Women with Physical Disabilities Who Want to Leave Their Partners

Abstract

Four domains of barriers for women with physical disabilities who are considering leaving a partner are outlined. These obstacles include (a) physical needs; (b) financial needs; (c) custody concerns; and (d) relationship issues. Disability policies can have direct bearing on the lives of women with disabilities, and hence on their freedom to choose to remain with or to leave a partner.     

Using Cognitive Mapping to Understand Problems Experienced by Family Caregivers of Persons with Severe Physical Disabilities

Individuals who provide ongoing care for family members who have a chronic disease or disability are likely to encounter a wide array of problems that can compromise their own health and their ability to function effectively in a caregiving role. Structured focus group meetings were conducted to elicit a comprehensive list of the problems that caregivers experienced during their first year of providing care to a person with a severe physical disability. A separate group of caregivers (N = 60) individually sorted problems into piles based on their similarity and assigned relative importance to each problem. The aggregated data were analyzed with multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis. Results indicated that caregivers cognitively organize problems along three dimensions: I. Centeredness–caregiver versus patient-oriented; II. Relationship Demands–physical versus emotional; and III. Caregiver Burden–time versus emotional. Additionally, 6 clusters of substantively similar problems were identified and prioritized in terms of personal relevance: Basic Needs (lowest); Perceived Constraints; Caregiver Challenges; Patient Resentment; Patient Withdrawal; and Patient Intrapsychic Adjustment (highest). Further examination of the organization of problems identified by caregivers should provide important insights about the experience of caregivers and how more targeted interventions can be developed to address their specific needs.     

Development of an Abuse Screening Tool for Women with Disabilities

Abstract

Women with disabilities are at increased risk for violence, including forms of abuse that can be experienced by all women as well as forms unique to women with disabilities, such as abuse by personal assistants. The purpose of this study was to develop an abuse-screening tool unique to women with disabilities. The tool, which was based on previous research, was field-tested with 47 women who experienced physical and/or cognitive disabilities. Final refinement of the tool's wording and formatting was accomplished through focus groups and individual interviews. Women with disabilities were receptive to participating in screening, which facilitated the identification of abuse and risk factors. Recommendations for abuse screening and risk assessment with women who have disabilities are presented.     

Mission to Persons with Disabilities

The human ego pushes some people to think that a wall of separation should be built, with the rich and the poor in their camps and the weak and the strong living separately. People with disabilities are victims of this separation, often considered as being apart, labelled as “the others.” However, the love of God pushes us to consider the others, whatever their differentiation, as the image of God created to live in relation with other humans. Thus, the mission to people with disabilities is a transformative love that releases actions of justice. This article frames the text of 1 Samuel 9, 1‐11, in Missiology Studies and Contextual Bible Studies from a disability perspective. It also re‐reads the text according to an African context, more precisely the Democratic Republic of Congo. The paper uses the “see, judge and act” approach: the author’s experience as a scholar and a woman living with disability will aid critical analysis, leading to recommendations.     

Negative and Positive Disability-related Events and Adjustment of Parents with Acquired Physical Disabilities and of their Adolescent Children

This study merged stress-and-coping research with the social model of disability to describe the most frequently experienced disability-related events experienced by 19 parents with acquired physical disabilities and their adolescent children, and examined the relations between these events, severity of disability, and psychological adjustment. Parents and adolescents reported many more positive than negative disability-related events, although parents reported significantly more negative events than did their children. Frequency of parents’ experienced negative disability-related events correlated significantly with self-reported anxiety, depression, and weaker feelings of parental self-efficacy, with their reports of adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing problems, and with adolescents’ self-reports of depression, anxiety, and lower self-esteem. Frequency of adolescents’ negative disability-related events correlated significantly with self-reported depression and lower self-esteem, and approached significance with self-reported anxiety. There were no significant associations between parents’ positive events and self-reported or adolescent adjustment. Total frequency of adolescents’ positive events correlated significantly with less parent-reported anxiety. There were several significant associations between parental rating of severity of disability and number of physical limitations with their and their children’s adjustment. Implications for understanding the daily effects of parental physical disability on parents and their adolescent children are discussed, and recommendations are suggested for prevention interventions.     

