A group of US and UK colleagues have published an interesting qualitative study about the challenges and resiliency of military mental health professionals (MMHPs). They had a small non-representative sample of British MMHPs who had completed a period of deployment in Iraq between 2003-2005. For the study, they participated in detailed interviews about their experiences practicing in a deployment setting. The authors did a nice job pulling together themes from the interviews in order to develop a conceptual model for the goals, challenges, and resources, and to draw out some recommendations about training and planning. Recommended:McCauley, M., Liebling-Kalifani, H., & Hughes, J. H. (2011). Military Mental Health Professionals On Operational Deployment: An Exploratory Study. Community Mental Health Journal. doi:10.1007/s10597-011-9407-8
CTL Blog
C
ommitment to Living (CTL) is a practical and compassionate approach for responding to suicide risk. Dr. Anthony R. Pisani developed and tested CTL as a three-hour workshop geared toward busy clinicians in challenging clinical environments. The workshop teaches core competencies in suicide risk assessment, documentation, and decision-making. This weblog originated in 2007 in response to interest from participants in ongoing education and interaction. At the present time, Dr. Pisani posts to the blog intermittently, and uses it as a repository for commentaries and links that might be helpful to workshop participants, as well as to clinicians around the world who visit and comment.