Social Work

CATERINA LOMBARDO

The class aims to teach students the fundamental theoretical models of dynamic psychology. In this direction, the approach to the discipline will be based on the most accredited and internationally shared scientific literature. All the main psychic processes and mechanisms that characterize the personality, emotional and affective experience, behavior and intersubjective relationships will be analysed. Through lectures, clinical case studies and discussions on issues of social importance, students will develop knowledge and models of interpretation of phenomena useful for the development and implementation of intervention and prevention practices of the risk of mental illness and deviance, the promotion of personal well-being and psychological health.

Critical skills of understanding and a good level of motivation to learn and work in group are pre-requisites for the comprehension and good performance at examination.

Lectures could be integrated with several practical activities, where students can participate with individual works and/or in little groups.
The first part of the course (about 12 hours) will be dedicated to the description of the figure of clinical psychologist and to its characteristics in comparison to other professionals working in the field of mental health (i.e. counsellor, psychiatrist, psychotherapist); it will be discussed the overcoming of old antithesis, such as mind-body, nature-culture, conscious-unconscious, instinct-reason. Students will also study in detail research methods in clinical psychology, psychometry, and validity of measurements.
The second part of the course (about 36 hours) will introduce the main mental disorders and some clinical approaches useful to the social workers. In this part, several topics of interest for the social workers like burn-out, placebo-nocebo effect, TSO will be addressed.

The main handbook is
A.M. Kring, G.C. Davison, J.M. Neale, S.L. Johnson. Psicologia clinica. Zanichelli. 5° edizione italiana condotta sulla tredicesima edizione americana.
Supplementry materials will be provided on e-learning.

The course will mainly be conducted through lectures supported by power point presentations. Practical exercises will eventually integrate the work during classess. Examples of exercises are comenting on a scientific paper, reading/observation of clinical cases, observation, participation to clinical research projects, etc.

Attendance is mandatory. Only 25% of absences are allowed. Presence will be taken by the teacher.

The exam is written with 24 multiple-choice questions and 2 open questions. All questions concern both the educational materials and PowerPoint presentations made available on e-learning and topics present in the manual. Students will have 50 minutes for completing the test.
The final mark will be the result of the score got in the multiple-choice questions (1 point for each correct answer, no penalty for mistakes) and those obtained in the open questions (maximum 8 points). Honours will be assigned to students who will have a score higher than 30.
The test is aimed at evaluating both the critical reasoning skills and knowledge acquired.

1) In the definition of mental disorder, disability indicates:
a) impairment in some important area of ​​the individual's life
b) sensory or motor impairment
c) psychological distress associated with the disorder
d) violation of the social norms of the community in which the individual lives

3) Khun calls paradigm:
a) The set of theories to which a discipline refers
b) The set of assumptions on which a theory is based
c) The set of methods consensually used within a discipline
d) All of the above