De l’évaluation de l’aide humaine comme modalité de réparation du dommage corporel. Un cas d’espèce caractéristique des difficultés des pratiques médicale et juridique

Regarding compensation for physical injury, complete repair is one of the general principles. The post of damage helps to respect this dogma and as such seems essential in the legal request. Its determination by the judge rests essentially on an act, the medical expert assessment. As such, its evaluation can seem limited to this single area of medical competence. Nevertheless, because of its characteristics and of its complex legal definition, this post of damage is close to the vast notion of disability and addresses multiple situations exceeding the single competence of the medical expert. Through a clinical and legal case, we show the difficulties of the evaluation of this post of damage, its stakes and possible solutions.     

Enabling Action: Reflections upon Inclusive Participatory Research on Health with Women with Disabilities in the Philippines

People with disabilities experience health disparities arising from social, environmental, and system-level factors. Evidence from a range of settings suggests women with disabilities have reduced access to health information and experience barriers to screening, prevention, and care services. This results in greater unmet health needs, particularly in relation to sexual and reproductive health. Women with disabilities are also more likely to experience physical and sexual violence than women without disabilities, further undermining their health. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) can generate knowledge and underpin action to address such health disparities and promote health equity. However, the potential and challenges of disability inclusion in CBPR, particularly in contexts of poverty and structural inequality such as those found in low- and middle-income countries, are not well documented. In this paper, we reflect on our experience of implementing and evaluating W-DARE, a three-year program of disability-inclusive CBPR aiming to increase access to sexual and reproductive health and violence-response services for women with disabilities in the Philippines. We discuss strategies for increasing disability inclusion in research and use a framework of reflexive solidarity to consider the uneven distribution of the benefits, costs, and responsibilities for action arising from the W-DARE program.     

Intimate Partner Violence Among Transitional-Aged Women With and Without Disabilities: Implications for Social Work Practice

Although women with disabilities are at increased risk for intimate partner violence (IPV), little is known about how this phenomenon impacts transitional-aged young women with disabilities who are still trying to master the developmental challenges of adolescence. This study explores risk factors for and prevalence of IPV by drawing on a population-based sample of women ages 18–21 with (N = 1,616,207) and without (N = 7,554,064) self-reported disabilities. Findings suggest that risk factors for IPV were more prevalent among sample members, as was past year experience of IPV. This study has implications for school social workers and disability service providers who interact with this population.     

Womanist Therapy with African American Women with Disabilities

Abstract

African American women are at increased risk for disabilities. There is very little information available, however, regarding psychological interventions with African American women with disabilities. The purpose of this article is to discuss psychological intervention in working with African American women with acquired disabilities from a womanist perspective. Themes and interventions will be discussed. Recommendations for working with African American women with disabilities in a therapeutic context will be offered.     

Sustainable Family Care for Children with Disabilities

The majority of parents want to continue caring for their sons and daughters with disabilities at home, and they are expected and actively encouraged to do so. Notwithstanding, and for reasons that are not well understood, a substantial number of parents seek to place their disabled son or daughter out-of-home. The aim of this study was to investigate the attitudes of parent-carers in Alberta, Canada, toward out-of-home placement. The primary objective was to identify factors that may explain why some families, and not others, seriously consider out-of-home placement as an option for their child. This knowledge is vital for developing social care policies and programs that support parents and promote sustainable family care for children with disabilities. A stratified (by child age group) random sample of 538 families raising children with disabilities in Alberta, Canada took part. Participants completed the family life survey, which incorporated measures of child and family characteristics, sustainability of the daily routine, and out-of-home placement propensity. Results suggest that family placement propensity is inversely associated with the sustainability of the daily routine. Sustainability of the daily routine is, in turn, more strongly associated with social-ecological resources, including parental control-over-work and the adequacy of child care options, than with child characteristics, including activity limitations and behaviour problems. If families have the social-ecological resources they need to create and maintain a daily routine that is congruent with their values and goals, and with the needs, interests and competences of family members, then they are unlikely to give out-of-home placement any serious consideration.     

