ChristianAndersonHawkenProjects2023

Outside of my main internship I spent my spare time researching the nature vs nurture argument. I originally came to this argument a few years ago when my brothers started testing it out on me without me knowing. For context My brothers are 28 and 25 years old. The argument in question is whether kids develop their social skills and traits through the environment they are raised in or if they are passed down through genetics. In my brothers experiments they came to the conclusion that we act more alike through nature, because me and my oldest brother act just alike and even use the same verbiage; even to the point that we both would look each other in the eye and say "meep". Then reading the article I found it interesting that their is an interesting connection between nature and nurture. they then described nurture as being "generally taken as the influence of external factors after conception, e.g., the product of exposure, life experiences, and learning on an individu...

 This Blog is an update more so just on how everything has been going. I started my week by making some minor revisions to the initial questionnaire after receiving feedback from patients and Dr. Turner. The revisions were primarily just to make questions clearer, change wording around to be more patient friendly, and provide more room for patients to answer questions. The next big thing I did during the week, was I went and visited my middle school Ratner. At the school I went and met with some of my old teachers along with the school's guidance counselor. I did this to gain perspective on how kids are perceived by by teachers vs how they are perceived by a trained professional in the psychological field. This was weird for seeing through the lens of the teacher having to manage a classroom full of students and notice subtle changes that give away different moods. I first thought it was weird that my teachers still knew my quirks that I had when I was in their classroom, but I was...

 During this week I took more of a receptionist type of role so I gather information through talking to incoming patients before they met with Dr. Turner. It initially started with me sparking small talk with them. Asking questions such as "how has your day been?" and "any positive experiences happen over this past week". Just small questions to brighten the mood of incoming patients, while also making the office feel like a more welcoming environment. This is important as sharing your traumatic experiences can be extremely hard for people. Especially given since for most people its hard to let somebody new into their life, and that is just for doing simple things like sharing that you have pets or siblings. So I can only imagine how hard it was to establish the bond he has with some of his patients. For example one patient who came in was carrying the trauma of having been trafficked by her mother when she was a young age. I don't know any more on the situation...

 To start the week off I was creating a sign in sheet for my mentor that asks the patients various personal questions, like the one you see when going to a new doctor for the first time, however, on this their needed to be some more personal questions due to me working for a clinical therapist. Many of the questions involving depression symptoms. The questions ask things like family history with drugs, have you ever experienced any form of abuse, and have you ever needed to be hospitalized. My next task was then to hand this form out the patients as they came in for their appointment, while Dr. Turner was seeing someone else, as a way to speed up the process and schedule for him. I learned this was extremely important because therapy sessions can last up to an hour and half maybe two hours depending on how the patient is feeling that day. Through handing these out I got to really see the people who came into his office each day. I started to quickly notice their facial expressions ...

 In this blog I will be reflecting on my first week experience with my other mentor Ms. Lisa Smith at the Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry (LMM). At the LMM I will be viewing various psychiatric organizations under the guidance of Lisa Smith, so this week we were planning and scheduling official dates for me to visit along side her. This was a little harder of a process because we have to take many legal procedures into account when interning in the realm of psychiatry. The first place we were able to get access to the department of sexual therapy. In this department I will be able to observe and even work with patients whom have been involved in all form of sexual harassments. In this experience I will be given the opportunity to hear and understand their stories. I will then be working with Ms. Lisa Smith to further understand the trauma and how she helps them bypass such distress, as I know this is a very hard topic to just forget or even get over.

 To start my week off I met with my primary mentor Dr. Turner, where I created a questionnaire for perspective patients to fill out. The questionnaire asks general health questions along a few slightly more personal questions in order to allow Dr. Turner to have a little background knowledge on his patients. Due to legal reasons I'm not allowed officially sit in on his 1 on 1 conversations with patients, so instead he will then describe to me how his conversations begin to naturally flow, along with how he builds bonds his patients. When first getting a new patient he would begin the conversation by sharing small talk details and then branching to more positive subjects that would overall brighten the patients mood. After about 10 minutes of sharing positive experiences, they make their way into talking about the initial dilemma. He proceeds with his patients in this manner due to his #1 belief in psychiatry being that "you can't tell a person how to think, you can only he...