LAST MONDAY the Inquirer?s main editorial had the title ?Wanted: psychologists,? focusing on the need for such professionals in handling hostage crises.

The editorial did get me thinking though about the country?s need for psychologists in general. I know some readers will probably be asking, ?Why, do we have that many psychological problems??

We tend to associate psychology with the handling of mental problems, which was why there were attempts in the last presidential campaign to smear Benigno Aquino III with claims that he had once been a patient of a psychologist. The rumors were shown to be fabricated, but the fact that they tried to concoct a situation where Aquino was seeing a psychologist reflects public misconceptions about psychology.

The fact is that only a handful of psychologists work with the more serious mental health cases. This is the area of clinical psychology, which is highly specialized, requiring graduate work and accreditation.

(I should clarify that psychiatrists are graduates of medicine, who then choose mental health as a specialty. Psychiatrists have to pass the medical board exams, and also obtain additional residency and specialty training. Psychiatrists can prescribe medicines while psychologists cannot.)

Psychologists can help move the country forward in many other areas, including business, education, public health, public policy. The current chair of the psychology department at UP Diliman, Dr. Aurora Corpuz Mendoza, works in the area of transportation, providing insights into our traffic problems.

Psychology is actually a popular college course. At UP Diliman, the psychology department has the highest enrolment in the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, with 525 undergraduates and 186 graduate students.

But many of the undergraduates are taking psychology as a pre-med course. Others are into industrial psychology, which will mean working with corporations after graduation, in areas like human resources development.

Sadly, this kind of work is still found mainly in the private sector. As someone who has worked as an administrator at UP for almost 10 years now, I realize that what outsiders perceive to be government inefficiency is in large part caused by low morale and motivation, often exacerbated by personal problems. Work quality will improve if government agencies had psychosocial support services with professional psychologists, working out programs that include team-building, advice on handling both work and domestic problems.

Outreach

Psychologists can also be important in education, either as educators themselves or providing psychosocial support services. Some private schools have psychologists who help to detect learning disabilities as early as possible and to institute remedial programs.

Guidance counseling also taps into psychology although, unfortunately, students still associate such services with the handling of student ?delinquents.? Some schools are reorienting guidance counseling services to handle the day-to-day concerns of young people, from school performance to relationships with parents, peers and, in adolescence, with boyfriends or girlfriends.

Some universities? psychology departments are now beginning outreach or extension services. The Ateneo had an experimental program for overseas Filipinos, a need that cannot be underestimated. While overseas, Filipinos? needs for psychosocial support are even greater than here at home; yet, being overseas means they have even less access to psychosocial services. If such services are available, they may not be culturally appropriate. Hotlines or telephone counseling to call trained psychologists could even spell the difference between life and death.

When ?Ondoy? struck last year, the Ateneo and UP?s psychology departments fielded teams to help handle post-traumatic stress syndromes not just among those hit by the floods, but also among volunteer workers, who were in danger of burning out from seeing all the misery and suffering. The psychologists continue to involve themselves in disaster preparedness.

What I would like to see is some kind of popularization of psychology for Filipinos. I?m always surprised encountering people who still don?t understand some of the basic concepts around psychology, for example, the idea of a ?subconscious.? Without this understanding of the subconscious, it is not surprising that people still attribute erratic or ?strange? behavior to the supernatural.

Our understanding of child psychology is also still weak, with many Filipinos presuming that the child has no consciousness (walang malay) or understanding. So parents have no qualms openly talking about a child?s weaknesses or shortcomings in his or her presence, sometimes even putting down the child with terms like ?tanga tanga? (stupid).

In the 1970s, the late Virgilio Enriquez and others at the UP psychology department developed sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino psychology), emphasizing the need to look at indigenous concepts about the mind, cognition, behavior. The field has developed through the years but much of the research is still Tagalog-centered. I also find a stronger tendency to extract information from popular culture, rather than looking for more concrete applications.

There has been work certainly around so-called Filipino values, and how these might be applied in corporate settings, but much more needs to be done beyond office settings. When I was working for an American foundation, there was a leadership program that brought Filipinos to the United States to take up courses. I kept arguing that the leaders could be better trained in the Philippines, starting with our own concepts and models, but then I realized the work here by psychologists also needs to be further developed.

Governance

We need concrete answers to questions like: ?What are the characteristics of a good leader?? The answers have to be in local languages, together with discussions on what each of those desirable attributes mean. For example, we know many Filipinos expect leaders to be ?mabait,? which could also end up as a way of condoning corruption, for as long as the spoils are shared.

Governance stands to gain from psychologists. I see some government posters talking about developing ?mabuting Pinoy,? a good and ethical Filipino. Now, do we truly understand how ?mabuti? is defined in terms of citizenship?

Popularizing psychology will also mean learning from what?s out there in culture, the ways through which Filipinos have learned to cope with adversity. We keep hearing about Filipino ?resilience? but need more studies on the actual coping mechanisms. Dr. Lourdes Carandang has been doing some of this work, especially with children.

If public awareness of psychology were to be raised, we would find, too, people learning to keep away from hostage-taking incidents, knowing that hordes of uzizeros (kibitzers) actually goad the hostage-taker to even more dramatic performances.

Email: mtan@inquirer.com.ph