In June, APA added 96 new terms to its Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms® to provide more effective searching on current topics, including employment, education, and diversity. This Thesaurus update also includes 61 new cross-referenced terms, and 122 revised scope notes.
New terms from this Summer update will initially be applied to current content only; following the Fall 2024 release, the majority of 2024’s new postable terms will be back-mapped to older records.
NEW POSTABLE TERMS
Using the controlled vocabulary of the Thesaurus means a database search will quickly and accurately retrieve all publications related to a specific concept, regardless of the keywords the authors may have used.
The Thesaurus tool is found on all platforms as part of APA PsycInfo® and redirects synonyms to the preferred “Use” term to include in your search. Each Thesaurus record includes links to broader terms, narrower terms, and related terms, the year the term was introduced, an historical note if applicable, and a scope note providing definition and application.
We’re excited to announce a recent major update to the APA Dictionary of Psychology! Notable as the first content update since the final publication of the print version in 2015, this release features a number of benefits, including
revisions of 1,500+ terms related to gender and sexuality; race, ethnicity, and culture; aging and older adulthood; and disabilities and disorders
alignment with the APA Inclusive Language Guide and additional APA resources, including removal of binary wording to promote gender inclusivity
updated DSM-5-TR diagnostic terminology, and
date information for each entry’s most recent update.
With more than 25,000 authoritative entries spanning 90 psychology subfields, this web-based tool is freely available at https://dictionary.apa.org.
Users who access APA PsycArticles on APA PsycNet have integrated access to the dictionary when viewing the HTML version of full-text APA journal articles. Look for the dotted blue underline that links to the dictionary entry.
Definitions are also accessible and highlighted in search engine results. Quickly look up a term from anywhere by typing the word/phrase you want to look up into your browser’s search bar and look for the APA Dictionary in the results.
TIP: Typing dictionary.apa.org or APA Dictionary followed by your desired term into your browser’s search bar may return the APA Dictionary entry as one of the top search results, depending on your search engine (e.g., Googling dictionary.apa.org gate control hypothesis or searching DuckDuckGo for APA dictionary gate control hypothesis returns the APA Dictionary entry for gate-control theory).
In September, we added 20 new videos to APA PsycTherapy®, our streaming video database designed to meet the teaching and training needs of psychotherapy students and practitioners. APA PsycTherapy videos are recorded during an unscripted session to provide an authentic example of psychotherapy conducted by an expert therapist.
Four of these new videos are from the recent APA PsycTherapy Video Series, and so contain introduction and discussion segments in addition to the therapy session.
Shame and Anger in Therapy, with Leslie S. Greenberg, lead originator of emotion-focused therapy (EFT)—the video demonstrates and discusses how to help clients process the emotional pairing of shame and anger. This is the first video Dr. Greenberg has created in a number of years.
Client Contributions to Therapy, with Kathryn Kline, Amy Greaves, Heidi Levitt, and Jairo Fuertes—focuses on how patients/clients help therapy succeed.
Prolonged Exposure Therapy,with Sheila A. M. Rauch—an evidence-based method for treating posttraumatic stress disorder.
Cultural Complexity in Psychotherapy: The ADDRESSING Framework, with Pamela A. Hays, features Dr. Hays demonstrating and discussing her therapy model (a model explained in her best-selling book, Addressing Cultural Complexities in Counseling and Clinical Practice, 4th edition)
Other new videos include:
Emotion Focused Skills Training
Integrative Psychotherapy Approach to Navigating Grief
Multicultural Therapy Empowering Teen’s Ethnic and Gender Identity
Solution-Focused Therapy in Practice
Working Through Climate Anxiety and Concerns Related to Having Children
An APA PsycTherapy subscription includes a PDF copy of The APA PsycTherapy Teaching Guide, Revised Edition which features a series of exercises for using APA PsycTherapy with students, in clinical supervision settings, psychotherapy researcher training, and more.
Interested in strengthening your APA database searching skills? Join us for the next round of APA PsycInfo® webinars designed for students, faculty, and anyone else who wants to learn more about how to search APA PsycInfo more effectively!
