Psychology - OU Community Online

Are you responsive to hypnotherapy? Is hypnotising people dangerous? How do you spot someone masquerading as a hypnotherapist? The OU´s Dr Peter Naish, a senior lecturer in psychology, chats to Documentally about hypnosis...

A new counselling course from the OU examines fear and sadness, two of the most common but distressing emotions that we experience, and explores the different ways of coping with them...

Counselling is currently one of the few growth industries in the UK and more people seek counselling for feelings of depression and anxiety than anything else.

The OU’s new course Counselling: exploring fear and sadness (D240) offers a comprehensive insight into how to help people work through these common issues. It’s a core course in a new Foundation Degree in Counselling, developed in association with the Counselling and Psychotherapy Central Awarding Body (CPCAB).

The course is ideal for those aiming at or considering working or volunteering as a counsellor, says course team academic Dr Andreas Vossler. “It might also appeal to people who want to develop their awareness and sensitivity of these emotions to help others, or even to those who are struggling with these feelings themselves. “Those who sign up for the course need to be prepared to do some self-reflection,” he warns, “as well as reflecting on other people’s experiences.”

The course has been created in collaboration with leading academics, practitioners and experts in the UK, and Dr Vossler said it had been a very exciting opportunity to develop the course with a new approach.

“We are trying to present a picture of how fear and sadness can be understood, how this has changed during the past 100 years, and the leading approaches used in counselling. We don’t just cover them in a general way; there’s is a lot of illustrative material giving specific examples so students can compare the way the different approaches work. Fear and sadness are very normal. Everyone will experience them during their lives – they are natural reactions to certain events. But if you have a situation where they become dominant and difficult to handle, and you are unable to cope, then this is where counselling might be very useful.”

Examples of different counselling approaches in action are a feature of the course’s online Virtual Learning Environment (VLE ), which uses video and audio material to bring the theory to life. Students get to watch a role-play scenario of a real counselling session with a therapist in each of the three main approaches (cognitivebehavioural; psychoanalytic; and person-centred/humanistic) followed by an interview with the therapist analysing the way they conducted the session and the rationale behind their approach.

New and growing trends such as online counselling and even computerised counselling forms are covered, says Dr Vossler. “On the VLE is an online counselling chat. It is in real time, giving students a taste of the rather specific challenges of online counselling – you might not get a response from your client for 10 or 20 seconds, for example. The waiting periods also gives them a chance to reflect on what their own responses would be.”

The VLE also features celebrities Stephen Fry and Trisha Goddard talking about their own experiences of fear and sadness, and the strategies they’ve used to overcome them during difficult periods.

Useful links

• Counselling: exploring fear and sadness (D240)

The Open University’s Dr Graham Pike (pictured) helps police make better use of witnesses to crime.

What does your work involve?
I conduct research into eyewitness memory and work with the police to develop new investigative procedures. Although my research uses different methods, one of the most useful is the ´mock investigation´, which involves showing a staged crime to volunteer witnesses and then seeing how well they can recall the event, or how accurately they can identify the perpetrator. Sometimes the mock investigation takes place in one of our psychology laboratories, but we also conduct field work with police services so that the investigation is conducted by officers at actual police stations.

What’s the point of it? ?
Eyewitness memory is fragile and can be very prone to error. Simply asking a question one way rather than another can have a profound effect on what an eyewitness will recall, or who they will identify. It is therefore vital that psychologists work with the police to design interviewing and identification procedures that make the most of eyewitness evidence whilst at the same time limiting the chances that an innocent suspect ends up in prison.

How do you become a criminal and legal psychologist? ?
Completing a suitable undergraduate degree in Psychology is usually the first step in any career as a psychologist. To either practice as a psychologist or to become a researcher in psychology requires further study at postgraduate level and also supervised practice.

What are the rewards? ?
The main reward for me is conducting research that actually makes a difference to people´s lives. Psychological research has helped make a big difference to how the police conduct investigations in a number of areas. This includes: the use of video identification parades so that witnesses and victims do not have to come face-to-face with perpetrators; guidelines for the construction and conduct of identity parades that reduce the chance of misidentifications leading to serious miscarriages of justice; and interviewing techniques that help witnesses recall more, and more accurate, information about the crime.

Where can I find out more?
The website of The British Psychological Society contains very useful information about careers in all areas of psychology.

Are there any relevant OU courses? ?
The OU offers Psychology courses across a broad range of levels, so there will be a suitable course for you no matter what your previous experience. You can find out more at the Psychology homepage. Of particular relevance to forensic psychology are our undergraduate degrees in: ?Psychology; ?and Criminology and Psychological Studies. And our postgraduate qualifications: ?MSc Forensic Psychology and Criminology; ?and PgDip Forensic Psychological Studies.

Gemma Briggs, a psychology lecturer at The Open University, is in the driving seat when it comes to research on the impact of mobile phone use while behind the wheel of a car.

It’s illegal to drive while talking on a mobile phone – unless it’s a hands-free conversation. But is this just as distracting to a driver? And what other things can have a negative impact on our ability to drive?

Gemma said: “The focus of my research is on mobile phone use and driving. Specifically I’m interested in how talking on a phone can affect an individual’s attention for and perception of a driving situation.

“The research we’ve carried out so far looks at individual aspects of the different tasks – for example, asking whether a more emotionally involving conversation is more distracting than a more mundane one.

“We test participants using a driving simulator and take measurements of their reaction time for hazards, their eye movements whilst driving, and the number of driving errors they make.

“Taken together, findings so far have shown that regardless of whether you use a hand held or a hands free mobile phone, you are around four times more likely to be involved in an accident if you dual task when driving.”

Want to find out more? Then watch this video in which Gemma talks about how a driving simulator and the game Grand Theft Auto are helping with her research and how, indirectly, a fear of spiders can impair your driving…
 

Useful links

• Study with the OU - psychology