HealthForumOnline Adds a New Online Continuing Education Course on Memory in Everyday Life
Philadelphia, PA (PRWEB) July 15, 2014 -- HealthForumOnline (HFO), a nationally-approved (APA, ASWB, NBCC, CA-BBS) provider of online continuing education (CE), is pleased to announce a new course entitled, "Memory in Everyday Life: Healthy or Defective?" to its extensive online CE resource library for psychologists, social workers, counselors, marital family therapists, and other allied health care professionals.
Memory is many things. It is a subjective experience. It is a mechanism for the ability to learn new information throughout our lives. It is the pathway that allows for our personal recollection of life experiences and use of our accumulated fund of knowledge. It is a cognitive system and, as such, is an embeddable part of the global cognitive system that characterizes behavior and our sense of self. It is key to our general level of intellectual, adaptive, and personality functioning (1, 2).
Memory is also a neurological system, with brain structures and communicating networks discovered in the 20th-century, many of which still remain to be understood. While we have known the basic features of memory function for over a hundred years, the past fifty years have seen an explosion of knowledge about the brain structures (e.g., hippocampus) and networks engaged in memory and learning (3).
Concerns about forgetfulness are among the most common cognitive complaints observed in outpatient care. Understanding what constitutes “normal” memory and how to assess and respond to it when it goes awry is essential (1, 2). Building on a brief foundational overview of this evidence, this course will help guide mental health providers in determining when a memory problem is part of normal aging, when it is a feature of brain disease, and---perhaps most importantly---when it is in the uncertain zone between the two?
This new online CE course for mental health professionals from HealthForumOnline will look at what can be expected from normal, healthy memory functioning in adulthood and as a person ages. Common clinical syndromes of memory loss are discussed along with well-known, important case histories. How these syndromes compare to the clinical features of dementia, as well as strategies and common test instruments used to assess memory functioning are reviewed. Finally, the course explores how we can improve or enhance our memory functioning and/or hold off the weaknesses that result from normal aging through the use of aids in our everyday lives.
About HealthForumOnline:
Mental health professionals can chose from HFO’s more than 20 categories of continuing education (CE) topics related to health psychology and behavioral medicine containing over 90 online CE courses that are fast, convenient and cost-effective. HealthForumOnline (HFO) is approved as a provider of CE courses by the American Psychological Association, the National Board of Certified Counselors, the Association of Social Work Boards, and the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. HFO’s CE Program’s Advisory Committee and authors are comprised of over 65 nationally-recognized experts in behavioral medicine.
1. Balota, D.A., Dolan, P.O., & Duchek, J.M. (2000). Memory changes in healthy older adults. In E. Tulving & F.I.M. Craik (eds.) The Oxford handbook of memory (pp. 395-409). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2. Salthouse, T. (2012). Consequences of age-related cognitive decline. Annual Reviews of Psychology, 63, 201-226.
3. Erickson, K.I., Voss, M.W., Prakash, R.P., et al. (2011). Exercise training increases size of hippocampus and improves memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108, 3017–3022.
Michelle Rodoletz, Ph.D., HealthForumOnline, http://www.healthforumonline.com, +1 (215) 887-6669, [email protected]
Share this article