Therapeutic interactions in a medication education group. Using the psychopharmacology RACE.

1. The Psychopharmacology RACE is an interactive, innovative game that emphasizes group teaching about psychiatric medications and disorders at the clients' levels of functioning. 2. Implementation of the Psychopharmacology RACE provides the opportunity to structure a medication group, impart information, and facilitate the development of therapeutic group factors. 3. Interactive group learning with the Psychopharmacology RACE can be a useful tool to enhance learning when clients are unable to read and understand written materials.     

Preholiday grief. Facing it alone.

These strategies for coping with the holidays following a loss can be shared not only in a group format such as a preholiday workshop, but also on a one-to-one basis by caring health professionals. To be effective in promoting adaptation to loss, it is vital that health-care professionals heighten their awareness of the needs and reactions of the grieving person. Their sensitivity to the anxiety and pain that can accompany the holiday season must increase. Only when awareness and sensitivity increase will there be an increase in the development of effective bereavement outreach programs. Through such programs the bereaved can experience positive encounters with caring professionals who can help them establish a new sense of hope, purpose, and renewed self-esteem.     

A discharge group for chronically mentally ill. Easing the way.

1. Chronically mentally ill clients have unique needs for discharge planning due to their lack of resources and poor social skills. 2. A weekly group focused on discharge needs can assist patients in planning and solving problems. 3. A psychoeducational approach is used, including video tapes, role playing, group discussion, and guest speakers. 4. Topics for discussion include medication compliance, employment, housing, loneliness, aftercare, and fear of failure.     

Severe vs. nonsevere firesetters revisited.

The study reported here compares a group of 75 severe firesetters with a group of 105 nonfiresetters and minor firesetters along 32 variables that have been positively correlated with juvenile firesetting behavior. A chisquare analysis of the data revealed that the frequencies observed in the 75 "severe" cases differ significantly from those in the "nonsevere" group. A prediction equation was derived from the 14 most salient variables. This equation can be used to differentiate severe/high-risk from minor/low-risk firesetters 95% of the time.     

台湾留美学生保钓群体研究

20世纪70年代台湾留美学生爆发了保钓运动,运用社会学"群体"的概念,可以将保钓学生视作一个群体,但群体内部不同组成部分参加保钓的心态以及特征各有不同。从整体看,70年代台湾留美学生保钓群体大都是具有高学历的知识分子,继承了中国传统的士人精神;而理想主义是钓统运动持续时间长久的内在原因。     

Nurse-led art expression in addiction treatment.

Creative expression can be a potent force in recovery programs, and psychosocial nurses trained in group processes can use art expression as part of addiction recovery and relapse prevention. Enabling clients to understand recovery and recognize what life offers without addiction is one of the best defenses against relapse during difficult times.     

Mastering group leadership. An active learning experience

Leading therapeutic groups is an underused but viable treatment role for nurses in all specialty areas. A dynamic psychoeducational group model provides structure as nurses invest and collaboratively participate to actively learn the group leader role. this article highlights the sequencing of instruction of group theory and skills with examples from a baccalaureate nursing curriculum. Samples from student journals reveal their growing assimilation of the group leader role as learners actively participated in groups, collaborated, and reflected on their learning. Examples of creatively adapted group exercises, as well as selected nursing group leader interventions, demonstrate group leadership as a skill that can increase nurses' repertoire of therapeutic responses. Therapeutic groups are both exciting and cost-effective treatment strategies for use with mentally ill clients. The skills of an accomplished group leader are transferable from within the psychiatric population to working with families, bereavement groups, and other client populations, ranging from people with diabetes to survivors of catastrophic crises. Group leadership ability complements the management and negotiation skills needed in professional nursing roles. When students and staff nurses grow in group leadership expertise, clients in various settings will be better served with this currently underused treatment option.     

Using group mean centering for computing adjusted means by site in a randomized experimental design. The case of California's Work Pays Demonstration Project.

