• Question: What is your opinion on psychology as a science in terms of mental heath issues?

    Asked by anon-216134 to Robert, Olly, Nicola, Jasmin, Dennis, Caroline on 12 Jun 2019. This question was also asked by anon-216145.
    • Photo: Robert Dempsey

      Robert Dempsey answered on 12 Jun 2019:

      I think the beauty of Psychology in relation to Mental Health is that it can take a very scientific approach (using valid measures, controlled designs) but also look at Mental Health from a more qualitative approach looking at getting an in-depth understanding of the individual’s experience. I don’t think either approach is more valid than the other – actually, having a combination of the two is really useful to understand people’s experiences and then look at predictors of people’s symptoms. Some of the most impactful work we’ve done has been qualitative via interviews and other means to look at how people experience mental health issues and how they understand their experiences.

    • Photo: Dennis Relojo-Howell

      Dennis Relojo-Howell answered on 12 Jun 2019:

      Psychology offers many approaches when it comes to mental health. Some look at mental health issues as a medical condition; others look into the unconscious aspects that influence our mental health.

      Each perspective has its strengths and weaknesses so in order to fully understand psychology, it is important to be familiar with these different perspectives.

    • Photo: Nicola Johnstone

      Nicola Johnstone answered on 13 Jun 2019:

      It’s super informative. While psychology isn’t all about mental health, using scientific evidence to understanding how people think, feel and behave on a broad scale is very important to really understand mental health.

    • Photo: Oliver Clabburn

      Oliver Clabburn answered on 13 Jun 2019:

      I think in terms of mental health, psychology is one of the main sciences! We’ve got biology for anatomical issues like illness and disease, physics for things like climate change- i think psychology (along with neuroscience) is crucial for mental health science.

    • Photo: Jasmin Moon

      Jasmin Moon answered on 13 Jun 2019:

      Psychology is definitely needed to help understand why people get mental health issues and how best we can help ourselves and others to prevent and treat them.
      As Psychology is a science, it is a very thorough and reliable approach to investigating this.
      However, we should also not ignore the knowledge we can gain from just speaking to someone and hearing about their experiences first hand (this can still be done in a scientific way!).

    • Photo: Caroline Brett

      Caroline Brett answered on 15 Jun 2019:

      Psychology has a lot to offer in terms of mental health issues – its focus is on understanding how people think, react, behave, feel, and interact with one another. Of all the sciences it is the best equipped to inform us on where mental health difficulties come from

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