Ashlee Petranovich- Clinical and School Psychology Internship (Murray State University) Week Five

Hello everyone! I hope that my blog post finds you well. My name is Ashlee Petranovich and I am currently in Murray, Kentucky attending Murray State University. While I am here on my internship I will be collaborating with four different programs that are focused on mental health, school safety, school psychology, and psychological assessments. These programs are indirectly or directly associated with the College of Education and Human Services at Murray State. The work that I will be completing in the next 7 weeks aligns with the following bullet points:

• Grant implementation experience through the MSU/WKEC Mental Health Providers Academy grant
• Counseling and assessment experience shadowing school psychology interns as they complete screening for and diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder in youth clients
• Assisting faculty with literature reviews on manuscripts and grants
• Website enhancements for KY School Safety
• Assisting the Center for Student Engagement and Success
• Sharing my perspective and knowledge

*Due to confidentiality and working with human subjects I am limited in what exactly it is that I can write about/post pictures of*

This week’s blog post will be fairly short! This week was quiet with numerous no-shows to the clinic and cancellation of class. Regardless, I had so much fun and learned lots. 

MONDAY, JUNE 25TH 

I headed over to the clinic today and was happy that there was a showing at the clinic. Today’s client was under the age 5 and was nonverbal. Because of the child being non-verbal we had to integrate new tests for the child such as the WNV (Wechsler Nonverbal Scale of Ability), EVT-3 (Expressive Verbal Test), PPVT-5 (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test), and the ADOS-2 test which I have written about before. I still have a lot to learn about these tests but I understand the purpose of each test and will go further into each one. Before I do so, I will talk about some of the behaviors the child held, along with my experience of the day.

If any day was going to be a day to teach me a lesson about the duality of children behavior- it would be today. The child was not having it today and was overall a very anxious kid. It was clear that the child did not want to be testing and was uncomfortable with the presence of others. Child was crying and humming as they did so. I tried to be in the same room as the child, but I learned that with as many bodies as there were in the room, it was too stimulating for the child. I stepped out and waited outside as the child was trying to calm down. The child was not aggressive in their actions but had a tendency to swat at the examiner and door because the child was not comfortable. This continued on for around six minutes before the grad students decided to pull the child from the room and bring them back to the parents. This soothed the child and we were able to proceed with testing. It went from 100 to 0 very quickly and a calm behavior was inconsistent as the day went on. Some days in testing, you have smooth days where the child is anxious but willing to cooperate OR you have high intense days where tantrums are constant. You have to be really flexible for the child and work to make the child feel more comfortable and accommodate to their needs.

The WNV test is a nonverbal measure of ability for culturally and linguistically diverse groups. This helps for people who are neither English language nor Spanish language-language proficient and for those who have language considerations. The child is not expected to speak and the examiner does not speak as much as they normally do. This test has subtests that handle matrices, object assembly, coding, recognition, spatial span, and picture arrangements.

The EVT-3 test was not considered for the child after the WNV was administered since it was a verbal test and nonverbal was the way that the examiners needed to do.

ThePPVT-5 is an individually administered measure of receptive vocabulary based on words in standard English. This helps with the CAARS test but the child was deemed unfit for this test.

The child was very interactive with the ADOS test, which is a common theme for children. It allows for free play and the examiner to get a grasp for how the child interacts in a social/playful environment. Something that stuck out to me while testing was the amount of echoed language that was used by the child. The child would repeat some words or phrases and misconstrue them.

bee and dog

TUESDAY—THURSDAY, JUNE 26TH-29TH

These days were spent at home rather than the clinic because there were no-shows and a cancellation of class for this week. I spent this time working on reading up on some of the books I checked out for my online internship. These were centered on sports psychology and I had the opportunity to learn more about the mental attitude that is needed for athletes. As I continue to learn more from these books and get deeper into their content- I’ll be sure to write what I learn.

In addition to this, I finished off my project with the Kentucky Center for School Safety by working on their website and graphic posters. I sent over my work to them and await on a response! I enjoyed this project because I was able to look over the resources that are provided for schools no matter the topic; whether it be sexual assault, suicide, drugs, or gangs.

Saylor says hi!

KCSS Design bookmark

Sealed with a kiss and hug!

FRIDAY, JUNE 30TH

Today was a day where I did not go to the clinic and had the day off. My aunt also took the day off and we decided to go hit up some of the antique stores up at Hazel, which was only a 30 minute drive. There were around five different stores that we went into and it was so fun! I got one thing for my dad, which I can’t spoil what it is! It was so nice to be with my aunt for the day and enjoy looking at items that made us feel nostalgic. If only I had all the money in the world I would have bought a lot more things.

When I got home I spent time relaxing and worked on my blog. While I did this, I watched a movie called Thank you for Your Service, a true story about three Iraq War veterans who are actively trying to readjust to civilian life, all the while battling with the traumas of war. This movie was an emotional one for me as I watched the mental turmoil that veterans go through. This movie encouraged me to learn more about the mental health conditions that are shared among veterans. This allowed me to learn more about how anxiety, paranoia, PTSD, depression, and schizophrenia are inflicted to veterans in some cases. I would like to learn more about the hallucinations and PTSD on a neurological level; what is happening to the brain while these episodes occur.

https://www.research.va.gov/topics/mental_health.cfm#:~:text=Older%20Veterans%20actually%20scored%20better,12.3%20percent%20for%20non%2DVeterans. 

To end the day, I worked on getting some of my belongings put together in box to send home. This way, I can avoid having TWO overweight bag labels put on my suitcase.

bread machine time!

Thanks for reading! Next week will be very busy for me so I will write much more then! I hope you have a wonderful week.