When analyzing data from a randomized experiment that is replicated across multiple sites and includes covariates, the covariates can adjust for differences from either the grand mean or the group (site) mean. The analysis strategy determines the reference point. Pooling the sites and using a standard analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) adjusts for differences around the grand mean, whereas analyzing each site separately adjusts for differences around each group (site) mean. This article demonstrates that group mean centering permits pooling data from multiple sites into a single analysis while still using the group mean as a reference point for evaluating the covariate.     

Adapting the selective periodic health exam to a college-aged population. Joint American Preventive Services Task Force. Canadian Task Force on Health Care Screening

The periodic health examination is a group of tasks carried out by physicians at regular intervals, but not always yearly. It is designed to determine either the risk of subsequent disease or to identify disease in its early, asymptomatic state. These tasks include immunizations, health promotion topics, and specific clinical screening maneuvers. This paper seeks to increase awareness of the extensive work being done by the Canadian Task Force on Health Care Screening and the Joint American Preventive Services Task Force in setting standards for the periodic health exam. The exam can be reviewed in the office and urgent-care setting or promoted in health education activities. Knowledge of the new standards for the periodic health exam can help in setting priorities for preventive activities in student health services. Implementation in the college-aged group will require cost considerations.     

Medication education: increasing patient compliance.

The medication education program described is based on group discussion and individual counseling in a partial hospital setting. It is one model for promoting medication compliance. The important issues are those presented by the patients themselves. Nurses can and must help patients understand the influences on patient decision-making processes and encourage them to make sense of the wealth of information regarding health care and medications now available to them as consumers. Nurses should also introduce patients to the successful methods invented and refined by others to manage medication difficulties. We can also support the patient in the lifelong processes of developing a clearer understanding of their relationships with health-care providers and of promoting sound health practices.     

Chapter 9. Self-Care Practices and Hispanic Women with Diabetes

SUMMARY

Diabetes is a major public health problem in the United States, and a dangerous disease that can lead to serious long term complications. Left uncontrolled, diabetes can lead to blindness, heart failure, kidney failure, and low extremity amputations. This challenge is further magnified by the fact that Hispanics already constitute the largest minority group in the U.S., which suggests the potential of diabetes to reach epidemic proportions. This chapter explores the role of culture and self-care practices among Hispanic women with diabetes.     

The E.S.S.E. Group Model

Social work practitioners today are having to deal with ever-increasing numbers of families falling into the at risk category. At the same time, the issues and problems facing these family units are often overwhelming and challenging to resolve. The E.S.S.E. Group Model, outlined in this article, is a new research based approach that was designed to address the most relevant concerns facing families today. It is a unique program that combines family life education within a support group framework. Initially, the model was developed for several school districts in the midwest. Counseling personnel had identified a need for a parent training program that would elicit higher levels of participation. The E.S.S.E. Model accomplishes that goal through its structured yet individualized curriculum along with its parallel and conjoint group set-up. The specific content and process guidelines of this new approach make it easy for clinicians to duplicate in a wide variety of settings. One of the model's curriculums is outlined in detail in this article. Readers will find that the E.S.S.E. program serves as an excellent example of the type of group intervention needed today to help revitalize at-risk families.     

A method to obtain a randomized control group where it seems impossible. A case study in program evaluation

Randomization of program participants into control and experimental groups is often not feasible in field settings. The researcher's desire to evaluate a program with a rigorous experimental design is often incompatible with the objective of serving the expressed needs of the program participants. However, opportunities do arise when a randomized control group can be constructed without disregarding the participants' wish to be included in the treatment group. This article describes a method that uses the participants' compliance to program instructions as a means of classifying participants and, thereby, obtains a randomized control group for a subset of participants. A large smoking intervention project is used to illustrate two variations of this method.     

Discourse, interaction, and testimony: The making of selves in the U.S. Protestant dispute over homosexuality

Ethnography helps to elaborate Foucault's conception of power at work to produce subjects through micro-level interactions. I examine interactions among Protestants as they discuss homosexuality in two sites, an ex-gay movement seminar and a pro-gay liberal congregation. In two opposed groups, the genre of testimony produced an authentic-seeming truth, working performatively to produce group boundaries, to legitimate authority and hierarchies in the group, and to tacitly define certain categories as abject, unlivable. That groups can produce this effect in spite of their intentions illustrates how certain forms of social power inhere in language and work through everyday talk.     

