Third Latvian Psychologists Congress - Report

aleksandraz (61)in #psychology • 8 years ago

First of all I want to tell you all how much I’ve missed you all! With the launch of Golos this past week was a difficult one to find time for all things I would like do. Still, I will try to improve the situation and be able to post for both platforms, as I really like interacting, reading and writing posts for you here.

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You all know my passion for psychology and on the October 15th I’ve attended the Third Latvian Psychologists Congress. This was the first time I ever attended a congress, so for me it was all new and interesting.

As you can see from the title of the congress, such a congress in Latvia was held only for the third time. Despite the fact that the society of Psychology is not new in Latvia and exists for more than twenty years, some active work on development and improvement of various issues concerning psychology in Latvia and various issues regarding providing psychological assistance tarted to be performed only several years ago. There are no regulations on this issue that would protect both the psychologists and their clients from various situations that happen today in this field. For example, as of today there are no regulations on who could conduct some psychological operations, which means that even people without any education in the field of psychology may do it.

That is why psychology society is now actively working on advancing and achieving the adoption Psychology Law. Under this law only those who have Master’s Degree in Psychology may work as psychologists. Those who have Bachelor’s Degree may only work as an assistant of a psychologist, and those who do not have psychological education at all legally will not be able to conduct psychological operations.

Due to all this the increasing flow of students in psychology are expected.
Thus this congress was dedicated for the overview of various learning programs in different institutions. I was really amazed to fiend out that in Latvia there are such areas as military psychology or legal psychology.

The second part of the day during the congress was devoted to the discussion of important topics. The audience was divided into groups according to the interests and everyone was able to impact the ongoing discussion. The topics discussed were:

the improvement and oversight of professional competencies
co-operation with professionals of other fields
strengthening of cooperation between the professional and academic environment
legal protection of psychologists; the necessary working environment and conditions for high-quality work performance

Later on the results of the discussions were presented to the other participants and some topics were pointed out to be considered later in order to adopt a resolution. Some of these topics were:

make a list of psychologists who are ready to accept interns
improve the database of psychology tests
create an ongoing or past research database
further education, improvement of professional competence, availability of methods
popularization of psychology in society, raising the level of respect towards the profession of psychologist, educational events
confidentiality issues: soundproofed offices, the storage of the documentation
cooperation with the media - provide more professional commentary on ongoing issues in Latvia

All in all I’ve learnt a lot about psychological issues and matters in Latvia. I liked the people I’ve met. They even had a Latvian singer to open the congress. :)
How things are going for similar issues in your country? Do share your opinion.