Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a devastating medical condition mat can happen to anyone at anytime, despite precautions. This paper provides details regarding etiology, symptoms, prognosis, and treatment of TBI. Patients and families usually require assistance and direction from several healthcare professionals, including social workers, both during and after the initial period of hospitalization and rehabilitation. After a brief discussion of interventions at several levels, the paper concludes with a focus on both the individual and the family, and how social workers in the hospital or rehabilitation clinic can intervene to assist the patient and family members in learning and using more effective methods of coping. Implications for social work practice are included.     

Stepfather involvement in social interventions made by youth protection services in stepfamilies

Despite efforts made by management and caseworkers to promote active parental participation in the protective context, fathers or other male figures are often brushed aside from intervention. This paper presents the results of qualitative research on methods used by youth protection caseworkers (n = 22) working with stepfather families. The main objective is to identify items that encourage or discourage stepfather involvement in psychosocial interventions. Results showed that certain items do not apply solely to stepfathers, but influence youth protection caseworker decision‐making from a broader perspective. Particular characteristics associated with being a stepfather significantly influence involvement practices espoused by caseworkers, notably the absence of legal status and biological connection with the mother's children.     

Impact of Psychological Disorders on Postpartum Mothers and Child: Current Issue in Remediation in India

ABSTRACT

India is a multicultural, multiethnic, pluralistic society with enormous socioeconomic disparities, and it is a formidable task to provide affordable and effective mental health care, especially to the remote rural corners of the country. The unfortunate aspect of the Indian mental health scenario is that there exists very poor awareness of the maternal health risks of the postpartum period. It is during this period that serious psychological disturbances can manifest and seriously jeopardize safe and normal motherhood. Currently, there is neither a national agenda for mental health care among pregnant and postnatal women nor a viable training program to equip health workers to recognize and manage postpartum psychological disorders. This article attempts to provide a viable module for training future health providers to gain an understanding of the illness pattern that constitutes postpartum disorders through experiential learning and problem solving.     

What Colleges Are Doing About Student Binge Drinking A Survey of College Administrators

Abstract

In 1999, the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study surveyed 734 US college administrators to learn what colleges were doing to prevent binge drinking. Respondents rated the severity of student alcohol-abuse problems and described prevention efforts and institutional investments in prevention infrastructure. Prevention practices were widespread in the areas of general education about alcohol, use of policy controls to limit access to alcohol, restricting advertising at home-game sporting events, and allocation of living space to alcohol-free dormitories. Programming was less prevalent for more targeted alcohol education, outreach, and restrictions on alcohol advertising in campus media. Nationally, most of the surveyed colleges reported having a campus alcohol specialist, many had task forces, and about half were performing in-house data collection. Less common were program evaluations, community agreements, or neighborhood exchanges. Prevention practices varied with institutional characteristics and the surveyed administrators' perceptions of the severity of alcohol problems.     

Informational interventions on paternal outcomes during the perinatal period: A systematic review

Problem

The perinatal period is a stressful transition for new parents.

Collecting experimental network data from interventions on critical links in workplace networks

This article describes and discusses challenges associated with interventionist network data gathering in organizational settings, with a special focus on dyadic interventions. While pointing out major risks of these approaches, we argue that collecting data in combination with dyadic network alteration methods can enable social network researchers to explore network mechanisms from a new angle and potentially benefit the members of the targeted social networks and the entire collectives, if certain research design and implementation principles are followed. We introduce a facilitated self-disclosure method for strengthening critical dyads in social networks in combination with longitudinal and retrospective network measurement. We assess the participants’ perceptions of the different stages of this process by qualitative interviews. The study illustrates that experimental network data collection includes some extra challenges in addition to the many challenges of observational network data collection but participants also reported practical benefits that would not be gained through observational network surveys alone. The results highlight the importance of early and continuous communication during the data collection process with all research participants, not just the management, and the benefits of sharing more of the preliminary results. The lessons learnt through this study can inform the design of experimental network data collection to prioritize the preferences of the participants and their benefits.     

The Use of Visual Prompts to Increase the Cleanliness of Restrooms on a College Campus

Prompting procedures have been used in community settings to change many public health related behaviors. The current study took place on a college campus and used a multiple baseline across settings design to evaluate the effectiveness of visual prompts to decrease urinal splatter on men's restroom floors. Results indicate that prompts were immediately effective, and effectiveness was maintained during follow-up four months later. Findings suggest research in community settings should investigate long-term maintenance of prompts to increase the generalization of behavior analytic interventions.     

Evaluating organizational-level work stress interventions: Beyond traditional methods

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, there has been a growing literature on organizational-level interventions for work-related stress, and associated calls for such interventions to be evaluated. At the same time, doubts have been expressed about the adequacy of traditional scientific research methods in applied psychology (the natural science paradigm) in providing an effective framework for such evaluations. This paper considers some of the philosophical and methodological issues raised by evaluation research in relation to organizational-level interventions for work-related stress. Four key issues are discussed: the concept of a study being “fit for purpose” in relation to research designs and the nature of acceptable evidence; the issue of control of research conditions in real-world studies; the need to evaluate process as well as outcome, including the interrelated nature of process and outcome; and the interpretation of imperfect evidence sets. The starting point of this paper is the reality of organizational life, which is complex and continually changing. Its main objective is not to offer an alternative to a scientific approach but to argue for a more broadly conceived and eclectic framework for evaluation that acknowledges the limitations of the traditional approach. It espouses an approach that is reflective of the reality of organizational life and in which the methods used for evaluating an intervention are fit for purpose. The paper concludes by offering an outline framework for this broader approach to the evaluation of interventions.     

Some differences between neurotic delinquents and other neurotic children 1

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) neglects the clinical implications of permanency planning decisions for foster care children. The resulting decisions can undermine children's attachment-based treatment progress. The intersection of policy and practice with foster care children raises issues of ruptured attachments, communications between therapists and the larger macrolevel systems, the role of the therapist in the permanency decision process, and the impact of permanency decisions on treatment. An improved policy would promote greater coordination between clinical and court processes and would expand the criterion for permanency planning decisions to include the clinical needs of families.     

A Pilot Randomized Trial of an Intervention to Enhance the Health-Promoting Effects of Older Adults’ Activity Portfolios: The Engaged4Life Program

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and outcomes of the Engaged4Life program, an intervention to encourage inactive community-dwelling older adults to embed physical activity, cognitive activity, and social interaction into their everyday lives in contexts that are personally meaningful and natural for them. Fifteen participants were randomized to the intervention group (technology-assisted self-monitoring of daily activity via pedometers and daily tablet-based surveys; psychoeducation + goal-setting via a 3-hour workshop; and peer mentoring via phone 2×/week for 2.5 weeks) and 15 to the control (technology-assisted self-monitoring only). Recruitment was shown to be feasible and efficient, but not able to reach the target for men. Retention rate was 83% and participants manifested high adherence and engagement with the intervention. Though this pilot trial was not powered to demonstrate significant differences between groups, daily steps increased by 431 (11% increase) from baseline to Week 4 for the intervention (p < .05), but decreased by 458 for the control, for a net difference of 889 steps (p < .05). Findings were sustained at Week 8 (p < .01). In a future trial, difficulties in recruiting men, barriers due to the technology-intensive design, and the optimization of secondary outcome measures should be addressed.