Creation of Psychological and Pedagogical Groups for People with Disabilities - Coursework Example

Psycho-Educational Groups For The Developmentally Disabled Individuals Psycho-Education Groups for the Developmentally Challenged This will be a voluntary psycho-educational group whose aim will be to teach members of anger management and related issues through continuous group psycho-education. This group will comprise adults with developmental disabilities from different backgrounds as well as long time sufferers of anger related issues. Persons with developmental disabilities sometimes exhibit challenging behaviors like being over aggressive-beating others or yelling and shouting at people. “Challenging behavior’’ here refers to abnormal ways of expressing oneself and in this case inability to control anger. The program will provide behavioral interventions targeted at reducing such behaviors. Recently, efforts have been applied to developing a developmental pathway model in the behavior analysis literature to prevent challenging behavior from occurring (Roarne, 2007). It will also provide information about developmental disabilities, in particular anger management problems, its symptoms, and its side effects, how to control it and techniques for crisis intervention and mutual problem-solving. The group will also stress the fact that developmental disability is just a condition like any other which is curable by medication and psychotherapy procedures but can’t be perceived to be inability (Toseland, Jones & Gellis, 2004). It will also emphasize to members that they are as good as they are willing to push themselves. The project will be in line with the view of Colom & Lam (2005), on the meaning of psycho-education. They argued that psycho-education is “a therapeutic approach that does not focus on abnormality diagnosis, prescription, therapy, or cure, but on goal setting, skill teaching, satisfaction, and goal achievement.’’Authier (1977) describes it as focusing on the goal setting, skill teaching, satisfaction, and goal achievement. The group will have clearly set target and put in place measure to make sure they are achieved. There will also be checks and balances on the group so that there is zero deviation from the original goal. Landsverk & Kane’s (1998) review found that there is an “increasing body of evidence of research showing psycho-education to be an effective component in a comprehensive treatment approach to serious mental illness.” Anger being one of the possible mental illnesses, plus other research findings that have revealed the same is what is forming the basis of this research. In Griffiths (2006) review, he revealed that “psychosocial educational interventions can be beneficial on a wide variety of measures for sufferers of many different mental health disorders.’’ This project therefore aims to put such findings into practice lest they fail to help serve their purpose. Rationale for the Group It will be assumed that with group psycho-education comprising people from different backgrounds and those who have suffered for varied duration, will yield positive results compared to group made of people from similar backgrounds. Past researches quote patients as saying that group programs were meaningful and helpful in better understanding their lives (Prasko, Vrbova, Latolova, & Minerova, 2010). Morse (2004) explains that “participant’s social interactions are considered to be crucial in the delivery of psycho-education”. That points to the reason why the group members are to come from different historical backgrounds. Putting these people together in groups will be important in understanding their different experiences and come up with proper solutions tailor-made for the condition. Benefits of psychosocial educational interventions This project will benefit members in many ways. Mowbray & Megivern (1999) researched on Michigan Supported Education Intervention Project (MSEIP) for individuals with mental health problems and discovered that the delivery of education in a group setting, that utilized problem solving and role modeling, resulted in increased feelings of empowerment. They also found that participation in the group and classroom interventions provided an increase in the use of specific problem-solving strategies and improvements in a measure of optimal goal setting. The only problem with the study is that it can’t be generalized since it was limited to Detroit USA only. It was also found from the research conducted in Canada that utilizing a psycho-education intervention to help patients identify the signs and symptoms of Bipolar Disorder and enhancing knowledge about the illness, raising awareness of the impact of BD on psychological, cognitive, physical, emotional, and social functioning among others contributed to improved quality of life for the participants in terms of physical functioning and general life satisfaction (Michalak, Yatham, Wan & Lam, 2005). Another research done in New York USA, involving depressed individuals, in this case non-hospitalized participants suffering from late-life depression using psycho-education intervention based on goal-focused model of hope found out that this intervention resulted in a significant reduction in depressive symptoms (Snyder’s 1994). They also found positive improvements in measures of