Clinical Implications in Healing from Domestic Violence: A Case Study.

Violence against women by their intimate partners continues to be widespread today. Practicing psychologists who treat female clients will see the consequences of immediate and long-term emotional effects of abuse. The author uses a psychologist's personal story of domestic violence and healing from abuse to illustrate the psychological issues and concerns battered women face in their healing. The author then gives eight recommendations for treating battered women. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Assessing dangerousness: Violence by sexual offenders, batterers and child abusers.

Reviews the book, Assessing dangerousness: Violence by sexual offenders, batterers and child abusers by Jacqueline C. Campbell (see record 1995-98215-000). This is a valuable volume of consistently well written chapters by authors of diverse backgrounds. The book's chapters identify research on clusters of risk factors for child abuse, wife assault, homicide by battered women and sexual offending. The identification of risk factors is the prevalent concept in contemporary violence prediction research. Risk factors are determined by researching actual circumstances of violence and statistically identifying antecedent events that appear to be pertinent. The current text is a readable and well referenced overview of the contemporary state of research efforts to address the notion of dangerousness potential. Dangerousness is reviewed in several key interpersonal areas. We anticipate that the text will be attractive to many average readers who unfortunately may be mislead not only by the series editor's stated aspiration, but also by the misguided illusion that the field is slowly progressing towards actual empirical prediction of dangerousness. For the professional reader who has practical experience with violent behavior, we anticipate that the text will be a valuable concise resource for at least the next several years. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological Effects of Domestic Violence on Children and Their Mothers.

While domestic violence and child abuse are known to be highly correlated, several related areas of functioning of victim mothers and children are not well researched and have implications for the provision of services. Fifty mothers and children were referred by service agencies for independent structured interviews and psychological assessment. Assessment focused on evidence of posttraumatic reexperiencing, avoidance, physiological arousal, associated symptoms, and parenting skills. A complex pattern of results documented high levels of abuse and associated trauma disorders in both the children and their mothers. However, the presence of disorders was generally not correlated between children and mothers, and affected mothers were less likely to seek mental health services for their children (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Community-based intervention for children exposed to intimate partner violence: An efficacy trial.

A community-based intervention program was tested with 181 children ages 6-12 and their mothers exposed to intimate partner violence during the past year. A sequential assignment procedure allocated participants to 3 conditions: child-only intervention, child-plus-mother intervention (CM), and a wait-list comparison. A 2-level hierarchical linear model consisting of repeated observations within individuals and individuals assigned to conditions was used to evaluate the effects of time from baseline to postintervention comparing the 3 conditions and from postintervention to 8-month follow-up for both intervention conditions. Outcomes were individual children's externalizing and internalizing behavior problems and attitudes about violence. Of the 3 conditions, CM children showed the greatest improvement over time in externalizing problems and attitudes about violence. There were 79% fewer children with clinical range externalizing scores and 77% fewer children with clinical range internalizing scores from baseline to follow-up for CM children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Screening for Domestic Violence: Recommendations Based on a Practice Survey.

How do practicing psychologists identify female victims of domestic violence? When asking about harm to self and others, do they also ask if the client is in danger of being harmed by another in an intimate relationship? A national survey of practicing psychologists revealed that 95% agreed that it is their responsibility to assist victimized clients, but fewer than 19% routinely screen for domestic violence. Psychologists report several barriers to screening at intake, which coupled with low screening rates, suggest that psychologists are missing important opportunities to assist clients who are at risk for assault. Several recommendations designed to improve psychologists' screening rates for domestic violence are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Psychotherapy through clinical role playing.

Reviews the book Psychotherapy through clinical role playing, by David A. Kipper (see record 1986-98559-000). Kipper's book presents a microanalysis of the role of groups and intervention in therapy. So does his presentation of a general role-playing model embedded in group therapy. It is a reminder of roots springing from behavior simulation, the environmental factor and clinical role playing as a subset of behavior simulation. Kipper presents an extended and somewhat drawn-out discussion of the newer and rational processes of psychotherapy through clinical role playing. He is an advocate of clinical role-play therapy as a comprehensive utilization of behavioral simulation as a force for change in therapy. He is persuasive not only in group therapy but also in the application of this technique in individual treatment. Clinical role playing in therapy is both an adjunct and sometimes the main thrust of therapy. We all do it using different nomenclature and even in psychoanalysis without its staging and defined roles. This book calls our attention to a technique that we may take for granted, and as such it is an evocative book well worth reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Violence and its aftermath/La violence et ses séquelles: Introduction.

