The Diabetes SIG is highlighting healthcare workers including clinicians, researchers, academics, and students/trainees who are involved with youth with diabetes. The Diabetes SIG is featuring Humans of Diabetes Psychology to bring more awareness to professions involved in pediatric diabetes.
Please find our Humans of Diabetes Psychology and their responses below. If you are interested in being featured, please contact us!
Please find our Humans of Diabetes Psychology and their responses below. If you are interested in being featured, please contact us!
Dr. Suzanne Bennett Johnson
How did you become interested in working in diabetes?
The answer to this question is actually a love story. I received my PhD in clinical psychology in 1974 from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. At that time, behavioral medicine and pediatric psychology were very new and I received absolutely no training in either. I was trained as a behavioral psychologist with a focus on children and I was hired by the Department of Clinical Psychology at the University of Florida as a child clinical psychologist with expertise in behavioral interventions and a particular interest in reading disabilities. I became romantically involved with a man in the Department – Nathan Perry- who ultimately became Chair of the Department. We wanted to marry but there was a nepotism rule that forbid such a marriage. So I agreed to be transferred to the Department of Psychiatry. Psychiatry had a poor history with the Department of Pediatrics and the Chair of Psychiatry figured since I was a child psychologist, perhaps I could do something to improve that relationship. I started talking to people in Pediatrics and learned there was a pediatric endocrinologist, Arlan Rosenbloom, who was looking for a psychologist to work with his patients. Of course, I had to learn everything about diabetes but I felt my training provided me the skills to apply what I knew to an entirely new population of children. As they say, the rest is history.
What is something that has personally touched you in your clinical work?
Type 1 diabetes is a very challenging disease and I have been touched by the emotional roller coaster many parents feel as they try to help their child grow and develop normally while living with an incurable disease. At the same time, the resilience children who have this disease repeatedly demonstrate is equally impressive.
What inspires you as a psychologist?
I think the psychological science is absolutely fascinating, whether the focus is on memory, decision-making, human attraction, animal behavior, taste – all aspects of psychology are interesting – not only to me but to the public at large. Trying to answer questions that will help people with diabetes and their families always inspires me. But I think my patients and their families have kept me focused on what were the really important questions I should try to answer through research.
What's the best part of your job? What's the hardest part of your job?
I think the best part of my job is making a difference in patients’ lives, the opportunity to learn from others in interdisciplinary clinical care and research, and training the next generation of psychologists to carry on the work of our field. I think the hardest part of my job is getting other providers and other scientists to appreciate what psychological science and psychologists have to offer.
What have you done in your career that you're most proud of?
This is a hard question to answer but if I had to pick just one thing, I think it would be my election as President of the American Psychological Association. This gave me the opportunity to push psychology from its historical position as a mental health profession into the more modern – and in my view, more appropriate – position as a health profession. Although I had lived integrated care my entire career, many psychologists had no idea what that entailed and had accepted the mind-body dualism that relegated mental health providers to a status separate from and of lower importance than medical providers. Being APA President gave me a bully pulpit to push the organization and its members toward promoting integrated care and increased collaborations with other health organizations like the American Diabetes Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, to name a few.
What is a misconception that people have about your job?
It is interesting that in many social situations, if you tell someone that you are a psychologist, they immediately suggest that you can somehow read their mind. This is usually said in a somewhat joking manner. Yet, it suggests that many people think psychologists have great powers. On other hand, in clinical settings many medical providers think that what we do is “common sense” or something they could do if they only had the time. It is only after working with psychologists that they learn that psychologists have valuable skills that improve the care of their patients! A similar problem occurs in interdisciplinary research settings. Many scientists don’t actually view psychology as a science and it can be quite challenging to get them to appreciate the power of our science.
When you're not working, what do you like to do for fun?