hope, hopelessness, anxiety, and social functioning (Klausner, et al., 1998).This study utilized formulation of psycho-education and skills training in the areas of anxiety management, cognitive restructuring, individualized behavioral assignments, and the utilization of past success to guide achievement. This study though had relatively small number of participants, it equally add to other research studies which recommends this group formation. They recommended that more research be done to prove its appropriateness in other cases of mental disability. Another research was also done on psychosocial educational interventions involving participants with major depressive disorder. In this research, they found that both the intervention courses resulted in a reduction in the number of participants meeting a diagnosis of depression, a reduction in depressive symptoms, and improved subjective functioning (Dowrick, Dunn, & Ayuso-Mateos, 2000). While doing his annual follow-up, Dowrick et al. realized a slight advantage for the problem solving program over the course on prevention of depression in reducing depressive symptoms. This might be interpreted to mean that the problem solving skills acquired allowed participants to cope with the continuing and changing demands in their lives in the longer term since the study had assigned individuals living in the community who were suffering from major depressive disorder to either a problem solving course, a course on the prevention of depression, or to a control group. The study had its participants taken from urban and rural communities in Finland, Republic of Ireland, Norway, Spain, and the United Kingdom and hence the initial point that the desirable group should be non-uniform. In both these cases, the interventions proved to be beneficial for the participants and hence the same is true for the developmentally disabled patients as they exhibit almost the same characteristics (Roffman, 2004). It is important though to note that the groups studied were relatively small in number and hence the need to expand the group composition in terms of number and heterogeneity of the group in this study. Goals of the Group The major goal of this group will be to achieve self-reliability and appreciation by interpersonal relationships through psycho education of members on anger management strategies. The group will purpose to improve the perception of themselves and to the society as well as family. The specific goal will be to improve the risk awareness among the members so they can exhibit normal behaviors in real life situations. This will be achieved by constant psycho-education and member to member discussion of better ways to manage their temper in tempting situation. Target population and membership This project is targeting the developmentally disabled individuals living in groups within New York City but will be expanded to other cities depending on the result of this one. For the start, the target number relatively higher than quoted previous researches. It will have a minimum of five to a maximum of around 200. The higher the number, the greater the diversity of experiences. The ratio of educator to members should be 1:50. What is important here is that the participants must join the group voluntarily. With voluntary membership, the result can rarely be biased. The only screening will be group membership and or recommendation from a psycho therapist or some anger management expert indicating that one suffers from the above condition. This procedure is to avoid bias and wrong results from having wrong participants in the first. Logistics for the group The group members will be meeting every Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Weekdays the meeting will be taking place in the evenings for one hour while on Sundays it will be for three hours beginning noon. The timing is to allow the participants on weekdays to first attend to their jobs then meet after that to avoid conflict of interests. On Sundays being a weekend, many people are normally available and hence the long meeting hours. It is made three times per week to ensure that the participants are constantly reminded of their mission. Less frequent may make them forget or backtrack while more frequent may lead to exhaustion and finally boredom. The plan is also to make the group long term not just some short term project which leads to a relapse of the participants into their former conditions at the end. James (2005) insinuated in his research that “To raise the expectations of a vulnerable learner group, and then take away learning provision and support after only a short period of time could be damaging to potential learners and to the credibility of the provider”. Since the intention is to help as many as possible, it is important that the group remains open to any willing member subject to abiding by the set out rules. This again will contribute to too many members from different backgrounds and history bringing in a story to share which is in line with initial aim of group heterogeneity. Session content This content might change and doesn’t have to be rigid. This will only represent the first three weeks. Subsequent weeks will follow the same trend with Tuesdays being recap day, Fridays being real issues (skill teaching) day and Sundays being a group evaluation