Students Use Simulator in Therapy Study

Like pilots who train in a flight simulator without the danger of a crash, student psychotherapists now have a simulator to learn how to counsel seriously depressed patients without worrying about triggering a suicide.

Eugene Mead, Brigham Young University professor of family sciences, created a videodisc computer program that puts students face-to-face with society’s most common mental illness victim, a woman suffering long-term depression.

The major difference between the simulation and real life is that when the session ends, the student can reassure himself, “It’s only a movie.”

Can Make Mistakes

“With the videodisc, the student can make a lot of mistakes and try a lot of things without hurting anybody,” Mead said. “It’s the equivalent of a psychotherapy cadaver in the sense (that)they can practice with the simulation and not run the risk of having something happen in a real human being’s life.”

Mead said he picked clinical depression for the first videodisc training program because “depression is the common cold of mental health.”

In the video, an actress portrays a woman patient entering a waiting room. She self-consciously introduces herself. At this point, the student at the computer keyboard assumes the role of a psychotherapist and decides how to respond.

Within the next few minutes, the therapist finds himself counseling the woman about her relationship with her husband and son and, depending on how the session goes, suicide.

Deadly Potential

The videodisc simulates a common counseling situation, Mead said--one with a deadly potential if handled incorrectly.

The student responds to the patient’s statements into a tape recorder, then chooses an option from the computer keyboard that best characterizes his answer as “rapport, probing, guided discovery or self-disclosure.” Depending on the student’s selection, the program branches into another client statement.

If a student’s response is completely wrong, the screen flashes:”Try again.”

Immediate Feedback

The script for the videodisc is based on videotapes of actual interviews conducted by Dr. Timothy Beck, a Philadelphia psychiatrist and national authority on depression.