This study examines the early family experiences of a sample of trainee counselling psychologists in order to gain insight into their career motivations. Specifically, it was hypothesized that counselling students would be more likely to report early occupation of caring roles within the family and less experience of appropriate bonding with their parents compared with students training to enter a non-counselling psychology profession. Participants completed scales to assess Parentification, Parental Bonding and Self-efficacy toward Caring. The responses of 64 students were analysed, 32 in each respective group. Results indicated that counselling psychology trainees reported significantly lower levels of care from their mothers but reported higher levels of self-efficacy toward caring. An investigation of the predictors of parentification indicated that a lack of care from fathers was associated with higher parentification scores for all participants. Care from mothers was shown to relate differently to parentification, depending on the gender of the participant, such that a lack of care from mothers was related to parentification for female participants, whereas greater care from mothers was related to parentification for male participants. Implications for counselling psychology training and practice are discussed in addition to future directions for parentification research.

This paper concerns the concept of parentification, whereby children take on inappropriate parental roles. A brief theoretical overview is presented, showing that parentification has important implications for understanding both clients' and counselling psychologists' experiences. Specific ways of assessing adult clients who were parentified as children are described, focusing on parentification criteria and typical profiles. This is followed by a description of a deparentifying process, including exploring shame-based experiences, resisting splitting and working with projective identification. These discussions are illustrated by examples from an anonymized case study of a client who was parentified as a child. Finally, the paper includes a discussion of possible dilemmas and difficulties that may arise when parentified clients and parentified counselling psychologists work together. Although previous literature has discussed parentification separately for counselling psychologists and clients, this paper is unique in its discussion of the interaction between the client's and counselling psychologist's experiences of parentification and the corresponding impact on the therapeutic alliance. The paper concludes by emphasising the importance of personal therapy and supportive working environments for the well-being of counselling psychologists and consequently that of their clients.

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In this study we aimed to investigate the contribution of a model of schema use originally from social psychology, the cognitive miser perspective, to understanding pain and illness representations. Recall of pain and general symptom information was tested under either conditions of cognitive load or no load. If the cognitive miser perspective were to be applicable, schematic information would be better recalled under load, and aschematic information better recalled under no load. This was the case for pain information. However, for general symptom information cognitive load did not influence recall. It was concluded that processing pain information may be better understood from the cognitive miser perspective, but the meaning model of schema use may be more applicable to general symptoms.

Background A perinatal loss is a life-changing event that can have psychological consequences for a mother both after the loss and in a subsequent pregnancy. Aims This qualitative study aimed to examine mothers' lived experiences of the holistic journey of perinatal loss and subsequent pregnancy. Methods Qualitative data were collected via online surveys (n=40) and face-to-face semi-structured interviews (n=5), then analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results Under the overarching theme ‘finding the words: language, labels and legitimate distress', three themes were developed that captured the ways in which participants used language to challenge societal silence and legitimise the personhood of their loss, while creating a community of support. Conclusions Midwives play a key role in women's experiences during the perinatal journey after a loss. The language used can either validate or be dismissive of distress. The researchers recommend midwives adopt labels developed by rather than for bereaved parents in order to provide empathic care.