Declarative verbal memory impairments in middle-aged women who are caregivers of offspring with autism spectrum disorders: The role of negative affect and testosterone

Caring for offspring diagnosed with a chronic psychological disorder such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is used in research as a model of chronic stress. This chronic stress has been reported to have deleterious effects on caregivers' cognition, particularly in verbal declarative memory. Moreover, such cognitive decline may be mediated by testosterone (T) levels and negative affect, understood as depressive mood together with high anxiety and anger. This study aimed to compare declarative memory function in middle-aged women who were caregivers for individuals with ASD (n = 24; mean age = 45) and female controls (n = 22; mean age = 45), using a standardised memory test (Rey's Auditory Verbal Learning Test). It also sought to examine the role of care recipient characteristics, negative mood and T levels in memory impairments. ASD caregivers were highly sensitive to proactive interference and verbal forgetting. In addition, they had higher negative affect and T levels, both of which have been associated with poorer verbal memory performance. Moreover, the number of years of caregiving affected memory performance and negative affect, especially, in terms of anger feelings. On the other hand, T levels in caregivers had a curvilinear relationship with verbal memory performance; that is, increases in T were associated with improvements in verbal memory performance up to a certain point, but subsequently, memory performance decreased with increasing T. Chronic stress may produce disturbances in mood and hormonal levels, which in turn might increase the likelihood of developing declarative memory impairments although caregivers do not show a generalised decline in memory. These findings should be taken into account for understanding the impact of cognitive impairments on the ability to provide optimal caregiving.     

The Common Agenda Between Old Women,Women with Disabilities and All Women

Popular belief assumes a common agenda between old women and women with disabilities. The stereotype is that all old women are disabled and all women with disabilities may as well be old; both groups are stigmatized and marginalized, even in the feminist community. While the two groups share social invisibility and oppression, they are different in terms of their history, political goals and philosophy. Both groups desire to distance themselves from each other; those who are disabled because they have too often been warehoused into nursing homes with the old, the old who may not be disabled and don't want to face that possibility. Yet there exists compelling common ground as both groups struggle against their oppression. All women face a dual task: to confront their oppressor as well as their own internalization of that oppression. Since women with multiple oppressions are more sharply confronted with both tasks, they are on the cutting edge of the vital issues all women face. They can therefore become the teachers and heroes for all women in the common struggle for empowerment and freedom.     

Burden,Interdependence, Ethnicity,and Mental Health in Caregivers of Patients with Schizophrenia

Caring for a patient with schizophrenia often results in high levels of perceived burden and poorer overall mental health. Using a sample of 176 caregivers of patients with schizophrenia, the present study examined how two components of burden (objective and subjective) interacted with interdependence and ethnicity to influence relatives' overall mental health. In line with study hypotheses, and with the stress‐appraisal‐coping model developed by Lazurus and Folkman (1984), we found that subjective burden mediated the relationship between objective burden and mental health. In other words, subjective appraisals of caregiving appeared to partially underlie the association between the concrete costs of caregiving and psychological outcomes in schizophrenia caregivers. Also as hypothesized, we found that interdependence, or the perceived interconnectedness of individuals within a group, moderated the relationship between objective burden and subjective burden. In other words, when levels of interdependence were high, the objective components of burden appeared to have a weaker relationship with subjective burden. When interdependence was low, on the other hand, objective burden was more likely to be associated with subjective burden. This finding suggests that helping caregivers to value harmony and connection with others over individual self‐interests may reduce the likelihood that objective stressors (which are often inevitable in schizophrenia) will result in subjective distress. On the basis of prior research, we also tested several hypotheses regarding the role of ethnicity and its association with burden, interdependence, and mental health. However, contrary to expectations, no ethnic patterns were observed.     

