Psychosocial interventions for disruptive symptoms of dementia

An estimated 6% to 8% of the adult population age 65 and older and more than 30% of those age 85 and older are affected by a dementing disorder. The annual direct and indirect cost of caring for the 4.5 million people with Alzheimer's disease in the United States is estimated to be at least $100 billion. By 2030, when the entire Baby Boomer generation is age 65 and older, the increased number of people with Alzheimer's disease could exceed the ability to absorb the added cost. Both professional and familial caregivers should be familiar with the treatment interventions that are most effective in reducing the disruptive behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia. This article discusses the various kinds of dementia, their associated symptoms, and the psychosocial treatment options that have been found to be effective in alleviating the effects of the disease on both people with dementia and their caregivers. Psychosocial strategies can be divided into four major subgroups: communication techniques, behavioral strategies, environmental modifications, and caregiver education. The ultimate goal is to optimize functioning of people with dementia and minimize caregiver strain.     

He Wero: The Challenge of Putting Your Body on the Line: Teaching and Learning in Anti‐Racist Practice1

This paper explores ways in which social workers, community workers and social work educators have developed anti‐racist practice in relation to indigenous issues in Aotearoa/New Zealand. A brief history of anti‐racism training in Aotearoa/New Zealand is provided, showing how this has been reflected in the Massey University Bachelor of Social Work programme. The core of the discussion describes the application of a structural analysis model to engage students in identifying their own culture and how they situate their experiences in relation to the indigenous Maori in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Processes of Maori tikanga (custom) and whole person/soul learning are utilised to prepare students to engage with the Bicultural Code of Practice of the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers, which mandates partnership under the Treaty of Waitangi, acknowledging Maori as the indigenous people of Aotearoa/New Zealand.     

Involving Service Users in a Problem Based Model of Teaching and Learning

Since the introduction of the new degree in social work in the UK, programmes have been developing ways to involve service users, using differing models. This paper will explore how service users can enhance the inquiry based model of teaching and learning while at the same time emphasising the belief that process and content in teaching and learning cannot be separated. It will also show how this approach, by involving service users as consultants, creates expertise and can provide a ‘legitimate constituency’ and thus allow for meaningful participation of service users at all levels of social work education.     

Challenges of Depression and Suicidal Ideation Associated With Aging With HIV/AIDS: Implications for Social Work

As the number of older adults with HIV/AIDS increases, new challenges are emerging that threaten their ability to age with this disease. Threats of particular concern are depression and suicidal ideation. Studies show that those aging with HIV/AIDS have a number of stressors that tax their coping mechanisms, increasing vulnerability to depression and suicidal ideation. These stressors can be categorized into three areas. First, there are psychosocial stressors that can contribute to depression. Second, there are health and biochemical stressors that can contribute to depression, as well as compromise cognitive abilities needed to adapt to such stressors. Third, cognitive stressors may create predispositions to depression. In particular, certain cognitive abilities needed to cope with depression and suicidal ideation may be compromised by aging with HIV/AIDS. A model of these stressors is provided for didactic purposes, as well as to suggest implications for social work practice and research.     

Stop It Now! A Pilot Study Into the Limits and Benefits of a Free Helpline Preventing Child Sexual Abuse

Stop It Now! aims to prevent child sexual abuse using a free anonymous helpline. It provides information, advice, and guidance to anyone concerned about child sexual abuse. It targets people who have sexually abused children or who are worried that they might do so. This article presents findings from a pilot study on the operation and outcomes of the helplines in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The findings underline the strength of the public health approach to prevention efforts. More specifically, benefits reported by helpline users are shown to correspond with the aims of the helplines. A number of factors were reported by users that helped them modify their own or others’ actions to minimize risk of abuse. However, a challenge that remains is ensuring that helplines are accessible to those most in need. Recommendations are included to further expand the effect of Stop It Now! in reducing CSA.     

Whose Streets? Our Streets! Activist Perspectives on the Australian Anti-capitalist Movement

The purpose of this paper is to provide a summary of the Australian anti-capitalist movement of 2000/01 as seen through the eyes of its activists. On the basis of thirty-five interviews conducted in mid-2002 we examine the background of the activist layer, the nature of the social networks and connective structures which shaped the Australian anti-capitalist movement, the character of the mobilizing structures that were used to organize the protest movement, the degree to which the Australian movement was connected to international activity or learned from international political theorizing, the tactics that were used at the protests, and the political frameworks that shaped the thinking of key activists. We conclude with some considerations as to the strengths and weaknesses of the movement.     

Demanding hosts and ungrateful guests – the everyday drama of public transportation in three acts and academic prose

In their own view, public transportation companies make a very hospitable offer to commuters: if you are ready to travel with us, we will take you for a reasonable price nearly anywhere, every day and almost at any time of the day, under good conditions of comfort and safety. Please, step onboard. But commuters resist being reduced to the thankful guests of their commuting service providers. Commuting is an experience whose rhythm structures daily lives. It is not an innocuous in-between-doors passage, but a social practice intertwined with the routines bound to the home, workplace, and places of leisure which they commute to and from. Commuting routines are a constitutive part of commuters’ lives. Correspondingly, commuters own their commuting space. They do not own it in terms of legal ownership, although they possess a valid ticket; they own it via the degree to which they are at home in their routines and intuitively know through the senses and feelings produced through the normal flow of daily practices, that they are on their own home turf. Home is more than the physical space of the house; it is an embodied perception of a familiar cultural space which is organized in such a way that one has some control and responsibility over. Because commuters grant transportation companies daily access to the intimacy of their homes, they are hosting the companies, not the opposite. Public transportation hospitality is thus a tension-filled drama, co-produced by transportation companies and commuters. In this drama managerial routines meet routines of daily life, legal definitions of ownership meet practice-based ones, and organizational hospitality stands against individual hospitality. Our claim is that the fact that each party considers itself to be the host of the other, the prevailing situation consequently frames the provision and experience of public transportation services as a drama: the drama of hospitality.     

“J.”, or: the Black Holes of Hillis le mal

This essay examines Hillis Miller's recent critical use of terms from physics (black holes) and mathematics (the zero) as a theoretical strategy that recasts our understanding of his performative aims. It proposes an other Miller to the familiar explicator and pedagogic disseminator of literary deconstruction he is often taken for, putting his work in contact not only with Benjaminian practices but coming horizons in global esthetic politics.