of the theory professors discussed. To boot, I'm supposed to start as a social work intern a couple weeks in, when I'm not entirely clear what that role entails and how to engage a client.

It's great to be on the other side of that. I worked through that experience and saw the other side of it, gaining a certain level of confidence. But I still often wished this summer that I could sit in on some individual and group work that I could reflect on and emulate (rather than just critique, as I'm prone to).

There are videos around, but any social work student will tell you, it seems like there was a boom in training videos for psychologist and social workers in the 80s that finished in the early 90s. You're hard pressed to find a video that doesn't include big hair.

I got lucky this year with my field placement, though I did advocate pretty hard to get a placement of that kind after last year. I wanted a clinical placement (in contrast to my case management placement last year), with an interdisciplinary team and like case conferencing and psychopharmalogical training. I not only got that (interning at Montefiore Medical Center), but we also have groups in front of a two way mirror. My first few weeks, I watched a bunch of groups held by to psychiatric residents, discussing issues with the clinical director during the groups and with the residents after the groups.

But still, many concepts are hard to get a grasp on. One neat website I came across, that seems very useful is The Psych Files where a clearly eccentric doctor of psychology provides basic tutorials in concepts, theory and practice in clear, understandable language.

Here's a sample:

One my favorite parts of the site is the Audio Psychology Test Prep Tool which gives basic explanations of psychotherapeutic concepts and disorders. It's simplified and clear. While that means it's incredibly limited, it does make it easy to learn the language and then build from there.

Another place to look is the YouTube pages for Psychotherapy.net (here) which has 45 training videos and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (here) which has 56 videos.

Other interesting places to look - the Minds on the Edge, a program that started airing on PBS this month, provides a full-length, online program on issues around severe mental illness in America.

Readers, have any of you found good resources that are publicly available?