A Case Study of Liberation Among Latino Immigrant Families Who Have Children with Disabilities

Latino immigrant families with children with disabilities experience multiple sources of oppression during their settlement process in the United States. Unfair social structures and dominant cultural values and norms and the way they influence the immigrants' personal life stories generate a cycle of oppression very difficult to break. This paper presents a case study of how a group of Latino parents carried out a process of liberation fueled by the generation of empowering community narratives (critical awareness leading to transformative action) that resulted from a community-university partnership. Participants initiated a process that led them to discover their own stories of oppression and create new stories; to deconstruct the dominant cultural narratives and modify existing ones; and to understand contexts for power sharing. This joint reflection and increased awareness propelled group members to take action by founding a grassroots organization to redress some of the injustices that were partly responsible for their oppression, thus generating shifts at the personal, relational, and collective levels. In light of the theory of liberation, we discuss the participants' development of critical awareness that led them to take action to address their unmet needs.     

Impact of Psychoeducational Interventions on Distressed Family Caregivers

This study compared the effectiveness of two active interventions to a waiting-list control condition to reduce depression and burden and increase use of adaptive coping strategies in family caregivers (N = 161) of physically and/or cognitively impaired older adults. Chi-square analysis of change in depression status from pre- to postintervention showed a higher percentage of improvement among participants in the increasing life satisfaction psychoeducational condition compared to the improvement rate in either the problem-solving psychoeducational class or the wait-list condition. Change in coping strategies and subjective level of burden also differed by group, with participants in the class conditions reporting more frequent use of cognitive or behavioral coping strategies, and less subjective burden, from pre- to postintervention. There was no change in either avoidant coping or perceived stress over time. Results show that intervention programs targeted to improve specific coping skills and psychological symptoms can have a significant impact on caregivers' distress.     

People with Disabilities – In Order to Belong,They Need to Be Missed!

People with disabilities are often excluded within our churches: Why is that so? This paper will explore why disabled people are not missed within our churches as a mission group and as a member of the body of Christ. It will also explore why the fact that they are not missed makes them feel like they do not belong in the church. The paper will conclude with what people with disabilities have to offer the church, and what the church can positively do to help them feel like they belong through our mission and inclusion of them into the full ministry of the church.     

学习困难学生问题行为及其影响因素的研究

采用问卷法,探讨了学习困难学生的违纪行为、情绪困扰,情绪困扰与注意障碍的关系,以及问题行为与应激的关系.结果表明:(1)在违纪行为、注意及多动问题评定中,无论是教师评价,还是家长评定,学习困难学生(学困生)的得分均显著高于学习优秀学生(学优生);在情绪评定中,教师评价显示,学困生的情绪困扰显著高于学优生;(2)教师评价时,注意问题与情绪困扰的相关显著,但多动因子则与情绪困扰关系不大;(3)在正性应激量上,学优生高于学困生,未出现显著差异;而在负性应激量上,学困生的得分显著高于学优生;(4)负性应激量对情绪和注意问题的预测作用显著,但对违纪行为预测作用不明显,而正性应激量对情绪和注意问题以及违纪行为预测作用均不明显.     

Women Living with Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract

Women living with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) typically experience social and emotional sequelae that can be effectively addressed in the context of a psychotherapeutic relationship. Traumatic Brain Injuries can affect the full range of human functioning, from activities of daily living to experiencing a coherent sense of self. In this article, we focus on two issues, social isolation and emotional functioning, that encompass a number of key challenges facing women with TBI and are common and fruitful foci of psychotherapy. Social isolation includes marginalization in multiple communities, the invisibility of cognitive disabilities, difficulties in interpersonal relationships, and difficulties in employment and access to transportation. Emotional functioning includes posttraumatic stress symptoms, loss of self-esteem, anxiety, depression, anger, and shame. Two exemplary cases are used to illustrate the themes and underscore the complexities and realities of adjusting to TBI. Recommendations for therapists and consumers are woven throughout the paper.     

A Closer Look at Religiosity Among Family Caregivers

This article addresses the relationships between the dimensions of religiosity and positive appraisal of caregiving among African American, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic Caucasian family caregivers for older adults. Data analysis of 69 subjects revealed a negative correlation between non-organizational religiosity and positive appraisal of care among African American caregivers and a positive correlation between organizational religiosity and positive appraisal of care among Hispanic caregivers. Findings from this analysis challenges the overall assumption that religiosity increases positive appraisal of caregiving. Rather, the nature and outcomes of family caregiving are different for various ethnic groups.