Psychologists Promote Physical and Mental Health

DR. DOROTHY W. CANTOR
is a clinical psychologist in private practice.

Dorothy Cantor, PsyD, likes to help people solve their problems. Her work as a clinical psychologist with a private practice in New Jersey allows her plenty of opportunity to do so. She helps individuals from teenagers to octogenarians, and some couples, with varied psychological or relationship concerns.

Dr. Cantor earned her PsyD, a professional psychology doctorate, in 1976, was licensed in 1978, and since then has practiced psychodynamic therapy, which assumes that a person's early years are a critical part of their current problem and explores them in the context of the patient-therapist relationship.

Coordinating with psychiatrists if medication is involved, she says, “I listen with the ear of someone who is trained to understand the dynamics of what the person is saying, and respond with comments that are both artful and theory based, to help the person see things differently.”

Psychology wasn't Dr. Cantor's first career. “I was originally trained to teach because that's what most women who went to college in the 1950s did,” she says. Beginning when her children were in preschool, she earned two master's degrees (in reading education and school psychology) at New Jersey's Kean College. She went on to earn the newly offered PsyD, a doctoral degree designed for people who want to practice psychology, at Rutgers University's Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology.

Says Dr. Cantor, “It was important that the schools I attended be close to home so that I could combine my education with being a mom. . . . and Rutgers is 35 minutes from home!”

Dr. Cantor earned her doctorate so that she could be licensed to have a clinical private practice. “As a school psychologist, I did a lot of the assessing of problems, but never got to help alleviate them,” she says.

To be a good psychologist, says Dr. Cantor, you should be a good listener, nonjudgmental, smart, and “flexible to apply scientific theory to people in a non-formulaic way, which takes a certain creativity.” She advises students entering the field to prepare for many years of education, all the way to the doctorate. Still, she says, “The rewards are just so great. It's so gratifying to be helpful to people on an ongoing basis.”

Dr. Cantor is also past president of the American Psychological Association and current president of the American Psychological Foundation. This much-honored psychologist has written many articles and several books, including Women in Power (with Dr. Toni Bernay), What Do You Want to Do When You Grow Up? And Finding Your Voice. And she has appeared as an expert on many television shows, including Good Morning America, Prime Time Live, and the Today show.

What lies ahead? Dr. Cantor expects psychology to become more of a part of the bigger health care system, as people come to understand how mind and body interact. “I hope that people will go for mental-health checkups the way they go for physical health checkups,” she says.

As for her career, she says, “My role model is an 87-year-old colleague who's still practicing. I plan to write a few more books. And then, as always, I'll see what opportunities present themselves. There are just so many opportunities for psychologists.”

DR. DANIEL ABRAHAMSON
is a clinical psychologist, a consultant, and a researcher.

It's important to pick a career that suits your temperament and your likes and dislikes. I grew up in a family that values helping people who are less fortunate and less able to take care of themselves. So psychology was a natural choice for me. I studied clinical psychology in graduate school.

I also went into psychology because I thought it would provide more variety than any other field I'm aware of. I am an administrator, consultant, and researcher. I see patients, work in the community, and am involved with professional groups such as the American Psychological Association. Furthermore, I am surrounded by colleagues who share my excitement.

At the Traumatic Stress Institute, a private health organization in South Windsor, Connecticut, which I helped found, we deal with trauma—everything from natural disasters and industrial accidents to physical and sexual abuse. The institute is a new kind of model for independent practice because we do more than sit in an office for 50 minutes of psychotherapy with a patient—although we do that, too. But we also do research, training, and community education to help traumatized individuals get their lives back on track as quickly as possible. We reassure people who experience trauma that their responses are normal so that they don't think they're going crazy. If it's a young person, we might also work with teachers and administrators in the schools.

We advocate for public policy that provides services and secures rights for those who have experienced traumatic events. We work with the legal system to help people get disability and victim's assistance. One of our psychologists is involved in forensic work, helping judges and attorneys sort out issues about traumatic events that are not always clear-cut in the courtroom. For example, why might someone delay the reporting of a rape or other violent crime?

We also develop psychological measures to try to understand the impact of trauma on the lives of individuals, families, and communities. And we research the types of treatments that are most effective.

In terms of prevention, we work with businesses smart enough to realize that a traumatic situation, such as an industrial accident, can occur. In such cases, we prepare the key people in the organization to respond in a way that not only reduces the immediate impact of the situation but also the long-term consequences.

Five years from now, I hope I'll be doing more work on the significant problems in the working world. As companies modernize and prepare for the 21st century, psychologists can help them figure out how to treat people in a way that allows them to maintain their dignity and to keep themselves productive members of the work world. In this way we can avoid some really serious problems in corporate America.

