Doctor of Clinical Psychophysiology
Applied psychophysiology focuses on the amelioration / treatment and prevention of disease through teaching people techniques for recognizing and correcting abnormal physiological levels of function and responses. The field has a long history of making major contributions to education and health care in both treatment and prevention arenas. For instance, relaxation techniques are widely recognized as being effective in both the treatment and prevention of headaches. However, the majority of the field’s techniques are only gradually making the transition from alternative medicine to mainstream medicine.
Effective incorporation of behavioral medicine techniques into the treatment of a wide variety of clinical problems has been stymied by (1) the lack of appropriate training in these techniques among educators and health care providers and (2) the frequent poor design and small sample sizes utilized in studies supporting these applications. Even those techniques which have been well documented enough to be acceptable to the health care community, such as biofeedback for urinary and fecal incontinence, have not been widely used because few health care providers are trained to apply them effectively.
This is the only doctoral program in applied psychophysiology in the world at this time. The program is designed to train people to be true professionals in the unique constellation of assessment and interventional techniques which combine to form the profession of applied psychophysiology. People already trained in education or a clinical profession will learn to knowledgeably and effectively incorporate the techniques of clinical psychophysiology into their practices.
The crucial question for people interested in this program is likely to be what they can expect to gain by taking it.
The depth of knowledge in the theory and practice of applied psychophysiology gained through the combination of courses, seminars, research, and practica which potentiate to constitute the degree is unparalleled. Our graduates are true professional applied psychophysiologists who use a unique combination of assessment and applied approaches to effectively assess, track, and treat dozens of disorders and educational problems.
The ability to accurately assess dysfunctions in patterns of physiological functioning means that the underlying basis of disorders become clear. They accurately and effectively apply a multitude of skills to unravel incredibly complex clinical problems. The ability to track changes in dysfunctional patterns through the treatment process means that our practitioners actually know whether progress is being made and can adjust their treatments to counter problems as they occur. The availability of a synergistic set of powerful interventional tools means that our graduates can tailor a wide variety of methods to meet each client’s individual needs.
Thus, our graduates are unique professionals with a multidisciplinary armamentarium providing them with the ability to know what is wrong with their clients, accurately track changes in the underlying problems throughout the interventional process, and treat the actual problem – not just the symptoms – with a powerful set of tools which they have the knowledge to apply effectively.
The program was developed and tested through the Behavioral Medicine Research and Training Foundation’s continuing education courses. Students in the program’s initial trial came from counseling, MFT, nursing, physical therapy, and social work. All but four of the courses were taught during the trial and all but two have been taught by distance education with great success. Students evaluated each course for relevant knowledge imparted, applicability to increasing clients, quality of instruction, etc. Each received high marks and some were strengthened in accordance with student suggestions after review by the program’s director. Continued course quality is assured by the Behavioral Medicine R&T Foundation’s board reviewing and approving the syllabus for each course and then reviewing comments about the course made by students during end-of-course evaluations and interviews with each faculty member.
The doctoral program is designed for two groups of people – clinicians and educators. Clinicians who are already independently licensed or certified at the Masters level will learn to use psychophysiological techniques to extend their scopes of practice within their credentials to include new types of patients with a wider variety of disorders by incorporating a wider variety of evaluative and interventional techniques into their current skill sets. Educators who have completed their bachelor’s degrees but do not have a clinical background suitable for state certification or licensure will become professional applied psychophysiologists capable of using psychophysiological assessment and interventional techniques with a wide variety of clients within the educational arena. People from the second group take three additional courses beyond the core curriculum in basic clinical skills in order to insure that they have the clinical skills needed to work with clients safely and effectively. Both groups need to recognize that applied psychophysiology is currently not certifiable or licensable in any state.
Our intent is to guide students to become true professionals in applied psychophysiology.
