The Effectiveness of Guided Mourning for Adults with Complicated Mourning

Loss of a loved one is a common experience. For the bereaved to grieve is a natural expression of the loss, and mourning is the process through which one must pass in order to adapt to the reality of the loss. For various reasons, for some the mourning process becomes complicated, and the bereaved gets “stuck” in the process and fails to return to living life unburdened by the loss. Practitioners need to be aware of interventions that are proven to be effective in addressing complicated mourning. Initial search began with experimental and quasi-experimental studies but ended up including four pre-experimental studies. The study included adults who are not known to be intellectually challenged but who have suffered the loss of a loved one as a result of natural (illness) or violent (homicide, suicide, fatal accident) circumstances. A total of seven studies were reviewed. Guided mourning can be effective in helping an adult move through the mourning process. It is, however, imperative that the practitioner understands the mourning process and what has prevented the bereaved from moving forward through the process. Given how common grief and mourning are in the human experience, there is surprisingly little research on what is effective in helping those whose mourning has become complicated. More needs to be done in this area, including clearly defining the specific components of guided mourning and the clients who will be best served by this intervention.     

Co-Speech Gesture Mimicry in the Process of Collaborative Referring During Face-to-Face Dialogue

Mimicry has been observed regarding a range of nonverbal behaviors, but only recently have researchers started to investigate mimicry in co-speech gestures. These gestures are considered to be crucially different from other aspects of nonverbal behavior due to their tight link with speech. This study provides evidence of mimicry in co-speech gestures in face-to-face dialogue, the most common forum of everyday talk. In addition, it offers an analysis of the functions that mimicked co-speech gestures fulfill in the collaborative process of creating a mutually shared understanding of referring expressions. The implications bear on theories of gesture production, research on grounding, and the mechanisms underlying behavioral mimicry.     

Results of a Recent Survey of Funding Patterns of Student Health Services

The authors sought to determine whether a greater academic incentive would improve the effectiveness and student adherence to a 12-week voluntary exercise program designed to decrease students' percentage of body fat. They randomly assigned 210 students to 1 of 2 groups with different academic reward structures. The group with the greater reward structure showed better exercise adherence and lost more body fat than those without the additional incentive. These findings suggest that an academic incentive can increase overall student adherence to a voluntary exercise program and can boost the effectiveness of the program in a university environment. The findings also have potential implications for on-campus promotion of physical activity.     

A new approach to care proceedings

A new approach to care proceedings, introduced in April 2008 with revised Children Act 1989 Guidance Volume 1 and the Public Law Outline (PLO), a procedural guide for the courts, adds a semi‐formal pre‐proceedings stage. This paper critiques the aims and objectives of the pre‐proceedings process in the light of what is known about the families who become subject to care proceedings. Drawing on the Care Profiling Study, the analysis of a random sample of 386 court files for care proceedings brought in 2004 and the Ministry of Justice's preliminary study of the operation of care proceedings under the PLO, it questions whether formalizing communication between the local authority and the parents immediately before proceedings can produce the intended benefits of diverting cases from the courts and improving the preparation of court applications. It considers how the new processes fit with existing safeguarding and planning procedures, the impact on workers and families, and whether the procedures will help produce good, long‐term arrangements for children at risk of significant harm more quickly.     

Longing for Recognition Commentary on the Work or Jessica Benjamin

This essay considers Jessica Benjamin's conception of recognition and relationality, concentrating on the role of destruction and of dyadic relations. I argue that Benjamin has tended in her recent work to posit clinical practice as an area in which the destructiveness in relations can be transformed into more productive and even harmonious experiences of difference. Benjamin has also provided a dyadic alternative to the triangular conception of desire and relationality, offering an important alternative to schemes that are restricted to the oedipal model. I ask whether forms of triangulation are nevertheless central to the workings of desire that exceed the purview of Oedipus, in particular, whether understanding the coconstitutive relations of homosexuality and heterosexuality offer a queer approach to triangularity.     

Aging Well at Home: Evaluation of a Neighborhood-based Pilot Project to “Put Connection Back into Community”

There is growing interest, in the United States and globally, to transform communities to become more aging friendly. However, the majority of emerging initiatives lack a formal evaluation component, limiting our understanding of their effectiveness and the ability to replicate them. This study is an evaluation of a pilot project, the Aging Well at Home (AWAH) Program, which aimed to “put connection back into community” to support the psychological well-being of urban seniors who were aging in place. We examined AWAH's effect on stress, loneliness, and depression through interviews with 33 seniors at enrollment and at 9 months later. Findings revealed a significant decline in participants’ perceived stress (p < .001); however, AWAH was less successful in lessening loneliness (p < .09) and was not associated with any change in depression (p > .33). In self-assessments, the majority of participants reported a greater sense of self-efficacy and social connection as a result of AWAH participation. The study offers preliminary evidence of the utility of a neighborhood approach to improving older adults’ quality of life.     

Prominence in a Network of Communication: Work Relations in a Children's Psychiatric Hospital*

Colleague consultation in professional organizations is both important and commonplace. One consequence of consultation is that some individuals acquire more prominence than others in the work contact networks. The literature suggests that variation in prominence depends on personal characteristics, such as occupation, education, ascribed traits, and activities both inside and outside the organization. Using sociometric data for the staff members of a psychiatric hospital for children, various hypotheses dealing with the effects of personal attributes are examined. An alternative explanation is that social relations within and between organizational subunits influence the likelihood that subunit members will be prominent in the hospital-wide communication network. The analysis indicates that these subunit relations have direct effects on prominence and also mediate the effects of certain personal characteristics.     

Growth through defeat and the reenactment of a family drama

The thesis of this paper is that defeat in psychotherapy, as in premature termination, or an incomplete or unsuccessful therapeutic experience, may be due to insufficient attention to the reenactments of a family drama on the part of the patient and/or the therapist. Insight for understanding in a nonjudgmental manner is emphasized. This is because of inclinations toward self denigrating attitutdes, particularly in relation to “defeat” experiences.