I can't think of a single part of our culture, a single part of the world that we live in, where psychology doesn't have something to contribute. I get excited when I think that I can make a difference in somebody's life. I love the field.

DR. CAROL MANNING
is a neuropsychologist and a university professor.

My doctoral degree was in clinical psychology. I do clinical work, research, and teaching at the University of Virginia. All three aspects of my career are very important to me.

For example, I work in a memory disorders clinic as part of a team of neurologists, nurses, and medical technicians. I oversee patient treatment apart from medication. What I learn in my research, I use in my clinical practice. And in my clinical practice, I learn the important questions to ask in my research.

One of my patients who has Alzheimer's disease is in a clinical drug trial involving an experimental medication. No one knows if he is receiving medication or a placebo, which is something that looks like the medication but actually isn't anything at all.

I assess this gentleman periodically and also talk with his wife occasionally to determine whether his condition has changed. I test his ability to remember things, and I look to see if the kinds of judgments he makes are the same kinds of judgments you or I would make. I test his ability to know the time and the date and the place—to see if he knows generally where he is. I look at his ability to copy drawings and also to remember those drawings. I also check his attention span.

Computers are becoming increasingly important in all kinds of science, including psychology. A lot of psychology now involves programming models to understand the networks of the brain. I use computers to run experiments. This morning I tested a patient's spatial memory, where he had to remember where words were placed on the screen. I also use computers for statistics—to figure out what my data means.

I teach in the Department of Neurology, and some of my work involves supervising graduate students. It's most important that my students are truly interested in psychology and in the projects they're working on. They need to think creatively, they need to be determined, and they need to work thoroughly and carefully.

I'm helping one graduate student learn to do therapy and to assess patients. Another graduate student works with me on research studies. She helps me guide people through the research program on the computer. She analyzes data, and she's learned to do statistics and how to design studies. We write papers together for publication.

If you're interested in psychology, I'd advise you to take psychology courses as an undergraduate. And try to work in a research laboratory so that you can get some insight into what the field is really like.

Many of today's students are encouraged to take time off between undergraduate and graduate school because it's a long haul and it takes a lot of determination. Sometimes I think it's nice for people to have a break in there. It takes persistence to earn a doctorate in psychology, along with a great interest in psychological research, science, and people. It takes a long time—but I think it's well worth it!

DR. BARBARA A. BRAUER
is a clinical psychologist and a mental health program administrator.

I was born in Evanston, Illinois, the oldest of three children. Apparently, I was born deaf. We don’t know what caused it. There is no deafness in the family records, and my sister and brother both hear.

When I was about two and a half years old, I was sent to the Lutheran School for the Deaf, in Detroit. When my parents thought that I had learned all I could there, they enrolled me in the Evanston public school system. Thus I was mainstreamed into the sixth grade at the age of 10.

It worked out beautifully for me. The first year I had a special education assistant to help me make the transition. One of the first things that struck me was that I was getting a far superior education than at a school for the deaf.

After the first year, I was on my own. I now wonder how I ever did it. It wasn’t too bad when I was in high school because most of the lectures were in the textbooks. In college, however, much of what the professors were saying was not in the texts. There were no interpreters in those days, so I’d borrow my classmates’ notes and type them up fast so I could return them. (It was before there were photocopy machines!)

In a high school civics class, I saw some films about possible professions, and psychiatry caught my eye. However because medical schools in those days did not admit deaf people, I decided to go into psychology. I got a master’s in counseling from Columbia University, a doctorate in educational psychology from New York University, and did an internship in clinical psychology at Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, DC.

Today, there are about 25 deaf psychologists in the country. I was one of the first three “pioneers,” and also the first deaf woman to become a psychologist. I worked for 12 years in a unit for deaf people at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, where I did individual, group, and family therapy, and program evaluation. Then I came to the mental health research program at Gallaudet University; Gallaudet is the only 4-year liberal arts college in the world for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

In addition to teaching, I also did research at Gallaudet on translating paper-and-pen types of psychological tests into sign language for videotape format so that deaf people can take these tests on computers anywhere. (Four tests have been translated.) Deaf people, by and large, cannot read at the level required to understand the questions on the psychological test, especially the idioms. For example, one test has a question that asks: “Do you sometimes feel like you are all thumbs?” Deaf people don’t understand that question.

After 14 years, I moved into administration and now direct the Community Counseling and Mental Health Clinic at Gallaudet. This clinic, the first of its kind, was established primarily to train deaf students in counseling and clinical psychology.

