A toolkit for accessible and respectful engagement in research

Social, scientific, and ethical factors underscore the value of respectfully including people with intellectual/developmental disabilities in research despite significant barriers to their research participation. In pursuit of this goal, we worked with two research advisors with intellectual/developmental disabilities to develop a qualitative study toolkit emphasizing accessibility, flexibility, variety, and responsiveness. The toolkit includes procedures and materials for recruitment, consent, interview locations and questions, breaks, and incentives. We recommend that future research utilizes insights of individuals with intellectual/developmental disabilities in research that impacts their lives, and that researchers systematically improve the use of procedures and toolkits.     

The use of video in research dissemination: Children as experts on their own family lives

The paper considers the use of video as a medium for the dissemination of research findings in the context of a study of children's concepts of care and their experience and contribution to family life. While the video medium was chosen to give a direct voice to children, it served other purposes. It served as an opportunity to feed back research results to children and to reflect on the ways researchers had interpreted data concerning their own views and experiences of family life. It also provided a public context in which children enacted competences namely in the articulation of expert opinions. The process of making a professional video in many respects mirrored the process of doing research.     

Self-Study Guide:

No abstract available for this article.     

Family Mediation: A Guide for Family Therapists

Family therapists often see separating parents who need to agree on co‐parenting arrangements. This article provides a guide to current research and practice in family mediation. The limited available research suggests mediation is a useful approach for some separated parents and their children, but often is not successful with highly conflicted parents, parents with mental health problems, parents struggling to accept the separation from their partner, or parents with unrealistic co‐parenting expectations. We analyse ways in which mediation might be enhanced, and discuss the potential roles of family therapists to support separating families to negotiate positive co‐parenting.     

Psychoanalysis: A Traveller's Guide for Family Therapists

ROLL UP, ROLL UP! AirFreud is pleased to announce a special and spectacular Around-The-World Package for Down Under Family Therapists. Psychoanalytic ideas are being rediscovered in your field and you may like to encounter these first hand, in the places and spaces where the ideas arose. Visit first Vienna, the city of Freud's love-hate and his adopted home: see Freud's apartment, in a fashionable Viennese suburb, home now to the Sigmund Freud Museum. Then on to Paris, La Rive Gauche and the Sorbonne. Hear the echo of Jacques Lacan's Seminar resound along the famous boulevardes. Experience the stirrings of 1968. Then to London and feel the tension that still exists between the Anna Freud Clinic and the Tavistock, just as in the days of Miss Freud and Mrs Klein. Then whisk across the Atlantic to New York and then on to Los Angeles. Follow the footsteps of the psychoanalytic diaspora from Hitler's Germany to the security and comfort of forward-looking middle-class America. Along the way friendly tour guides will provide you with plenty of information. In the Handy Travel Pack, there are useful summaries of major theoretical writings, a map, and a splendid bound journal is included for your own notes and observations. No prior knowledge is assumed; take an open mind and enjoy the journey.     

Analyzing free-text survey responses: An accessible strategy for developing patient-centered programs and program evaluation

Despite widespread availability of yoga in the Veterans Health Administration (VA), it remains unclear how to best evaluate yoga programs. This is particularly problematic for programs aimed at veterans with mental health concerns, as evaluation typically focuses narrowly upon mental health symptom severity, even though program participants may have other health-related priorities. We analyzed responses to free-text questions on 237 surveys completed by veterans with mental health concerns enrolled in a yoga program at six VA clinics in Louisiana to characterize veteran participants’ experiences with yoga. Qualitative analysis resulted in 15 domains reflecting veterans’ individual health-related values and priorities. We use results to illustrate the potential for analysis of free-text responses to reveal valuable insights into patient experiences, demonstrating how these data can inform patient-centered program evaluation. The approach we present is more accessible to those responsible for decision-making about local programs than conventional methods of analyzing qualitive evaluation data.     

UN: Treatment not accessible,especially in prisons,globally

Last week, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released a report revealing that the adverse health consequences of drug use are more severe and widespread than previously thought. About 35 million people globally are estimated to need treatment for drug use disorders, according to the World Drug Report 2019, released June 26. The number of opioid users is now 53 million, up 56% from previous estimates. Opioids are responsible for two‐thirds of the 585,000 drug use deaths in 2017. Across the world, 11 million people injected drugs in 2017; 1.4 million of them have HIV and 5.6 million have hepatitis C.     

When Religion Enters the Dialogue: A Guide for Practitioners

Several factors, including Freud's debunking of religion and social work's discomfort with its religious roots, have resulted in a trend of avoiding religious issues in social work education. The result is compromised care. In this paper, clinical vignettes are utilized to illustrate some of the difficulties which may occur. A series of guidelines is offered, with the aim of increasing therapists' comfort level in negotiating religious issues in practice. Areas of discussion include assessment, resistances, object relations, and countertransference. Case examples demonstrate application of guidelines.     

Methods for Development Work and Research: A New Guide for Practitioners

From the outset, Britha Mikkelsen is careful to identify thelimitations of this rather detailed and extensive book (345pages). We are appropriately cautioned that it does not tryto do everything: it is a ‘guide’ ‘to a varietyof field study methods from which the reader may combine her/hisown mixture to suit the problem, time and resources available’(p. 23); ‘it is not a cookbook for the study of all developmentissues’ (p. 28) and it can be read selectively; and ‘itdoes not replace more elaborate texts, but will serve as a supplementto the basic methodology texts of sociology, anthropology...’(p. 46). Despite these protestations, it is a