Humor in therapy for the mentally ill.

There are many benefits of humor as a planned intervention for CMI patients. In addition to physiological, psychological, social, and communicative benefits for the patient are the benefits of humor for the nurse therapist. According to Keller (1984), another legitimate function of humor in therapy is as a source of rejuvenation for the therapist. Working with a population of clients whose progress is sometimes difficult to ascertain can sometimes be draining and may result in burnout if nurses are not periodically rejuvenated. Humor can act as an energizer for both clients and nurses, and can help nurses maintain their equilibrium. Areas for Further Research. Sullivan and Deane (1988) posed five potential areas for study in gerontological-oriented humor, but all of these areas are also applicable in the study of humor among the chronically mentally ill: Identification of any functional level changes and cognitive flexibility resulting from increased humor experiences. Development of humor assessment tools. Identification of environmental variables and barriers that affect the spontaneous occurrence of humor, especially in institutional settings. Exploration of differences in the effects of group and dyadic humor on mental health. Exploration of favorable and unfavorable environmental contexts and outcomes for using therapeutic humor.     

Telephone therapy: call for help.

1. Many disabled people are unable to take advantage of community resources because they cannot leave their homes, but the telephone can provide a link to psychotherapeutic services. 2. In both telephone and office therapy, the therapist orients members to the group, suggests an arena in which goals might be established, encourages verbalizations, sharing of concerns, strategies for solving problems, and assesses the psychodynamics of the therapeutic situation. 3. Psychotherapy via telephone can provide significant benefits to people who formerly were barred from services. Telephone therapy requires the therapist's commitment to the challenge of mastering a new technique and to altering fee structures to allow those on fixed incomes to be served.     

The effects of separate taxation on labor participation of married couples. An empirical analysis using propensity score

Up to 1987 the Spanish Income Tax imposed compulsory joint filing for married couples. However, the 1988 reform allowed spouses to choose between joint and separate taxation, involving a reduction in tax rates for secondary earners. Our aim is to analyze this reform as a quasi-natural experiment, assessing the effects of tax changes on labor participation. To find out the causal effect we adopt the difference-in-differences technique. We use data from the ‘Spanish Income Tax Panel 1982–1998’. Our results show that, as a consequence of differential tax changes, married women in families more strongly affected by the fiscal reform increase their labor participation more than secondary earners from families less affected by the reform. The participation rate for secondary earners in the treatment group increases by 9.4 percentage points whereas the control group increases their participation rate by 7.8 percentage points. We define the treatment group as those secondary earners in relatively low-income families in year 1987 and the control group as those in middle-high income families, because the former experiences a stronger reduction in tax rates than the latter. As a result, we can attribute the 1.6-percentage-point-increase in participation rates to the 1988 income tax reform.     

Carl L. Becker and Secondary Social Studies

The author discusses how high school social studies teachers can have their students investigate local history topics and share their findings by producing Web pages, using a cooperative learning structure. The author discusses his firsthand experiences using this approach with high school students at Warrensburg High School. He emphasizes the need to rethink how technology is being used in the social studies classroom—in particular, by having students share their local history findings with others beyond the walls of the classroom rather than being passive learners with the Internet. In addition, he emphasizes the benefits of having students work together to collaboratively construct knowledge using technology—specifically, by using the PIES cooperative learning structure to ensure there is positive interdependence, individual accountability, equal participation, and simultaneous interaction among group members. Examples of Web pages, produced by his students using the PIES cooperative learning structure, are discussed in the article.     

Summing up. Recommendations and experiences for evaluation of community-level prevention programs

This article provides recommendations and observations about evaluation of a locally based prevention project to reduce problems at a total community or aggregate level. The shift from targeting specific individuals or subpopulations to the overall structure and environment of a community is most demanding. Evaluation tools and analysis techniques have lagged behind program development because community-level interventions are not linked to a specific target group who can be separately studied. Thus assumptions about using random assignment and/or comparison communities as means to control for confounding variables are weakened when the unit of analysis is the community itself and dependent measures are subject to trending and the effects of history.