When Sarah Ravin first went to college she wanted to be a writer, so she
started off by majoring in English.
"Then in my first year of college I took a psychology course to fulfill
a science requirement, and I just loved it, I absolutely loved it," says Ravin.
"So from my first year of college, that's when I started majoring in psychology,
and I knew from that point that I wanted to be a psychologist, and then the
child aspect of it came later. I was well into my PhD program before I started
specializing in kids."
Ravin was 24 or 25 when she made the decision to focus on helping children
and teens. It was the result of getting clinical experience with young people.
Ravin helps young people with many different issues such as eating disorders,
depression and anxiety. As well, the effects of technology on
relationships and mental health are a growing area of concern.
"I've recognized just over the last five to 10 years how much kids use
electronic communications and how many problems result from that," says Ravin.
"Kids, for example, will completely isolate themselves and have no face-to-face
relationships but have a 'boyfriend' who lives across the country, and they're
very, very serious, but yet they've never met...
"And it really does, I think, have a really big impact on kids' mental
health because they've don't have a good sense of boundaries," Ravin adds.
"They don't really know how to communicate face to face and yet they have
these Facebook pages where they reveal their darkest secrets to 3,000 of their
closest friends, most of whom they've never met. I think that's been a big
change in society that I think has had a big impact on kids' mental health
and well-being."
The ability to communicate face to face is not only important for teens.
It's also an essential skill for child psychologists.
"I think an ability to listen actively [is essential], and to listen actively
I mean not just hearing but really attempting to understand what the other
person is saying and where the other person is coming from and communicate
to them that you understand," says Ravin. "I think that's huge."
David Day has known since Grade 10 that he wanted to be a psychologist.
He's a social psychologist who studies children and youth. He has worked at
two children's mental health centers and has been a director of research at
a center for children and families.
Day describes his research work as "systematic curiosity." He likes that
his work allows him to follow his curiosity wherever it goes.
"The quality that I think goes into making a researcher or a clinician,
either one, is curiosity about people," says Day. "To understand the motives
underlying people's behavior. How can people be so mean? How can people say
mean things to each other? Hurt other people in the playground?
"The curiosity is what drives any scientist or clinician, in any field,"
Day adds. "We train psychologists in terms of what's called a scientist-practitioner
model, so to be a clinician you have to be, yes, trained in how to do therapy
but you also need to be trained as a scientist as well. And that scientist
part is driven by curiosity."
Although Day is not a clinician, he works with clinicians as a professor
in the psychology department at a university. His wife also happens to be
a clinical psychologist.
"I think that becoming a clinician is almost like a calling," says Day.
"There are skills to be a good clinician that you cannot teach in university,
and so we screen very carefully our applicants to the clinical program."
Day says clinicians should have warmth, sincerity, a comfort level with
people and intellectual curiosity.
"That's what makes a good clinician, and it's hard to find," says Day.
"We have clinicians who are bright, bright people, but interpersonally maybe
there's some social anxiety or they're not so intuitive, they're more by the
book. They learn treatment by rote and they may become clinicians, but the
best clinicians are the ones that can marry the genuineness, the warmth, the
interpersonal skills... with a high degree of intellectual curiosity. That's
the recipe for a good clinician."
Robert Naseef is the co-founder of a counseling service that assists children,
adolescents and adults. He decided to become a psychologist in his early 30s
while working as a teacher.
"I taught a broad range of kids," says Naseef. "Some of them had behavioral
problems, some of them had learning problems, and I was just struck by how
education itself didn't answer their needs. I became more interested in the
kids as individuals and what made them tick, so that took me toward psychology."
Another factor was that around that time his oldest son was diagnosed with
autism. Naseef now assists a lot of teens with autism. He says helping children
and teens is very fulfilling.
"To make a difference in somebody's life is just such a wonderful feeling,"
says Naseef.
"When you can do something to help a child, that can help [them] through
their lifetime," Naseef says. "You can help a problem to be solved before
it worsens, before it becomes harder and harder to solve. There's just an
incredibly satisfying feeling to be able to help a child overcome some obstacles
and develop the kind of skills and resilience that's going to help them through
life."
The positive side of being a child psychologist is balanced by the fact
that there's only so much you can do.
"Sometimes kids are in really challenging situations either within families
or communities or schools and some of the social problems they face can also
seem insurmountable," says Naseef. "That can be difficult working as a psychologist,
when you just come up against your limits -- like, say, a child living in
an inner city going to a really sub-par school in a neighborhood where there's
violence.
"You can help them but you can't rescue them, so that part can be heartbreaking
as well," says Naseef. "So it's mixed, but overall it's really rewarding to
make a difference in a child's life."