Core course

PSY201: Statistics and Research Methodology I :

Course Overview

This course is designed to equip students from any discipline with a set of statistical skills, which they could then use to present, analyze and infer data. We will focus on basics of statistics, hypothesis testing, statistical tests most commonly used to analyze data in research, and caveats of using statistics. The class will be heavily skewed towards analyzing actual data versus mathematical derivations or theoretical concept delivery behind the tests used.

Course Objectives:

• Develop an understanding of key statistical concepts in the context of behavioral and social science research
• Develop intuitive problem solving skills
• Understand basic principles of a behavioral study design including but not limited to concepts related to randomization and blinding, difference between statistical and clinical/behavioral significance and ethical issues
• Be able to work with raw data , formulate research questions, operationalize constructs, form hypothesis and determine correct sort of tests to draw out inferences
• Learn the correct format of reporting statistical data
• Appreciate that data trumps anecdotes

Electives

PSY351 Psychopathology (Monsoon 2016)

Course Description:

This advanced level course will focus on understanding and analyzing the biological basis of psychological disorders. The course will be a mix of didactic lectures and problem based learning sessions. Students will build upon their knowledge from the clinical psychology class to delve deeper into the subtleties of psychological disorders.

Prerequisites:

Clinical Psychology

Not required but highly recommended: Biological psychology

Course objectives:

• To achieve student driven learning under an umbrella topic in problem based learning (PBL) sessions, where students will identify a set of learning objectives (LO s) and make brief presentations of their assigned LO s

– Stress on underlying biology of disorders

– Evidence based lectures

– Animal and human research

– Treatments will not be covered so much (future class, psychopharmacology) or potential LOs

• To develop presentation skills

– Grading of LO presentations by the instructor

– Anonymous feedback from the class on Piazza.com

• To develop scientific writing skills

– Three writing workshops dispersed through the course

– Term paper 1: Minireview

– Term paper 2: Mock grant application

PSY343 Drugs and Behavior (Monsoon 2017)

Course overview:

This course will provide an overview of psychoactive drugs and their use in treatment of common mental health disorders. The course will be conducted at a fairly advanced level and the content will be a mix of didactic lectures by the instructor and student run presentation of selected clinical trials. There will be a fair amount of neurobiological topics covered in the course.

It is my wish to foster critical thinking and analytical skills to the class. I am aiming for depth rather than horizontal spread of topics in this class. I am striving to teach you a set of rules, generalizable principles, looking at data with a critical eye and help you develop analytical skills that you can attribute to any problem of your choosing in the future.

A large part of this class therefore will be about class participation and class discussion. Please feel free to express your thoughts, voice your opinions in the discussion sections at any point of times. Please don’t refrain from asking questions. There are no stupid questions.

Think of the material from a biological, ethical, practical and clinical perspective.

Prerequisites:

• Clinical Psychology
• Statistics Research Methodology I & II

Course Objectives:

• Evaluate clinical research on psychological disorders with a critical eye

• Understand the broad mechanisms of action, functional systems acted upon, efficacy, safety and side effects of major classes of psychoactive drugs

• Develop an understanding of essential pharmacological concepts

• Understand the complex issues triaging on market strategies, pharmaceutical industries pushing certain drugs, efficacy and safety parameters of psychoactive drugs and patient compliance and side effects

• Understand the historical framework of how certain psychoactive drugs came to be of routine usage

• Critically read, interpret and analyze clinical trial data

• Develop presentation and group discussion skills

• Develop collaboratively analytical skills

• Discuss mental health services historically, and in today’s USA, and appreciate international differences

• Understand ethical issues involved with mental health services

• Improve writing and peer reviewing skills

The structure of violence as a human behavior (Proposed for Monsoon 2018)

Course Overview:

This course will be an attempt to bring in materials pertaining to violence and aggression across the disciplines of evolution, biology, sociology, psychology and political science. This will be a fairly advanced class in which the group will try to first break violence down to its roots and then rebuild it using perspectives from behavior, sociocultural patterns and aggression. Each student will probably arrive a a different conclusion, but the focus of this class is the journey across space and time as we take different approaches to tease violence apart. Through a mixture of book chapters, primary literature and student presentations, we will navigate through this course. For this class, I will be using a flipped classroom style, with students leading each class discussion with the instructor mostly playing the role of a moderator.

Prerequisites:

Statistical literacy ( SRMI and II for psychology majors, comparable courses for others).

CORE COURSE

PSY241 Clinical Psychology (Spring 2017, Spring 2018)

Course Overview:

This course focuses on understanding the phenomenology (description), etiology (causes), and treatment of abnormal behavior. Major psychological syndromes will be discussed along with the current APA classification system (DSM-5) and other classification systems. Genetic, biological, social, and psychological parameters implicated in the etiology of these syndromes will be introduced

Course Objectives

• Understand the merits and limitations of research methods and assessment techniques for clinical psychology
• Learn basics of critical and analytical skills required to read an article on clinical psychology
• Understand and be able to describe the current APA classification system (DSM-5) and show appreciation for other classification systems internationally
• Understand and be able to describe the major psychological disorders
• Describe the genetic, biological, social, and psychological influences on these disorders
• Understand the influence of societal, cultural, historical, and environmental influences on these disorders
• Appreciate the concept of comorbidity
• Discuss mental health services historically, and in today’s USA, and appreciate international differences
• Understand ethical issues involved with mental health services
• Learn the importance of vocabulary, empathy and nuances in abnormal behavior
• Be able to navigate and think through elementary clinical problems in practice
• Learn to write an interview questionnaire based on a clinical case study