A psychologist doesn’t have to be deaf to work well with deaf clients, but must master sign language and know about and understand deafness, deaf people, and deaf culture. By the same token, it is not easy for a student who is deaf to become a psychologist because mastery of the English language is required, particularly to write a thesis. It is only in recent years that some clinical psychology programs have started admitting deaf students. But there is a big demand for psychologists to work with the deaf, and jobs are available.

DR. LYNN REHM
is a clinical psychologist, a researcher, and a university professor.

I always had an interest in science. As a math major at the University of Southern California, I worked on a research project using some fairly complex mathematical and statistical approaches to try to understand the nature of intelligence. I liked the idea of applying mathematics to complex human problems.

I decided to do my doctoral work in clinical psychology partly because the field is so broad; there are roles for clinical psychologists in virtually every setting. I like that. For example, I see patients and also supervise graduate students who see patients. I also teach abnormal psychology at the University of Houston and work with graduate students on their research.

In addition, I do research. It’s exciting to design a project, study a problem, reap the data, and then be able to look at the numbers and detect a pattern. Such research helps us better understand what we’re doing in treatment and the nature of various kinds of problems that people have.

My particular interest is clinical depression: how it occurs, who develops depression and why, and how the illness can be treated. Clinical depression involves more than just feeling blue. It’s a change in mood that won’t go away and interferes with daily functioning. Some of the symptoms are fatigue, loss of appetite, difficulty in sleeping, and loss of interest in sex.

Depression has its roots in a person’s psychological and biological make-up as well as in the person’s environment. Depression is a common problem and one that many people don’t recognize, even though they themselves may be severely depressed or living or working with a depressed person.

I have also become interested in how to detect depression in different settings. I’ve worked with school children to try to prevent depression. I’ve consulted with staff at a correctional facility to set up a depression treatment program for prisoners. I’m now working in a Veterans Administration hospital, where we look at depression in posttraumatic stress disorder.

I’ve developed a therapy program that takes a cognitive–behavioral approach to help people overcome depression by teaching them about the nature of depression itself and how to change some of the pieces that make up the disorder.

I find working with depression rewarding because this mood disorder is eminently treatable. You see changes in patients, in their outlook on life, and in their view of themselves.

It’s great, for example, to see the return of a sense of humor in a patient because it is often one of the best indicators that he or she is getting better.

Depression also has an effect on loved ones who want so much to offer help and encouragement but find it frustrating and difficult to live with a depressed person. So when a patient improves, you also see gratifying changes in the whole family.

DR. RODNEY HAMMOND
is a health psychologist and a violence-prevention program administrator.

I had always wanted to work in the community on real-world problems. As a health psychologist focusing on violence, I can do that.

When I started as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, I hadn’t decided on my major. But, to help finance my education, I took a part-time job in a child development research program sponsored by the psychology department. There, I observed young inner-city children in settings designed to enhance their learning. I saw first-hand the contributions psychology can make, and I knew I wanted to be a psychologist.

After completing undergraduate work in psychology, I went on to earn my doctorate, focusing on children, both in school and in the community. When I graduated, there was no such thing as a health psychologist. I started as an assistant professor in a doctoral program in school psychology at the University of Tennessee. But soon, I went on to direct a children’s program at Meharry Medical College in Nashville. As a psychologist in a medical setting, I could help children with health problems and also help their families and the physicians who worked with them.

At Meharry, I was in charge of an extensive and innovative program with an interdisciplinary staff. We worked with children who had developmental disabilities, dealt with child abuse and neglect, developed partial hospitalization for children with emotional problems, and created prevention programs for youth at risk. Following that position, I became assistant dean at the Wright State University School of Professional Psychology in Ohio, where I trained clinical psychologists and directed a program, PACT (Positive Adolescent Choices Training) to prevent homicide and violence among minority youth.

Today, I am the director of the Division of Violence Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Through the Division of Violence Prevention, I oversee the work of the CDC to prevent injuries and deaths caused by violence. The division, with its budget of more than $90 million, manages research, surveillance, and programs in intentional injury; homicide; suicide; youth, family, and intimate partner violence prevention; and rape and sexual assault prevention.

As director of this CDC division, I oversee the world’s largest contingent of public health experts and scientists in the world working on violence issues and prevention. These experts and scientists work in a variety of fields, including medicine, sociology, anthropology, criminology, and epidemiology. I am also involved in global efforts to prevent violence through the World Health Organization and PanAmerican Health Organization.

Through my work, I’ve been able to achieve a career level unprecedented by a psychologist—I am the first psychologist to serve as the director of a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As you can see from my experience and background, my early work as a health psychologist was the basis for, but just the beginning of, this adventure. Psychology is much more than the traditional roles you may be aware of. When you think of a career in psychology, think beyond those limited roles!

^Back to Careers in Psychology