Helen Harris

CHILDHOOD LOSS AND AD/HD: PROGRAM IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION ADMINISTRATORS

Evidence-based practice and evidence-informed practice are not just buzzwords in education. It is essential that administrators encourage both the development and the application of new knowledge in the field. This study of 1755 elementary age children in Central Texas indicates a positive association between the experience of childhood loss and grief and a diagnosis of AD/HD. Implications of this information for administrators in education are explored, including the training of counselors and classroom teachers in grief interventions and accommodations for grief related attention problems in children.

Guardianship of Frail Elders: Student-Supported Process for Legislative Change

Legislative change, ethical dilemmas, and client management issues were all faced by social work students in a recent effort to impact guardianship in the State of Texas. Since the mid-1990s, Texas had been without a statewide system to provide guardianship services. In 2004 a group of social work students, law students, faculty, guardianship professionals, and judges from across Texas came together to create new laws and solve the significant gaps in services. Guardianship is at once a legal and social issue. It is mandated by the courts but generally managed by social workers. In this paper, the authors offer a model for student involvement that both changed the laws in this state and offers significant hands-on education in both research and community organization.

DSM-5: The intersectionality of spirituality, culture, and aging

ABSTRACT Counselors practice with older adults whose religion and spirituality may be factors in assessment and treatment. The DSM-5 includes religion and spirituality as part of pathology or culture. This approach is supported in counselor education. Religion as a cultural derivative only reflects the human aspect of religion, not including a client’s perception of divine actions possibly beyond the human experience, i.e., a miracle. How does the clinician discern if a client’s experience reflects pathology or the possibility of some sort of miracle? This article includes strengths and limitations of a cultural definition of religious and spiritual experience with case applications.

ADHD and Grief: Diagnosis and Differentiation at One Federally Qualified Health Center

ABSTRACT Family physicians provide medical care including diagnosis for children experiencing loss and grief. The cognitive impact of loss includes poor attention and concentration, suggestive of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Our study examined this phenomenon in a community health center (CHC) utilizing physicians’ surveys and a medical record audit of 378 children diagnosed with ADHD during a three-year period. Results identified ambiguous loss and trauma resulting from family instability, absent parent, domestic violence, abuse, and foster care, often unrecognized by physicians as producing grief accompanied by attention and concentration problems. Findings suggest exploration of repeated ambiguous losses in children with ADHD.

Lessons from the Vertical Limit: Valuing Older Adults

What is the value of a life? Many older adults see it as diminishing in a world where new is better and old is disposable. The cultural rhetoric can be discouraging as the news of threatening Social Security and Medicare long term solvency crisis suggests that older adults, specifically Baby Boomers, are an economic liability.

Competency-Based Education And Shared Academic Freedom For Transformational Education

Curricular revision consistent with program mission and goals and that also fulfils accreditation requirements is essential for social work programs. In this article transformational education, shared academic freedom, and competency-based evaluation are described as central to effective preparation of students in social work education. The authors provide an overview of the transformational education literature and one school of social work’s curricular revision process that demonstrates facultywide ownership of the revision process. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the faculty ownership and student evaluation process helped the school avoid the reductionist pitfalls in competency-based education in their pursuit of transformational education for programmatic impact.

Cognition in Adult Bereavement: Preliminary Findings From Five Hospice Bereavement Focus Groups.

Grief is an experience of both common and unique responses (Hooyman & Kramer, 2006). Grief affects people in various ways including emotionally, cognitively, socially, physically, and spiritually (Corr, 2007; Doka, 2014). Little has been published on the cognitive domain of loss affecting attention, and concentration of bereaved adults. This qualitative study explored these effects among adults in one hospice bereavement program in Central Texas. Five focus groups included facilitated bereavement topical conversations resulting in descriptions of memory, concentration, and attention deficits after loss. These results suggested that participation in bereavement programming may normalize the experience facilitating cognitive task accomplishment. Referrals for bereavement care may be appropriate in order to facilitate equilibrium in individuals lives following a significant death.

Learning to Give Voice in Ministry to Persons With Dementia: Student Monologues

As the population of older adults increases, the need for clergy and other professionals to work with older adults increases as well. Students are often unfamiliar with the challenges faced by persons with dementia and can benefit from opportunities to hear narratives that give voice to the dementia experience. Monologues are an effective learning methodology to engage students and ministers to prepare to work with older adults with dementia, sensitizing them to the struggles of this challenging illness. This article includes rationale and a brief examination of practice literature related to learning applications using monologue and guidelines for classroom application in preparing students, ministers, and others for work with older adults with dementia.

A Review of: “Grief and Loss Across the Lifespan: A Biopsychosocial Perspective, by Carolyn Amber Walter and Judith L. M. McCoyd”: New York: Springer Publishing Company, 336 pp.,

‘‘Loss is at the heart of growth . . .’’ (p. 323). That statement captures the spirit of this informational and directive treatise of loss and grief from a social work perspective. Carolyn Amber Walter and Judith L. M. McCoyd have written an engaging, thorough exploration of a variety of losses that occur during the average life span. The book is an interesting blend of theory and practice application with examples of loss, case studies, and responses from experts in the field. The authors cover the historical development of theory around loss and grief, current professional theory, and the conclusions they have drawn about best practice and intervention approaches. This book is useful both as information for those interested in grief and loss and as a textbook for students exploring work in this area. The authors address loss and grief as experienced in eight identified life stages: Perinatal, Infancy and Toddlerhood, Elementary-School-Age, Tweens and Teens, Young Adulthood, Middle Adulthood, Retirement and Reinvention, and Older Adults. These life stage chapters are closely related to Erik Erikson’s Stages of Development; a life stage model that the authors make reference to in each chapter. The chapters follow a fairly consistent model of beginning with a vignette of a person in that life stage experiencing loss followed by a discussion of Erikson’s human development theory at that life stage, kinds of losses experienced typically in that life stage, interventions appropriate in response to those losses, and case example applications. In some cases, readings from experts in the field are also provided. For example, the perinatal loss chapter includes discussion of loss of caregiver through death, the birth of a new sibling, parental depression, placement in foster care, and hospitalization. That scope of discussion is a real strength of this text. In each chapter, Walter and McCoyd discuss the issues experienced by persons in that life stage who experience losses like death of parent, loss of fertility, empty nest, and loss of home and country in immigration. They also discuss, in each chapter, the experience of loss of others when someone in the life stage dies. For example, the experience of parents losing a child, the experience of young adults losing a parent, and the experience of middle adults losing a sibling. While it is clear that particular losses are not limited to any one life stage, i.e., persons in any life stage could experience the death of a sibling; the authors make a good case for the inclusion of particular Journal of Social Work in End-of-Life & Palliative Care, 6:117–118, 2010 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1552-4256 print=1552-4264 online DOI: 10.1080/15524256.2010.489234