The purpose of this study was to increase the level of completed academic tasks through the use of a token economy system with female adolescents in an institutional classroom setting. A 70 percent anticipated completion of academic tasks was the primary aim. Secondly, would there he an 80 percent increase of appropriate behaviors following intervention? Six emotionally disturbed girls living in an adolescent treatment center; subjects of this study, were unable to adjust to the socially acceptable norms of behavior. Each of these girls was described as too disturbed to learn. Utilizing the principles of behavioral change, the experimental classroom was set up to assist each girl in increasing her on academic task behavior and/or to enable her to work and learn independently in the classroom. The environment was arranged in such a way that when a girl interacted with it, learning was maximized. Results found the average classroom percent of weeks meeting or exceeding 70 percent was 31 percent. The days meeting 70 percent criteria was 51 percent. The class average of on academic task rose from 10 percent to 88 percent.

With the advent of recent federal mandates, special educators have been inundated with a plethora of intervening strategies, conceptual models, and theories for use in the classroom. The result is manifest in a strong bias among special educators that is not conducive to the student's learning style. Educators, today, are not only being called upon to teach functional academics to emotionally disturbed youth, they are also asked to ameliorate the debilitating effects of emotional disturbance. Thus, educators are presented with unparalleled change from the world of traditional public school education. Unfortunately, teachers of the emotionally disturbed are not meeting that challenge, and often are providing a confused environment for the student. Students perhaps need a synthesis between directive and nondirective teaching styles. The problem under investigation in this study is the effect of a learning condition in which the teacher determines the limits of the classroom in a directive setting and the degree to which the student sets the limits of the classroom in a nondirective setting. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effects of a directive and nondirective learning environment on the student's acquisition of academic behaviors.

No description available.

There is little agreement regarding the identification procedures, characteristics and the definition of emotional disturbances even though the child-serving agencies often share the same clients and the same mandates. Because of these commonalities, a broad range of services are duplicated, lack coordination, and are provided by scarce personnel. The net effect may be no one receives services (LaCour, 1982). Interagency collaboration, touted as a management tool, is a vehicle by which lack of service delivery may be eliminated. According to state and federal mandates, interagency collaboration is to be used, whenever and wherever, services are needed to effectively serve students identified as seriously emotionally disturbed (SED). The purpose of this study was to identify the current level of interagency collaboration available to students within the Commonwealth of Virginia for students labeled seriously emotionally disturbed, ages 5-18, as perceived by special education directors and teachers serving students labeled seriously emotionally disturbed. A School Personnel Perceptions of Interagency Collaboration for Students Identified as Seriously Emotionally Disturbed survey was developed to measure the current level of interagency collaboration for this study. Items included were based on a review of the literature; information generated from informal interviews with special education administrators, special education teachers, and professionals in related fields; and, comments from expert reviewers. Questionnaires were mailed to a sample of thirty six school divisions, which translates into a total of 80 surveys sent to directors of special education and teachers of students identified as seriously emotionally disturbed. The sample was determined by: 1) designating school districts within the Commonwealth according to their Average Daily Membership into large-, medium-, and small- sized districts, and 2) selecting a sample from each size school district. Directors were then contacted and asked for the names of teachers within their school district currently teaching students identified as seriously emotionally disturbed. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-tests and one way analyses of variance. Post hoc tests were used to determine which means were significantly different from each other. Major findings include: 1) special education directors and teachers of students identified as SED agree that availability of a variety of services is very important to the success of their students. Few significant differences between directors and teachers were found; however, differences did occur with services that focus on the family rather than the child. Teachers found these services to be more important to the success of their students than did directors. 2) While directors and teachers across school district sizes indicated a variety of services were currently available to students identified as seriously emotionally disturbed, there was little agreement between directors and teachers within district sizes as to how much any one service was currently provided. 3) Teachers and directors indicated that, in many cases, they did not know whether or not a certain agency provided a specific service to students identified as in need of services. / Ed. D.

