Posted: September 6th, 2022

Practicum Journal Entry

instructions:
Practicum – Journal Entry
1. In 1- to 2-pages, reflect on a patient who presented with a behavioral or mental health issue during your Practicum experience.
2. Describe your experience in assessing and managing the patient and his or her family.
3. Include details of your “aha” moment in identifying the patient’s behavioral or mental health issue.
4. Then, explain how the experience connected your classroom studies to the real-world clinical setting.
5. If you did not have an opportunity to evaluate a patient with this background during the last 5 weeks, you may select a related case study from a reputable source or reflect on previous clinical experiences.
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Practicum Journal Entry
The selected patient is a 21-year old Hispanic female who presented to the healthcare facility with symptoms related to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The symptoms included anxiety, depressed mood, and avoidance of situations that bring flashbacks of traumatic activities (Shalev et al., 2017). Diagnosis of the condition involves re-experiencing the trauma and stress for over three months. She narrated that her mother was a drunkard and her father was abusing drugs. The parents had neglected their duties and often physically abused her. The management of the condition was effective in using cognitive behavior therapy to change the beliefs and alleviate fear and stress in the patient (Roberts et al., 2019).
The ‘aha’ moments involved how easily she was startled when I locked the door since she left it open when she entered the office. She was startled since she is afraid of closed doors. According to the patient she has been abused by her parents when they close all doors leaving no room for her to escape. Another moment was the overreaction since she cried regularly during the session. The session took longer since she could sob when she recounted the physical abuse.
The event was related to classroom studies to real-world settings since the symptoms of PTSD were evident. Despite the varying degree of the symptoms, one of the best therapies learned in class was cognitive behavior therapy (Williamson et al., 2017). The therapy is applicable in real-life settings since it articulates a change of beliefs and reducing problems related to depression. It is also effective in vulnerable populations (Schweizer et al., 2017). The classroom lessons also encouraged the application of trauma-sensitive sessions to achieve better results among young adults. The experience was essential in applying classroom lessons practically.

References
Roberts, N. P., Kitchiner, N. J., Kenardy, J., Robertson, L., Lewis, C., & Bisson, J. I. (2019). Multiple session early psychological interventions for the prevention of post‐traumatic stress disorder. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (8).
Schweizer, S., Samimi, Z., Hasani, J., Moradi, A., Mirdoraghi, F., & Khaleghi, M. (2017). Improving cognitive control in adolescents with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Behaviour Research and Therapy, 93, 88-94.
Shalev, A., Liberzon, I., & Marmar, C. (2017). Post-traumatic stress disorder. New England Journal of Medicine, 376(25), 2459-2469.
Williamson, V., Creswell, C., Fearon, P., Hiller, R. M., Walker, J., & Halligan, S. L. (2017). The role of parenting behaviors in childhood post-traumatic stress disorder: A meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 53, 1-13.

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