Addictions Counseling Certification: An Emerging Counseling Specialty

This article summarizes the national standards for addictions counseling of 4 different professional groups or boards. The new addictions specialty certification standards that are being developed jointly by the National Board for Certified Counselors and the International Association of Addictions and Offender Counselors (a division of the American Counseling Association) are compared with the standards of 3 other groups.     

Linking level of care to level of need. Assessing the need for mental health care for nursing home residents

What are the mental health status and active treatment needs of nursing home residents? A stratified random sample of 828 residents in 25 facilities serving Medicaid recipients was assessed for levels of physical and psychosocial functioning. Although 91.2% had sufficiently high levels of medical and physical care needs to justify nursing home placement, 79.6% also had moderate to intense needs for mental health care. Older residents, relative to their younger counterparts, had more intense medical and mental health care needs. It was also found that psychiatric diagnosis was a poor indicator of mental health service needs, particularly among elderly individuals.     

Spider Coming Down

The Hopi Indians regard humor, even sexual humor, as a form of prayer in their religious ceremonies. Clowns play an important role among the kachinas, twisting things around to make important points.     

Religion, Social Capital, and Health

Religion??s association with better physical health has been partially explained by health behaviors, psychosocial variables, and biological factors; but these factors do not fully explain the religion?Chealth connection. In concert with the religion and health literature, a burgeoning literature has linked social capital with salubrious health outcomes. Religious organizations are recognized in the social capital literature as producers and facilitators of social capital. However, few studies have examined the potential mediating role of social capital in the religion?Chealth relationship. Thus data from the 2006 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey were analyzed for 10,828 adults. The composite unstandardized indirect effect from religion to social capital onto health was significant (???=?0.098; p?<?0.001). The unstandardized direct pathway from religion to self-reported health (???=?0.015; p?=?0.336) indicated that social capital is a mediator in the religion?Chealth relationship. Among the demographic variables investigated, only age and income had a significant direct effect on self-reported health.     

Improving clinical outcomes in psychiatric care with touch-screen technology

Patient-focused research, which uses clinical characteristics to predict outcomes, is a field in which information technology has been effectively integrated with practice. The present research used touch-screen technology to monitor the daily self-report measures of 1,308 consecutive inpatients and day patients participating in a 2-week cognitive-behavioral therapy group. Providing regular feedback was effective in reducing symptoms for patients at risk of poor outcomes (Newnham, Hooke, & Page, 2010b). The use of touch screens in psychiatric monitoring encourages a collaborative dialogue between patients and therapists and promotes engagement in the process of progress monitoring and treatment evaluation.     

Development of the Perth Adolescent Worry Scale (PAWS)

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Tools to assess worry among adolescents exist but do not capture the content of worries. This study reports on the development of a brief,...     

The Working for Wellness Program: RCT of an Employee Well-Being Intervention

This paper details the design and evaluation of a positive psychology-based employee well-being program. The effect of the program on well-being was evaluated using a mixed method design comprising of an RCT to assess outcome effectiveness, and participant feedback and facilitator field notes to assess process and impact effectiveness. Fifty government employees were randomly allocated to either an intervention or a control group (reduced to n = 23 for complete case analysis). The intervention group participated in the 6-week Working for Wellness Program and completed measures of subjective, psychological, affective and work-related well-being (SWB, PWB, AWB and WWB) at pre-intervention, post-intervention, and three and 6 month follow-ups. The control group completed the questionnaires only. As predicted, mixed ANOVAs revealed improvements in SWB and PWB for intervention group participants over time relative to control participants but these effects had reduced by time 4. There was a main effect of group on AWB in the predicted direction but no effect on WWB. Participant feedback indicated that the focus on strengths and group delivery were the most effective components of the program. Key issues were sample attrition and a lack of on-the-job support for change. Findings suggest employees can learn effective strategies for sustainably increasing their subjective and psychological well-being.