and welfare day. First week Second week Third week Tuesdays Introduction Setting the goals of the group, rules and venues of meeting, electing officials if need be. Purposes of the meetings and opinion gathering from members on any related issue Setting measures to check on whether the group is on track with its goal or not. Identifying correctional measures Identifying and or modifying existing goals if need be. Recap of the past activities and corrections of identified weaknesses. Fridays Skill teaching day. Different skills will be taught to members to encourage self-sufficiency in the group. Self-discovery, sharing of experiences, definitions of disabilities, medical requirements and the expected responsibilities. Definition of anger and its related problems, its signs and how to deal with it Myths about anger and its management and its effect, as well as individual roles in managing the same. There will also be scenario play to train members how to handle different scenario that may cause anger on them. Psycho-education interventions. Pointing its importance and developing pro-active measures to cater for the affected Sundays Evaluation day. Hearing out from different members their levels of achievement of the pre-set goals. This day will also be welfare day. Members interact with each other. Self-help, lifestyle, physical health, time management, fun activity during leisure time Evaluation of the group activity in the past week. How to manage stress, interpersonal relationships, social skills training and future activities preparedness. Evaluation of the group activity in the past week Leadership of the group The group will be led by a PhD. holder psycho-therapist. This person will be assisted by two people from the group to reflect the sense of belonging. The two members will be selected by the group and has to be ethically sensitive. The leader however will invite different psycho-social educators to talk to the group as invited guests. For members and officials, no academic qualification will be required so long as you have been chosen by the group. For the group leader, he must be a psycho-education professional with experience in handling such a group being an added advantage. Evaluation procedure For this project, quantitative evaluation might prove a little tricky. However there will be some qualitative ways of measuring the performance of members. At the start, participants will be subjected to some situational tests to obtain their level of tolerance to different issues and see how they tackle the test and rate them in a scale of 1-10. The smaller shows poor tolerance and a higher showing better or improvement. The performance will be noted down. The same test will be conducted on them later to observe whether there is any improvement in problem solving abilities. This will be done every month for consistency purposes and each individual rated. References Authier, J. (1997). The psychoeducation model: definition, contemporary roots and contemporary roots and content. Canadian counsellor, 12, 15-20. Colom, F., & Lam, D. (2005). Psychoeducation: improving outcomes in bipolar disorder. European Psychiatry, 20, 359-364. Dowrick, C., Dunn, G., & Ayuso-Mateos, J. L. (2000). Problem solving treatment and group psychoeducation for depression: multicentre randomised controlled trial. British Medical Journal, 3(21), 1450–4. Griffiths, C. (2006). The theories, mechanisms, benefits, and practical delivery of psychosocial educational interventions for people with mental health disorders. International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation, 11(1), 21-28. James, K. (2005). NIACE briefing sheet: Learning and skills for people with mental health difficulties. Retrieved June 10, 2006, from National Institute of Adult Continuing Education: http://www.niace.org.uk/Research/HDE/Documents/MH_BS.pdf Klausner, E. J., F., C. J., Spielman, L., Pupo, C., Abrams, R., & Alexopoulos, G. S. (1998). Late-life depression and functional disability: the role of goal-focused group psychotherapy. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 13, 707-716. Landsverk, S. S., & Kane, C. F. (1998). Antonovsky’s sense of coherence: theoretical basis of psychoeductaion in schizophrenia. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 19, 419-431. Michalak, E. E., Yatham, L. N., Wan, D., & Lam, R. W. (2005). Perceived quality of life in patients with bipolar disorder. Does group psychoeducation have an impact? Canadian Journal ofPsychiatry, 50, 96-100. Morse, W. C. (2004). Psychoeducational Perspective Overview. Retrieved March 10, 2006, from University of Michigan - atranscript of spoken commentary: http://www.coe.missouri.edu/~vrcbd/pdf/PSYPERSP.PDF Prasko, J., Vrbova, K., Latolova, K., & Minerova, B. (2010). Psycho-education for Psychotic patients. Czech Repub: Olomouc University. doi:DOI 10.5507/bp.2011.008 Roarne, H. R. (2007). Preliminarydescription of the occurence of proto-injurious behaviour in typically developing Children. Early and Intensive behaviour intervention,, 3(4) 334-347. Roffman, R. (2004). Psychoeducational Groups. In C. Garvin, L. Gutierrez, & M. Galinsky,. Handbook of Social Work with Groups. Toseland, R., Jones, L., & Gellis, Z. (2004). Group Dynamics. In C. Garvin, L. Gutierrez, & M. Galinsky. Handbook of Social Work with Groups. Read More