By BETHANY SHERROW
Features Editor

(WARRENSBURG, Mo., digitalBURG) — Brooke Blythe passionately pursues the study of the one organ in the body that can study itself: the brain.

Blythe is a senior psychology major at UCM who says psychology drives her every day.

“I took general psychology in high school and like fell in love with a subject that interested me, but challenged me as well,” Blythe said. “I was interested in several subjects, but they were like easy come, easy go for me. Psychology was really that field that pushed my beliefs and understanding.”

She recently traveled to New Orleans to present with her research team on the topic of suicide.

“I went to the National Association for School Psychologist,” Blythe said. “It’s shortened as the NASP conference. We did our projects on suicide postvention. Suicide postvention is preventing suicide contagion after a suicide occurs. So, if in a high school setting, a student dies by suicide, the school would then enact a postvention program, which would keep other students from dying by suicide. So, it’s about helping those who are really bereaved or upset.”

Blythe said the project challenged the way psychologists currently discuss suicide prevention.

“Right now, suicide postvention occurs after the suicide, and prevention is before the suicide,” she said. “Some things that we call prevention are really intervention.”

Blythe said a suicide prevention expert at the conference stopped to read their poster, and the group was encouraged by what he had to say.

“He came up and criticized our poster, but then was like, ‘This is what this field needs to do,’” she said. “So, being able to have a professional look at our work and say we did awesome, that was amazing.”

While Blythe sees the importance of suicide research, she is more interested in working with victims or perpetrators of sexual trauma.

“One of my professors in class last year was talking about sexual assault and sex trauma,” she said. “His understanding, which I later developed into my understanding, is that we can help victims as much as we want. But, if we’re not stopping it at the source, the perpetrators, we’re just going to be creating more victims. He said, ‘And that’s great because you can keep yourself in a job. But, it’s not great for the victims. Your goal as a psychologist is to work yourself out of a job.’ And that’s what I want to do.”

Blythe wants to get her doctorate and become a clinician. She said she knows she will face many dark and heavy topics throughout her career, but she has a great support system.

“I have a really good group of friends that accepts my field and is really welcoming to my ideas,” Blythe said. “They’ll know when I’m sad, I’ll talk to them about it. And, they’ll be like, ‘Well, this is what you’re going to do.’

“My friends remind me that yeah, it sucks, it’s awful to read about, but that’s why I’m here. That’s my calling, to help this.”