Student Experiences of Psychosis: Cultural Alienation, Meaning-Making, and Systems of Care- 1:30-2pm The Storm That Helps You Notice How Far You Are From Land: International Students Whose Extreme Experiences Helped Us to Identify and Address Forms of Social and Cultural Alienation - Olivia Wills
- 2-2:30pm Countertransference and Containment in Acute Response Strategies for Students Presenting With Psychosis in University Residence Hall Contexts - Neil Haran, MS, Rachel Rahman, BA
The Storm That Helps You Notice How Far You Are From Land: International Students Whose Extreme Experiences Helped Us to Identify and Address Forms of Social and Cultural Alienation - Olivia Wills
In this presentation, I (a therapist in a college counseling center) will look at the work that two international college students and I did to unpack their extreme experiences. For these two international students, the extreme experiences were calling attention to alienation from aspects of self and community that had occurred as a part of their move/immigration to the United States. Unpacking the experiences invited critical meaning making and potentially, re-connection to what vitalized these two incredible individuals. In one case, we will reach back two layers of immigration in order for the client to make meaning of his choices during the extreme experience; he will identify a strong urge to connect back to a “natural self” that was polluted in his desire to connect to American Blackness, his desire to connect with peers in a large American community. This “pollution” or process of contortion led to him feeling even more isolated, and to him craving connection, at the end of four years. In the other case, a student will meet her darkest and most violent sounding voice yet and this voice, we learn together, was beckoning her home to her family and to a version of community and professional success that she had left behind in her native country. (Clients have signed consent, but information will be de-identified).
Countertransference and Containment in Acute Response Strategies for Students Presenting With Psychosis in University Residence Hall Contexts - Neil Haran, MS, Rachel Rahman, BA
The literature on best practices for crisis response for psychosis largely revolves around psychiatric/medical, emergency medical service provision, or law enforcement contexts. However, for the majority of American residential college students experiencing crises involving psychosis, their first responders are likely non-clinical university staff such as administrators or resident assistants, many of whom do not have specific training, academic backgrounds, or routine interactions with individuals experiencing psychosis. The absence of this background or training may lend itself to worse quality of care and escalatory response strategies by way of service-providers’ sense of unpreparedness and emotional dysregulation; this may further result in negative emotional contagion and escalation/agitation in service user populations during interventions. These consequences are associated with higher rates of coercive use of force and involuntary hospitalization for service users. Additionally, available mental health first aid training(s) may provide unrealistic depictions of individuals experiencing psychosis and emphasize unilateral control of the individual in crisis as the stated goal of intervention rather than service-provider self-regulation and management. In this presentation, we propose that psychoeducational training which emphasizes a mechanistic and empathetic understanding of psychosis and agitation, as well containment of both service provider and service user psychological states can be useful to accomplish the best outcomes for both service users and responding service providers. These outcomes will ideally reduce coercive hospitalizations and interactions with institutional entities, and drive better outcomes and service-user experience across the full continuum of care.
