Professional Background

 Dr. JANICE VIAN, Consulting Psychologist    jvian@telusplanet.net 

Registered Psychologist, CRHSP      B.Ed., M.A. (Education), Ph.D. (Clinical, School, and Community Psychology)

This summary of my work history is intended as a professional introduction, and to provide a description of the range of my work over the decades of my practice. I hope that this information will assist both my clients and other professionals who may confer with me, or refer clients to me. I have been a registered psychologist since 1983, and have worked in private practice for most years since completing my Ph.D. degree in, in 1988. I have also provided psychological services over intervals totaling about ten years, as an employee of public agencies.     

I have intentionally tried to practice as a generalist, as I enjoy the interactions among the various sub-disciplines of psychology. I suspect that this effort to be versatile has benefits for both my clients and myself, as it continually requires me to expand my range of knowledge. I enjoy the stimulation of this habit.  It probably originated in my first job, in a role which taught me practical psychology. This job was part-time employment in the Emergency Psychiatric Assessment Service of Calgary’s former Holy Cross Hospital. I was trained there to do crisis assessments and interventions, and I also learned a great deal about the interactions among medical problems, self-administered drugs, prescribed medications, and psychological issues. The medical environment was invaluable. I was very fortunate to have formed my clinical skills while simultaneously receiving both front line practical training, while also receiving a formal academic education in psychology.

My psychological training had been preceded by an earlier career in education, in which I worked for several years as a teacher and school counsellor.  This background in education oriented my early psychological training toward the vocational and school counselling field, but after I had completed Master’s level coursework and a thesis proposal in Counselling Psychology, I transferred to a doctoral program in Clinical Psychology.  Thus, I have competencies in vocational and school related assessments, but I am also experienced and comfortable with clinical and crisis work. My courses have included training in cognitive and behavioral techniques, so that I have had specific education relevant to depression, grief processes, anger and anxiety disorders such as fears, phobias and postpartum distress, as well training relevant to sexual, marital and family problems, and abuse of alcohol and other substances. I am experienced with reactions to trauma and stress, including symptoms related to past histories of abuse.

Despite my efforts to be a general practitioner in psychology, over the years that I have practiced, I have developed certain specialties.  I am experienced in the assessment and treatment of attention deficit disorders, and many other disorders which can be described both in medical and in psychological terms.  I have pursued and extended my knowledge of pharmacology, which I acquired first in my job in Emergency Assessment.   I have often worked in the interface between medicine and psychology, as this is required in order to do good work with cases involving chronic pain, psychological and physical consequences of trauma, peri-menopausal and PMS conditions, and also with many relatively rare conditions, such as anxiety episodes of phobic intensity, problems which involve automatic or seemingly involuntary behaviors, and post-concussion syndromes.

I have also done legal work, although the amount of such work has varied greatly.  I have treated young offenders and done assessments ordered by Youth Court, as well as assessments of inmates of Bowden Institution, which were done for the Parole Board of Corrections Canada.  I have also done pre-adoption studies of couples, and assessments in relation custody/access matters.  I have been qualified several times in Court of Queen’s Bench, as an expert in psychological assessment and diagnosis, and also with regard to the nature of infant attachment or ‘bonding’.  The expert opinion on this subject which I submitted to Court of Queen’s Bench in the so-called “Baby ‘M’ Case,” in 1993, was upheld through several appeals, including a final appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, and it was quoted in the published Reasons for Judgment.

I make myself available to my clients by providing accessible phone numbers on my card and in my letterhead, as I make every effort to provide crisis management, that is available and supportive.  In my general practice, treatment generally involves the discovery of the sources of problems, often from clients’ past histories, followed subsequent work oriented toward the prevention of recurrence of similar problems  This is deliberately planned with the client.  I am willing to undertake urgent work on a priority basis. I freely offer consultative assistance to other professionals, partly to express my gratitude to the mentors and friends who provided such assistance to me, and partly because I enjoy communicating with others in our joint and overlapping fields of expertise.