Mikie Long

Sit in on sessions with a therapist to observe and gain more knowledge in the counseling field.

Take intake and client notes.

Organize files manually and electronically.

Answer phone calls in the office regarding billing, upcoming appointments, testing, and referrals.

Run errands for my employer and the office staff.

Talk, engage in play therapy, and positively interact with clients who are children.

Provide excellent service to ensure customer satisfaction
Take and delivering multiple customer's beverage/food orders
Prepare drinks and set up trays of food
Keep dinning room tables and back of house clean at all times
Deliver checks
Engage and interact with customers

This literature review examines the symptoms, symptom comorbidity, prevalence, age of onset, course of symptoms, biological and environmental causes, assessment, diagnosis, and treatment for children and adolescents with a bipolar spectrum disorder. Pediatric bipolar disorder has recently started to become a more relevant topic in research and literature which is a wonderful thing because more knowledge on this subject will help so many people. The DSM-5 bipolar disorder symptoms section specifically focuses on the symptoms of manic, hypomanic, and depressive episodes. The comorbid disorders and symptoms discuss the disorders and symptoms that overlap with a bipolar disorder and how to differentiate between a bipolar disorder and other related disorders. The course of symptoms includes statistics on how the illness progresses, illness recovery, and bipolar disorder’s symptoms course. The sections about the age of onset and the prevalence discuss the age most children and adolescents are diagnosed with a bipolar spectrum disorder and how prevailing bipolar disorder in the youth is in the United States. The subsections of biological and environmental factors include the factors that affect the development of bipolar disorder in youth including genetic predispositions, structural brain differences, neuropsychological and social-cognitive factors, infections, maternal smoking and birth complications, climate, childhood trauma, and life events, and social support. The final sections of this literature review are the diagnosis, assessment, and diagnosis sections. Two strategies discussed in this section to diagnose bipolar spectrum disorder in children and adolescents are the Alexian Brother’s protocol and the FIND strategy. The treatments for bipolar disorder that are discussed are psychoeducational treatment, interpersonal & social rhythm therapy (IPSRT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), child and family-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (CFF-CBT), the rainbow program, and medication. Pediatric bipolar spectrum disorder is a disorder that has not been investigated as much as in adults with a bipolar spectrum disorder. Further investigation and research on this subject are very important to further clinician’s knowledge on how to diagnose, treat, and assess youth with this disorder correctly and efficiently. Diagnosing bipolar disorder early on will help children in the future better handle their disorder.

The COVID-19 outbreak was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020 (Cucinotta et al., 2020) and existing research has referred to it as a traumatic event, causing disruption in individuals' everyday lives. The present correlational study investigates the relationship among Clemson University students’ levels of mental health symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is important to study this topic because college students are already prone to developing mental health problems with the academic demands that are put on them, and this unprecedented time has the potential to negatively affect students’ mental health even more (Kecojevic et al., 2020). 86 students participated in this study by completing an online survey designed to measure levels of psychological distress, loneliness, psychological wellbeing, and resilience. The questionnaire consisted of 19 items from the American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment III and all had a Likert response scale. All items were scored using the same methods the ACHA used in their Fall 2019 assessment (2019, pp. 35-40). This study’s results showed a positive correlation between loneliness and psychological distress (r = 0.56, p = 1.87e -8), such that lower levels of loneliness were associated with lower levels of psychological distress. A positive correlation was also shown between resilience and psychological wellbeing (r = 0.48, p = 1.65e -6), such that higher levels of resilience were associated with higher levels of psychological wellbeing. The results revealed a negative correlation between the following: psychological wellbeing and psychological distress, psychological distress and loneliness, psychological distress and resilience, and resilience and loneliness.