Evaluating children's mental health service systems: An analysis of critical behaviors and events

A lack of studies which evaluate system change by tracking client outcomes is noted in the children's mental health area. This deficit may be a result of the inability of researchers to define outcomes and to draw conclusions about which measures reflect the efficacy of services and service delivery systems. This paper reviews five social validation surveys which examined children's mental health outcome measures. Based on the results of the five surveys, a model of critical behaviors and events is presented. This model will assist evaluators and researchers in understanding which critical events and behaviors should be measured to assess the impact of community-based mental health services for children.     

‘community psychology and politics’ by David Smail

Demystification, eschewing roles that disempower others and enhancing accessibility to the tools of knowledge, are consistent with the aims of community and applied social psychology. Although a focus on psychological empowerment can be a distraction from the need for actual power, it can also enhance it. Psychologists who avoid victim blaming and individual causal attribution biases can contribute to the discourse about social change. This requires both a reinterpretation of the known facts, and a reframing of social analysis. Social scientists and professionals are today's theologians and priests. Our power lies in our legitimation as interpreters of social reality. Teaching the psychology of empowerment, participative decision making and informed consent can influence the powerful as well as the powerless.     

Teaching spontaneous requests to children with autism using a time delay procedure with multi-component toys

Children with autism were taught spontaneous requests through a time delay procedure. Unlike previous research, which usually employed food as the target stimuli to be requested, the present study used toy pieces from multi-component toys. The procedure involved presenting a child with the target stimulus, with the trainer prompting the child by immediately modeling the request response. When the response was imitated without error, prompting was delayed with the time interval gradually being increased over trials. A spontaneous or imitated response was reinforced by giving the child the requested object. As the stimulus/model interval increased, children with autism were expected to initiate the request by themselves prior to the prompt. The efficacy of the time delay procedure was assessed using a multiple baseline across subject design with three Chinese boys with autism. Results showed that the three children acquired a 100% performance within five to nine sessions of training and the skill was maintained at the one-month and three-month followups. Furthermore, the learned response transferred to various conditions when tested across setting, person, toy, and food items. These results suggest that toys, the multi-component ones in particular, served well as reinforcers for language training. Furthermore these findings confirmed the practical utility of the time delay procedure for promoting spontaneous communication skills in children with autism.     

CHOICE-MAKING TREATMENT OF YOUNG CHILDREN'S SEVERE BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS

The choice-making behavior of 5 young children with developmental disabilities who engaged in aberrant behavior was studied within a concurrent operants framework. Experimental analyses were conducted to identify reinforcers that maintained aberrant behavior, and functional communication training packages were implemented to teach the participants to gain reinforcement using mands. Next, a choice-making analysis, in which the participants chose one of two responses (either a mand or an alternative neutral response) to obtain different durations and qualities of reinforcement, was conducted. Finally, treatment packages involving choice making via manding were implemented to decrease inappropriate behavior and to increase mands. The results extended previous applications of choice making to severe behavior disorders and across behaviors maintained by positive and negative reinforcement.     

Undecidability and intuitionistic incompleteness

Let S be a deductive system such that S-derivability (s) is arithmetic and sound with respect to structures of class K. From simple conditions on K and s, it follows constructively that the K-completeness of s implies MP(S), a form of Markov's Principle. If s is undecidable then MP(S) is independent of first-order Heyting arithmetic. Also, if s is undecidable and the S proof relation is decidable, then MP(S) is independent of second-order Heyting arithmetic, HAS. Lastly, when s is many-one complete, MP(S) implies the usual Markov's Principle MP.An immediate corollary is that the Tarski, Beth and Kripke weak completeness theorems for the negative fragment of intuitionistic predicate logic are unobtainable in HAS. Second, each of these: weak completeness for classical predicate logic, weak completeness for the negative fragment of intuitionistic predicate logic and strong completeness for sentential logic implics MP. Beth and Kripke completeness for intuitionistic predicate or sentential logic also entail MP.These results give extensions of the theorem of Gödel and Kreisel (in [4]) that completeness for pure intuitionistic predicate logic requires MP. The assumptions of Gödel and Kreisel's original proof included the Axiom of Dependent Choice and Herbrand's Theorem, no use of which is explicit in the present article.     

Specificity of Dating Aggression and Its Justification Among High-Risk Adolescents

Ninety-five high-risk adolescents were studied to determine whether their dating aggression and its justification as a response to interpersonal problems were specific to the current partner, general to dating relationships, or part of a global age-mate (same-sex peers and opposite-sex dating partners) aggression problem. Approximately one-third of males and two-thirds of females reported physical aggression against their current dating partner. Males' aggression (and its justification) toward their current dating partner was part of a generalized pattern of dating aggression, whereas for females, physical aggression against a current dating partner (and its justification) was partner-specific and unrelated to aggression in other relationships. Findings are discussed with regard to intervention and future research on adolescent dating aggression.     

The Influence of Distress on Mothers' and Fathers' Reports of Childhood Emotional and Behavioral Problems

This study examined the effect of parental distress on mothers' and fathers' reports of children's emotional and behavioral problems. The subjects were the parents of 696 children aged 10 to 11 or 14 to 15 years living in two-parent families in the community. The study utilized an extended version of the model previously employed by Fergusson, Lynskey, and Horwood (1993) to examine the impact of maternal depression on mothers' reports of children's behavior. In the present study, the extended model was used to assess the impact of distress on reports of childhood externalizing and internalizing problems obtained from both mothers and fathers. The results suggested that distress had little influence on mothers' or fathers' reports of childhood behavior problems. It is concluded that in community studies the size of any bias in mothers' and fathers' reports of childhood behavior problems due to parental distress is likely to be very small and of little clinical significance.     

An Ecologically Differentiated, Multifactor Model of Adolescent Network Orientation

The paper presents a test of an ecologically differentiated model of social network orientation for adolescents that distinguished between different social network reference groups (family, peers, and nonfamily adults). The model was tested in two consecutive studies. Study 1 describes initial model development (N = 120). Study 2 presents a confirmatory factor analysis with a second sample (N = 430) to replicate the factor structure developed in Study 1. Results supported a three-factor model of network orientation that differentiated between network reference groups. Analyses of concurrent and predictive validity indicated that orientation to network reference groups was differentially related to the perceived quality and frequency of support from members of respective social network groups. Group differences (gender, race) regarding network orientation to different network reference groups were consistent with studies of other social network processes. Implications for the study of the network orientation and the study of social networks more generally are discussed.     

Sensitizing Medical Residents to Fantasies and Alignments in the Family: Mastering Psychosocial Skills in the Medical Encounter

In this paper, it is proposed that a) psychosocial medicine is best taught in a setting that provides technical and emotional support, while seizing for teaching only those moments when the learner is most receptive; and b) that the setting should avoid the development of a separate psychosocial skills curriculum, but should take the student where he or she is and integrate the psychosocial skills into his or her everyday biomedical practice. The paper gives specific case examples in which family based psychosocial issues were preeminent in the clinical problem-solving medical residents faced.     

语句重音分布模式知觉

在排除语义和句法结构信息的情况下,用统计方法研究听者使用局部的韵律学线索知觉语句重音分布模式的能力;并根据知觉模式,讨论汉语中重音分类、词重音在语流中的变化以及重音在语句组织和语义表达中的作用等问题。