This issue is devoted to a wide range of topics concerning violence: How are public outrages such as the massacre in Montréal to he understood? What are the social motives underlying our preoccupation with violence in the family? Are children to he believed when they make allegations of sexual abuse--and how are we to know when they are telling the truth? How should we intervene in the lives of the survivors and the offenders? Violence and its aftermath is an obvious theme linking these articles. But the reader might care to consider a second theme, explicit in some pieces, implicit in others. How does our way of thinking about a problem affect the way we define it and what we think should be done about it? I hope you find as much to reflect upon as I did in this special issue of Canadian Psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Psychological Assessment of Children.

Reviews the book, The Psychological Assessment of Children by James O. Palmer (see record 1970-20599-000). The Palmer text begins with a nod to the science-practitioner model. It is ego-oriented and depends heavily of the case history approach viewed within developmental constructs. Psychiatric taxonomy is largely avoided. The organisation of material covers 5 parts; I Hypotheses of Assessment, II Methods of Data Collection, III Procedure in Assessment, IV Analyses of the Assessment, and and V Assessment and Recommendations. The final chapters comprise a linking of assessment for psychotherapy and other kinds of intervention. Test manual kinds of materials, test norms, and scoring procedures are not covered. Nor are specific tests reviewed, the assumption being that the student will be receiving technical training concurrently. Palmer's purpose seems to be the provision of holistic kinds of conceptual frameworks within which the technician can function instead as a professional. Worth examining for class adaption. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Deprived Children.

Reviews the book Deprived children by Hilda Lewis (1954). This compact and carefully written book is a report of a social-clinical study of 500 children entering the Mersham Reception Centre in Kent, England, between October, 1947 and July, 1950. Three concerns are evident: (a) an evaluation of the work of the Centre; (b) an evaluation of the effects of earlier maternal separation on the child's adjustment at the time of admission and on his adjustment two years later; and (c) an evaluation of the factors leading to the child's placement at the Centre and the importance of these factors for his subsequent adjustment. The writer has with care considered the family backgrounds, socioeconomic influences, and personal experiences of these children prior to their admission, and she has related these variables to the personality and behavior patterns of the children. The large number of variables which she considers in these areas and the skill with which she has interrelated these factors, sets this research report in marked contrast to the speculation characterizing most of the reports on deprived children. The author found in her investigation that the degree of disturbance of the child entering the Centre is related to his mother's emotional instability, her intellectual level, her tendency for overindulgence, her tendency to neglect and/or to reject him, etc. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Helping Bereaved Children, Second Edition: A Handbook for Practitioners.

Reviews the book, Helping Bereaved Children, Second Edition: A Handbook for Practitioners edited by Nancy Boyd Webb (see record 2002-02276-000). When health policy decision-makers understand the greater societal benefits of providing evidence-based bereavement support to children and adolescents, our country will have coordinated, accessible, and comprehensive Loss Support programs for every family member. Until then, we are fortunate to have this guide to educate us on how to best support our most vulnerable family members when someone loved dies. Although the title specifically targets practitioners, I believe that the plain language and holistic approach would assist parents and other adults in supporting these children and teens. I am pleased to endorse this book as an excellent resource for professionals and lay people alike as we all strive to ensure that our children receive the best support for the grief they experience in their young lives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Child sexual abuse: Critical perspectives on prevention, intervention, and treatment.

Reviews the book, Child sexual abuse: Critical perspectives on prevention, intervention, and treatment edited by Christopher R. Bagley and Ray J. Thomlison (1991). This book is a compilation of a series of literature reviews originally commissioned by Health and Welfare Canada in 1987 and completed in 1988. The individual papers included in this edited version represent a cross section of Canadian academicians, clinicians, and case workers who are integrally involved in the policies and practices regarding child sexual abuse in Canada. The work provides a comprehensive perspective on prevention at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. The list of authors is impressive in terms of their expertise and experience. At a time when numerous books on child sexual abuse are appearing on the market, it is nice to see a book that has some unusual aspects. Aside from its distinctly Canadian perspective, the book addresses several important, yet frequently ignored, topics. The book provides an up-to-date review of several core issues: conceptualization of the problem, prevention strategies, impact of sexual abuse, investigative interviewing, treatment outcome studies, and treatment issues for child molesters. The more unique topics include a review of the strategies used to evaluate prevention programs, prevalence rates among a number of special populations, the role of medical practitioners in preventing and intervening in child sexual abuse, and sexual abuse and exploitation among disabled individuals. Overall, I can recommend this book for clinicians and researchers in Canada and elsewhere who are interested in child sexual abuse. This compilation of literature reviews highlights the leading role that Canadian social service agencies have taken in developing programs for sexually abused children and their families. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interventions for intimate partner violence: Review and implications for evidence-based practice.

