The Psychology Digest

Our current Call for Proposals submission period has ended. Thank you to all that participated. If your proposal has been accepted, you will be notified by February 15, 2026. If you missed the deadline for this session but are still interested in sharing your expertise with Pearson, please reach out to clinicaltraining@pearson.com.

How CAT-MH^® helped one practice save lives

In the world of behavioural health, every moment counts. When someone reaches out for help, there’s often a narrow window of opportunity—one that can close quickly if the right support isn’t available immediately. For Bernie Dyme, a licensed clinical social worker with over four decades of experience, finding ways to maximise that critical window became essential as his practice grew.

What if the young people involved in community violence were just individuals struggling with untreated mental health conditions?

This question lies at the heart of groundbreaking research that’s changing how we understand and address violence in our communities.

Dr Michael Brook, associate professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, has spent years studying this connection. His work reveals something most people don’t realise: the majority of young people who become involved in community violence have significant histories of trauma, depression, hopelessness, and other mental health conditions that directly increase their risk.

Dr. Lisa Pellegrin, a licensed clinical psychologist in Tennessee, discovered exactly how to make this happen—and it's changing how she delivers care in her private practice.

What if you could spot undiagnosed ADHD in a 40-year-old father who came in for marriage counseling? Dr. Jared Minkel did exactly that—and it changed his patient's life. But first, the backstory...

The growing number of clinical trials and increasing number of drugs in the pipeline are reasons for optimism in the quest for new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). At the same time, there are concerns that many of the clinical assessments used to evaluate cognition are no longer fit for purpose.

Alzheimer’s researcher Jeffrey Cummings, MD, a neurologist and research professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, notes, “The assessments often date from the 1970s and 1980s, when we had a much less thorough understanding of early disease presentation.” Digital testing offers a solution.

In a new episode of a Pearson-sponsored podcast series, “The Progress Profile: Alzheimer’s Research in Focus,” Cummings joined moderator John Harrison, Ph.D., CPsychol, CSci, AFBPsS, an associate professor at Alzheimercentrum, AUmc, Amsterdam, to share his thoughts on the role of digital testing in Alzheimer’s disease.

WAIS®-5 A&NZ and WMS®-5 A&NZ Together to Assess Cognition and Memory

In the poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” by John Godfry Saxe, six men set out to learn about an elephant and all six of them have different perceptions based on the different parts of the elephant they experienced and argued their points mightily. “Though each was partly in the right. And all were in the wrong!” Professionals who utilise psychological assessments in their practice are very much in danger of being ‘partially right but in the wrong’ by limiting their testing to a narrow scope of cognitive functioning. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale®, Fifth Edition: Australian and New Zealand Language Standardised Edition (WAIS®-5 A&NZ) and the Wechsler Memory Scale®, Fifth Edition: Australian and New Zealand Language Standardised Edition (WMS®-5 A&NZ) provide clinicians with a battery of tests that sample a range of cognitive functions and have psychometric properties that allow for the integration of test results across batteries for enhanced interpretations.

Tracking cognitive functioning remains a critical part of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and dementia research. When used properly, COAs offer valuable insights into patients’ conditions, helping researchers track patients’ progress and assess a drug’s efficacy throughout clinical trials.

However, choosing suboptimal scales can be catastrophic for clinical research. The cognitive scales used in the majority of clinical trials for AD, for example, have been pivotal to the failure of 98% of Phase 2 and 3 clinical trials.

In this blog, we’ll discuss how COAs can make or break clinical trial outcomes and share how sponsors can select the optimal scales for their AD clinical research programs.

Growth scale values (GSVs) have gained traction as a more precise option for measuring outcomes in clinical trials.

If you're an occupational or physical therapist, you probably spend a lot of your day thinking, talking, and reading about motor skills. But have you ever come across the term “Fundamental Movement Skills”? Until recently, I hadn't, but it turns out there is a whole body of literature devoted to studying and discussing this construct that is, well, fundamental to children's ability to engage in play, recreation and activities of daily life. Sounds pretty relevant to what we do, right?