APA’s expert trainers will lead three different webinars this fall, so you can choose the one that best matches your interest.
Details and registration links are below; all times are in U.S. Eastern.
APA PsycInfo: Beginner Search
This 45 minute session is for anyone who is new to searching the behavioral sciences literature.
APA trainers demonstrate simple yet powerful techniques including how to quickly identify the best search terms, apply filters to narrow the range of results, and pinpoint empirical studies.
Highlights include using APA Thesaurus terms and other database fields to target your search, Boolean operators to accurately include or exclude concepts, and cited references to find related research.
This 60-minute session highlights some of APA PsycInfo’s advanced functionality, designed to increase your efficiency by retrieving better search results faster.
We provide an overview of the three main vocabularies [keywords, Thesaurus subjects, and Classifications] you can use to search APA PsycInfo, and show easy effective ways to quickly expand or narrow your list of search results.
You’ll also learn about syntax for proximity search and truncation; using citations to explore related research; applying search limits and results filters; using the Author Affiliation field to discover where research of interest is happening; searching the Test and Measures field for information about tests used in the scholarly literature; and using the Grant/Sponsorship field to discover potential funding sources.
Every spring and every fall, APA trainers offer a deeper dive into one area of our tools and databases. These hour-long trainings are designed for researchers and librarians who use APA PsycInfo frequently.
A live platform demo will focus on: the extensive content update of June 2023; The APA PsycTherapy Teaching Guide & corresponding APA PsycTherapy playlists; and individual account tools.
We are excited to announce that the amount of content in the APA PsycTherapy® database more than doubled on May 30!
Clinical psychology faculty, researchers, and graduate students can now access 910+ videos presenting more than 1,030 unscripted full therapy sessions conducted by expert practitioners with individuals, couples, and families.
APA Teletherapy Video Series titles now available in APA PsycTherapy
This latest update includes the full catalog of the APA PsychotherapyVideo Series in addition to newly published single video titles, such as:
Working With Couples in the Correctional System (Corrine Datchi)
Multicultural Feminist Therapy With Adolescent Girls of Color (Thema Bryant-Davis)
Working With Clients Experiencing Climate Distress (Leslie Davenport and Wendy Greenspun)
Setting standards for nearly 30 years, the APA Psychotherapy Video Series is well known in the field of psychology and includes many best-selling titles. Many videos feature the clinician who created the psychotherapy approach along with framing content, including an interview about their approach and their professional analysis of the therapy demonstration. This provides unique and valuable instructional context to benefit students as part of both coursework and independent study. All future APA Psychotherapy Video Series releases will be included in APA PsycTherapy, totaling 20-40 hours of new streaming video content each year.
APA PsycTherapy includes content related to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), a central principle guiding APA’s organizational mission. To help foster cultural competency and sensitivity, more than 50 titles feature topics related to EDI or feature therapists of color. Examples include:
Working With Clients With Physical Disabilities (Linda Mona)
Affirmative Counseling With Transgender and Gender Diverse Clients (Lore Dickey)
Cultural Humility in Therapy (Cirleen DeBlaere and Jesse Owen)
The Dynamics of Power and Privilege in Psychotherapy (Malin Fors)
Reflections on Race and Ethnicity in the Therapeutic Setting (Rita Chi-Ying Chung, Joseph M. Cervantes, Fred Bemak, and Thema Bryant-Davis)
Ethnocultural Psychotherapy (Lillian Comas-Diaz)
Working With Issues of Social Class in Psychotherapy (William M. Liu)
This powerful teaching resource provides authentic, engaging examples of therapeutic approaches such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, mindfulness-based interventions, and trauma-focused therapy. Through firsthand observation, students learn how to translate theoretical concepts into practice and different ways of handling critical incidents that can arise during treatment.
APA PsycTherapy also includes the APA PsycTherapy Teaching Guide to assist faculty with curricula development and training the next generation of expert practitioners. It features exercises for using APA PsycTherapy with students, in clinical supervision settings, in psychotherapy researcher training, and more.