I enjoy cooking, reading fiction, sewing, gardening, and having fun with my four grandchildren. But photography is the one passion that I devote a lot of effort to skill improvement. I enjoy both wildlife and landscape photography and have traveled all over the world as part of photo educational tours, usually with good friends who enjoy the same sort of thing. I find photography is a wonderful blend of technology, art and nature that helps keep my mind sharp and my soul grateful for time spent immersed in the marvels of the natural world.
The answer to this question is actually a love story. I received my PhD in clinical psychology in 1974 from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. At that time, behavioral medicine and pediatric psychology were very new and I received absolutely no training in either. I was trained as a behavioral psychologist with a focus on children and I was hired by the Department of Clinical Psychology at the University of Florida as a child clinical psychologist with expertise in behavioral interventions and a particular interest in reading disabilities. I became romantically involved with a man in the Department – Nathan Perry- who ultimately became Chair of the Department. We wanted to marry but there was a nepotism rule that forbid such a marriage. So I agreed to be transferred to the Department of Psychiatry. Psychiatry had a poor history with the Department of Pediatrics and the Chair of Psychiatry figured since I was a child psychologist, perhaps I could do something to improve that relationship. I started talking to people in Pediatrics and learned there was a pediatric endocrinologist, Arlan Rosenbloom, who was looking for a psychologist to work with his patients. Of course, I had to learn everything about diabetes but I felt my training provided me the skills to apply what I knew to an entirely new population of children. As they say, the rest is history.
What is something that has personally touched you in your clinical work?
Type 1 diabetes is a very challenging disease and I have been touched by the emotional roller coaster many parents feel as they try to help their child grow and develop normally while living with an incurable disease. At the same time, the resilience children who have this disease repeatedly demonstrate is equally impressive.
What inspires you as a psychologist?
I think the psychological science is absolutely fascinating, whether the focus is on memory, decision-making, human attraction, animal behavior, taste – all aspects of psychology are interesting – not only to me but to the public at large. Trying to answer questions that will help people with diabetes and their families always inspires me. But I think my patients and their families have kept me focused on what were the really important questions I should try to answer through research.
What's the best part of your job? What's the hardest part of your job?
I think the best part of my job is making a difference in patients’ lives, the opportunity to learn from others in interdisciplinary clinical care and research, and training the next generation of psychologists to carry on the work of our field. I think the hardest part of my job is getting other providers and other scientists to appreciate what psychological science and psychologists have to offer.
What have you done in your career that you're most proud of?
This is a hard question to answer but if I had to pick just one thing, I think it would be my election as President of the American Psychological Association. This gave me the opportunity to push psychology from its historical position as a mental health profession into the more modern – and in my view, more appropriate – position as a health profession. Although I had lived integrated care my entire career, many psychologists had no idea what that entailed and had accepted the mind-body dualism that relegated mental health providers to a status separate from and of lower importance than medical providers. Being APA President gave me a bully pulpit to push the organization and its members toward promoting integrated care and increased collaborations with other health organizations like the American Diabetes Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, to name a few.
What is a misconception that people have about your job?
It is interesting that in many social situations, if you tell someone that you are a psychologist, they immediately suggest that you can somehow read their mind. This is usually said in a somewhat joking manner. Yet, it suggests that many people think psychologists have great powers. On other hand, in clinical settings many medical providers think that what we do is “common sense” or something they could do if they only had the time. It is only after working with psychologists that they learn that psychologists have valuable skills that improve the care of their patients! A similar problem occurs in interdisciplinary research settings. Many scientists don’t actually view psychology as a science and it can be quite challenging to get them to appreciate the power of our science.
When you're not working, what do you like to do for fun?
I enjoy cooking, reading fiction, sewing, gardening, and having fun with my four grandchildren. But photography is the one passion that I devote a lot of effort to skill improvement. I enjoy both wildlife and landscape photography and have traveled all over the world as part of photo educational tours, usually with good friends who enjoy the same sort of thing. I find photography is a wonderful blend of technology, art and nature that helps keep my mind sharp and my soul grateful for time spent immersed in the marvels of the natural world.