Stage 2 student Helena Ruster writes that Dr Jennifer Storey’s recent Cafe Psychology has made her consider an aspect of working in mental health that she had not foreseen.
The premise of Café Psychology is to encourage both undergraduate and postgraduate students to learn about new research taking place at the School of psychology and engage in open discussions about the current topics. This week’s guest speaker was Dr Jennifer Storey, a forensic psychology lecturer at the University of Kent with her talk Stalking of Psychologists by Clients: What is our risk and what can we do? This is an issue that I had not given much thought to previously, however, I now believe that more awareness needs to be raised as few people consider this risk when intending to work in the mental health sector.
Dr Storey identified that individuals working in the forensic and substance abuse area have a higher risk of being stalked because a common motive for this behaviour is revenge. She also said that the way to manage stalking behaviour is to end all contact with the client and to seek help immediately from colleagues and police. It is vital to promote these risk factors because statistics state that only 12-15% of psychologists are trained on stalking management. This talk was really illuminating for me and I really appreciate Dr Storey speaking out about this and conducting research into this field. It has made me think about this aspect of working as a mental health professional and has made me want training on stalking management before going into a client-based job for my own safety, as well as those around me.
Unfortunately, this presentation was not recorded due to the sensitive nature of this topic, however, I highly recommend that if this is a topic you are interested in you read some of Dr Jennifer Storey’s publications which investigate the issues of client stalking further. Her publications can be found here:
- The Assessment and Management of Stalking Perpetrated by Clients Against Their Counsellors (2020)
- Serial stalking of mental health professionals: Case presentation, analysis, and formulation using the Guidelines for Stalking Assessment and Management (2017)
- Hurting the healers: Stalking and stalking-related behavior perpetrated against counsellors (2016)
Helena Ruster is studying Psychology with Clinical Psychology and a Placement year.