As students progress through our program they will have an opportunity to interact with many of the leaders in our field. Our teaching philosophy centers on the idea that our students are professionals and should be treated as such. Thus, students can expect to be on a first name basis with their instructors and – of considerable importance – we anticipate that students will be able to add to the program’s fund of knowledge as they bring their own sets of experiences to bear on the material they are learning. We anticipate that students will gain feelings of ownership for parts of the field as they advance it through their research and, eventually, clinical work using their new skills.
The program is designed to be offered mainly via distance education supported by several hands-on training sessions. The distance courses are usually provided through audiovisual lectures recorded on CDs and student – teacher interaction via the internet following each lecture. The “hands-on” sessions take place during the annual meetings of the Association for Applied Psychophysiology (AAPB) which meets once per year in various parts of the United States. This is the field’s professional organization. All students are required to join and maintain membership in the AAPB throughout the program.
Our doctoral program meets all of the requirements for doctoral programs in applied psychophysiology set by AAPB. AAPB is in the process of developing an accreditation program. As we meet the standards set for accreditation, we anticipate that our program will be accredited by AAPB when the accreditation system begins. The University of Natural Medicine (UNM) is licensed by the state of New Mexico to give the doctoral degree of clinical psychophysiology.
The core doctoral program consists of a combination of distance based lecture courses, laboratory experiences, seminars, and training experiences for a total of 90 credits. Each credit requires between 30 and 40 hours of work to earn including attending recorded lectures, doing required reading, writing papers, interacting with the instructor via phone and / or e-mail, etc. Each student will also perform a doctoral dissertation based on a publication quality, original study under the guidance of a committee consisting of a faculty chair from within the specialization and at least two doctoral level members who are subject matter experts. The number of courses taken simultaneously is at the student’s discretion up to a limit of four. It must be remembered that each requires the time commitment of a three or four credit graduate course. Matriculated students can begin courses whenever they wish and have up to one year to finish each course. The program is likely to take students three to four years to complete including the dissertation.
Everyone entering the program must have had the equivalent of undergraduate courses in (a) general biology and (b) general psychology as well as certification in Basic Life Support (CPR). Writing is a crucial part of the program. If a student cannot write at the level of a senior in college, the student will have to arrange to take a writing course before starting the program. Students’ writing skills may be assessed as part of the admissions process by having the student submit an essay on a professional topic of our choice within a set number of hours of the topic being provided to the student via e-mail.
Students are assigned a faculty advisor as soon as they join the program. The advisor will help the student choose which courses to take, assist in choosing a chair and committee for the research dissertation, and answer overall questions the student may have about the program and clinical psychophysiology. The research committee will be composed of leaders from any profession who the student and advisor identify as being able to help the student plan and conduct the doctoral dissertation. Students will do considerable practical work as part of the program. They choose who to do the work with from anyone who has the expertise needed who is willing to perform the training. Between our faculty, the research committee, and the practicum supervisors, students will have ample opportunity to work with the people most likely to help them learn the areas of most interest to them.
Our program is designed to insure that students have the knowledge base needed to practice their new skills within an educational or health care system and in private practice. Thus, students begin taking our professional development seminars via conference calls within six months of entering the program and then take clinical case discussion seminars during their second year.
The program is designed so students work on their dissertations simultaneously with taking didactic courses. This is crucial as far too many students in other programs finish taking their course work and never get their degrees because they never actually get around to finishing their dissertations. Thus, one of the first courses students take is the research course. Students start taking the dissertation planning seminar via conference calls as soon as they enter the program.
Our courses are open to anybody who is interested in taking them who meet the educational requirements for entering the program. People who are not matriculated at the UNM may be especially interested in those courses used toward certification and recertification in biofeedback and neurofeedback by the Biofeedback Certification Institute of America (BCIA) such as “A&P for Psychophysiologists”, “Recording and altering brain functions through Neurofeedback”, and “General biofeedback”. They may also be interested in courses having applications to people from diverse fields such as “Pain assessment and intervention from a psychophysiological perspective” and “Behavioral interventions for pelvic floor disorders”.
