Dr Shanti Farrington
- Principal Academic in Psychology
- Poole House P328, Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow, Poole, BH12 5BB
Biography
My research interest and focus has always been to translate findings from cognitive research into clinical/counselling application.
From a clinical perspective I am interested in understanding the trauma-informed psychotherapeutic approaches in clients with PTSD and complex trauma. The research questions vary from how neurologically healthy individuals cope with unwanted or traumatic memories to how that changes after a traumatic brain injury or stroke. Especially, when their usual method of dealing with unwanted memories is impaired, how do they cope? How does one integrate cognitive and counselling principles into neuro-rehabilitation.
From a cognitive perspective my research is focused on mechanisms of cognitive control, understanding the role of forgetting (including aspects of motivated forgetting or supression induced forgetting, incidental forgetting, the role of forgetting when individuals may experience severe trauma etc.) and how forgetting is affected by individual differences in emotional regulation, attention and ability to inhibit)...
While from a more applied perspective a lot of my interest and research focuses on how the individual differences in forgetting may be related to neurological and/or other clinical disorders. How does neurodiversity factor into the ability to inhibit unwanted memory and how does that affect aspects of counselling - especially in PTSD or complex trauma? What are the other factors such as adverse childhood experence, copings strategies, differences in culture and/or ethinicity, therapeutic relationship etc. play a role in recovery and/or rehabilitation? What are other psychological aspects that are key in rehabilitation specifically in people living with stroke, brain injury and dementia.
I use cognitive, behavioural, neuropsychological and qualitative approaches in healthy controls and neurological patients. Contribute to various applied projects in areas like trauma, suicide and resilience. I often use methods including fMRI/MRI with focus on lesion analysis approaches in clinical population. I also occasionally use electrical stimulation (tDCS/TMS in healthy controls) to understand the brain mechanisms underlying cognition.
I am a member of the Ageing and Dementia Research Centre (ADRC) and the Health and Clinical Research group.
I supervise students (BSc., MSc. and PhD) and contribute to various research projects and am engaged in collaborative work with South Asia (Nepal and India) focusing on Mental Health and Well-being.
As a fully-qualified counsellor (using Humanistic Integrative Approach) I am a member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy and currently working on my Doctorate of Counselling Psychology Training.
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