Over the past several decades, attempts have been made both to measure and to change attitudes toward the mentally ill. Early studies which measured such attitudes found that the general public considered the mentally ill to be morally degenerate, dirty, and dangerous. As time went on, public attitudes evolved into looking at mental illness in terms of a medical model, viewing mental illness as an illness like any other. This is the point at which the general public is now. It seems to be the opinion of some of the reviewers that such an evolution of views would bring about more accepting behaviors. Previous behaviorally-oriented research has not shown this to be the case. It is conceivable that as public attitudes evolve to a more interpersonally-oriented view, behavioral acceptance would also increase. Shortcomings in previous research included the lack of a face-to-face interaction between normals and the mentally ill, and attention to such details of the interaction as physical proximity. The present study investigated whether such conditions as being able to see someone one interacts with, and how far away that person is, make any difference in the way rewards and penalties are meted out, particularly if one of the participants is seen as mentally ill by the other. It was expected that when face-to-face and close to one another, a normal teacher would over-reward someone thought to be mentally ill. This response, hypothesized to arise out of a normal person's apprehension regarding the mentally ill, was expected to lessen as distance increased. It was also expected that when out-of-sight, learners would be penalized more heavily than learners face-to-face. This would particularly be the case when the learners was perceived as mentally ill. The experimental task involved a college student volunteer acting as a teacher to a confederate who was presented as either normal or mentally ill. Other variables were physical proximity and the ability of the participants to see one another. The teacher was required to administer a paired-associate learning task to the learner. Control, within limits, of the amount of reward or penalty in tokens, meted out for responses was entirely the teacher's. After the task, the teacher was required to complete an evaluation questionnaire on the learner. Results were surprising. The expected over-reward of the mentally ill learner when close and face-to-face did not materialize. In fact, it was found that learners face-to-face and far away were rewarded a greater amount and penalized less than those close. It seems that an attempt was made by these face-to-face, far away teachers to bring about an intimacy equilibrium, compensating for what seemed to be an uncomfortably great interpersonal distance. This was the case regardless of the perceived mental status of the learner, evidencing no differential treatment of the learner if he was presented as mentally ill. Out-of-sight predictions, however, were borne out. Implications of the data were mentioned. Possibilities of the direction in attitudes toward the mentally ill were explored, with two successful attitude change programs detailed. / Ph. D.

Families of children with a mental disorder typically have many stressors due to their children's behavioral functioning. These families do not always choose to receive community-based services that are intended to decrease the stressors within the families and prevent the children from being placed out of the families' homes. This study investigated the relationship between clients' functioning during their initial assessment provided by the Victor Community Support Services (VCSS), compared to their functioning when they were discharged from VCSS based on the families utilization of community-based services.

MPM / Oliver Tambo Institute of Governance and Policy Studies

A number of authors have suggested recently that the behavioral characteristics and self-perceptions of learning disabled and emotionally disturbed children are so similar as to negate the fruitfulness of trying to differentiate between these two groups. These characteristics are quite similar for the two special education groups when they have been compared independently of each other to regular education students. In order to provide support for these prior studies, the self-concepts and locus of control of 36 learning disabled, emotionally disturbed, and regular education students were compared. A significant difference was found between the LD and RE students in terms of self-concept only. No significant differences were noted between the ED and RE students. These results are discussed in relation to the somewhat conflicting results of prior studies with implications for future research.

M.Cur. (Psychiatric Nursing) / In local communities, young people use different substances for reasons known to them alone. This research study is about young people who are aged between 18 and 30 years, who smoke cannabis and are mentally ill. Mostly the parents of these young people, as well as other members of the family, the neighbours and the community at large experience many challenges resulting from cannabis smoking. The objectives of this study were to explore and describe the experiences of parents living with mental health care users smoking cannabis and to issue guidelines for the advanced psychiatric nurse practitioner to facilitate the mental health of parents living with mental health care users smoking cannabis in the context under study. A qualitative research design that was exploratory, descriptive and contextual was followed to achieve the aim and objectives of the study. Purposive sampling was used for sample selection based on inclusion criteria. The number of participants selected for this study was guided by data saturation. The total number of participants selected for this study was seven. The data collection methods used were phenomenological interviews, observation and field notes. In the phenomenological interview, the participant was asked: “How is it for you living with a mental health care user smoking cannabis?” The phenomenological interviews were audiotaped and transcribed. The researcher and an independent coder analysed the transcribed phenomenological interviews and field notes. The researcher used Tesch’s method of data analysis (Creswell, 2007:157) in analysing the data. The measures to ensure trustworthiness in this study include credibility, dependability, confirmability, transferability and authenticity. The seven ethical principles of competence of the researcher, right to self-determination, right to privacy, right to autonomy and confidentiality, right to protection from exploitation and obtaining informed consent guided this study ...

Progress, Regress examines the narrator's journey through the world of mental illness. Psychologist Lisa James has a new client, six-year-old Megan Cooper, who has been diagnosed with child-onset schizophrenia. Megan's young age and the severity of her illness rattle Lisa, and make her question not only her role as a psychologist and a mother, but also her own mental state. / by Michelle Maher. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.