Increasingly, war and armed conflict are having devastating effects on the psychological and social well-being of civilian survivors throughout the world. There is a serious shortage of practitioners and culturally-appropriate models for assisting victims of psychological trauma with their healing and recovery. Educational settings, be they formal or nonformal, are appropriate places for psychotherapeutic interventions. This dissertation focuses on the intentional use of a nonformal educational setting for psychosocial healing of those exposed to war-induced trauma. A participatory education program designed to teach Central American community mental health workers the basic concepts and techniques of trauma treatment also served as a healing environment for the trainees. Individual psychological trauma as well as war-related intra-group conflict were addressed. Using an integrative model of healing and recovery, the intervention combined cognitive, emotional, spiritual, social, and physical approaches. The educational setting provided a larger interactional framework for the social contextualization of intrapsychic wounds, thus supporting healing. The case illustrates the importance of self-care for professionals and para-professionals working with the psychologically traumatized, which is rarely mentioned in the literature. This is a qaulitative study that combines a literature review on the nature of trauma and recovery, a case study with Central American community mental health workers, interviews with practitioners, and personal experience. The literature review takes into consideration cultural and Latin American perspectives, the importance of community-based approaches, and the linkage of individual and social dimensions. It includes a critique of posttraumatic stress disorder as a conceptual framework. The inquiry examines the viability of intentional incorporation of psychosocial healing into an educational setting, and indicates which components of participatory nonformal education best lend themselves to interfacing with psychological healing. Findings from both the literature and case study point to a need to question long-held assumptions of psychotherapy when working with trauma survivors. Self-care, safe container-building, peer support, mentoring, and a heightened role for para-professionals are recommended. The training and preparation of community mental health workers is seen as an effective response to the proliferation of war-related trauma.

This study explored how first and second generation Puerto Rican female headed households residing in Springfield, Massachusetts, utilize the extended family network in childrearing responsibilities. The study will examine how the process of acculturation to the mainland culture has influenced the structure and the dynamics between single-parent families and the extended Puerto Rican family. More specifically, it explored in what ways the traditional shared childrearing responsibilities between single-parent families and extended family have been adapted to fit with the mainland culture. In addition, it explored the aspects of the traditional shared childrearing responsibilities that remain functional. The results suggest that first generation and second generation Puerto Rican female heads of household are quite similar in how the extended family network is involved in the shared child-rearing practices.

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Research with adult populations suggests that individual differences in social support may begin in childhood. It has been suggested that the makeup of people in a child's social support network could be indicative of the child's social development. Until recently there was not a measure available that could be used to report social support across the life span, therefore the ability to compare childhood social support networks to adult social support networks has been limited. The present research used a measure that has historically been used with adults and recently used with children as young as age 7, and used it with younger children (age 4). The measure used is a hierarchical mapping technique in which the children were asked to place the members of their social support network into three concentric circles. Four, 7, and 10 year olds (N = 286) participated in individual 20 min interviews. The social development of the child from age 4 to age 10 can clearly be seen in this research. For example, the older children have relationships of varying closeness and can made distinctions on the basis of closeness. In contrast, the younger child places most network members in the inner circle, possibly because the child is unable to make finer distinctions in relationships or possibly because the child actually has mostly relationships that would be described by placing them in the inner circle. Other findings include that as the child gets older, the social support network grows larger and includes more family members in the inner circles and more friends in the outer circles. The research also indicates that the reports of 4 year olds were just as reliable as those of 7 and 10 year olds.

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