Exploring Adverse Psychological Events for Mental Health Professionals

Photo by Emma Simpson on Unsplash

Adverse Psychological Events (APEs) are stressful, life altering events that create shifts in functioning personally and professionally and impact professional identity and clinical work over time. It’s a term we’ve coined in 2023 and are studying within the mental health industry, with the hopes that it will:

1.    Support clinician burnout prevention and address compassion fatigue

2.    Normalize the messy side of clinical work/risks and humanness within the field

3.    Identify trends in the mental health industry including career longevity

4.    Inform supervisors and mental health leaders of clinician considerations

5.    Provide support and tools for professionals in various mental health settings

So what are examples of APEs? Our Big Five Fears of Therapy Careers are definitely on the list.

1.    Client Violence towards Clinician

2.    Client Sudden Death

3.    Client Suicide

4.    Subpoena

5.    Grievance

We know that APEs are impactful in the short term, creating disruption and dysfunction for therapists physically, emotionally, relationally, mentally, and spiritually. What’s the long lasting effects of these events? It’s one of the many things we hope to learn through studying APEs. We are asking colleagues to share their experiences with us in a confidential survey. From this data and trainings we offer on the subject here at Supervisionary, we hope to spearhead intentional conversations on the impact of APEs on clinicians and model what mental health leadership can do to help these professionals heal through community and connection.

Now is the time to speak on APEs and create supportive, empowered responses that help therapists move towards post-traumatic growth to remain in the field. What can you do to help yourself or a colleague who are going through one of these significant, stressful events? We have some ideas, and hope you will join us in exploring them further in our on-demand training for clinicians and clinical supervisors!