The objective of this article was to survey available intimate partner violence (IPV) treatment studies with (a) randomized case assignment, and (b) at least 20 participants per group. Studies were classified into 4 categories according to primary treatment focus: perpetrator, victim, couples, or child-witness interventions. The results suggest that extant interventions have limited effect on repeat violence, with most treatments reporting minimal benefit above arrest alone. There is a lack of research evidence for the effectiveness of the most common treatments provided for victims and perpetrators of IPV, including the Duluth model for perpetrators and shelter–advocacy approaches for victims. Rates of recidivism in most perpetrator- and partner-focused treatments are approximately 30% within 6 months, regardless of intervention strategy used. Couples treatment approaches that simultaneously address problems with substance abuse and aggression yield the lowest recidivism rates, and manualized child trauma treatments are effective in reducing child symptoms secondary to IPV. This review shows the benefit of integrating empirically validated substance abuse and trauma treatments into IPV interventions and highlights the need for more work in this area. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptualizing Exposure to Community Violence: An Application of Confirmatory Factor Analysis.

The primary goal of the present study was to demonstrate how the technique of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) could be applied to common measurement issues within the school psychology literature. Specifically, the CFA technique was used to test several alternative factor structures thought to underlie a commonly used measure of exposure to community violence. Data were collected from 242 elementary and middle-school, inner city, African American students. Results illustrate the potential benefits and limitations of applying CFA. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Community Consultation.

Reviews the book, Community Consultation by Patrick O'Neill and Edison J. Trickett (1982). Community Consultation is organized around the theme of linkages. First, the consultant is linked to the client not just those with whom they work directly. Clients can include a single person, a group, a complex organization, or the community at large. In Part One, issues surrounding this linkage are examined, including consultant/setting fit and the contract, implicit or explicit, that defines the formal relationship between consultant and client. Part Two concentrates on the linkages among members of a particular client group or organization. Community Consultation is an extremely ambitious book. It defines consultation broadly as including not only the relatively conservative intervention described by Gerald Caplan and others but also elements of more radical interventions traditionally called community development and social action. In summary, Community Consultation is a provocative book that significantly advances our theoretical understanding of consultation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The abusive personality: Violence and control in intimate relationships.

Reviews the book, The abusive personality: Violence and control in intimate relationships by Donald G. Dutton (see record 1998-06084-000). Having devoted much of his career to the study of men who abuse their wives, Donald Dutton is unquestionably well qualified to write this book. Through his extensive research on the topic and his hands-on experience with men who batter, he has gained valuable insights into these and other men. In the late 1970s, when my colleagues and I were planning a study on applying social learning theory to the reduction of violence, Don Dutton was one of the few people who had already made headway in that area, and his ideas about how to apply psychological knowledge were formative in our early efforts. Since that early work, Dutton's ideas have evolved based on where his research results led him, and that journey is the story told in this book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Rochester Symposium on Developmental Psychopathology, Volume 3: Models and integrations.

Reviews the book, Rochester Symposium on Developmental Psychopathology, Volume 3: Models and integrations by Dante Cicchetti and Sheree L. Toth (1991). Cicchetti and Toth's Models and integrations is the third of five volumes issuing from the annual "Rochester Symposium on Developmental Psychopathology," a series of publications which has served to define the discipline. The current volume plays a pivotal role in the evolution of developmental psychopathology because it raises important theoretical questions about the discipline, not the least of which are what is it and what might it be? In challenging the conceptual strength and clarity of the field, the book addresses salient developmental issues that will need to be resolved if the discipline is to advance. This is a thought-provoking and intellectually challenging book. It contains 11 weighty chapters organized into three relatively distinct but overlapping sections: (1) theoretical issues, (2) models for understanding specific forms of child psychopathology, and (3) developmentally-grounded intervention strategies. Each chapter in this book demonstrates an extraordinarily high level of theoretical and methodological sophistication. Collectively, the chapters in this volume constitute one of the most informative and sophisticated discussions of theory and methodology in the field of developmental psychopathology that is currently available. This volume is an outstanding contribution to the field and is highly recommended reading for advanced students and researchers in the areas of developmental and child psychopathology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Helping students succeed in the regular classroom: A guide for developing intervention assistance programs.

Reviews the book, Helping students succeed in the regular classroom: A guide for developing intervention assistance programs by Joseph E. Zins, Michael J. Curtis, Janet L. Graden, and Charlene R. Ponti (see record 1988-97800-000). The goal of this book is to provide sufficient detail to enable practitioners to make intervention assistance programs integral components of their current educational systems. Authored by four of the field's leading scholars and practitioners in the area of prereferral intervention, the book clearly succeeds in achieving these goals and, hopefully, in helping to stave off the "bandwagon" mentality that could easily engulf the new service delivery models that are appearing nationwide. Helping Students Succeed in the Regular Classroom begins at a conceptual level by examining the rationale, logic and need for intervention assistance programs. Reflecting the best of contemporary thinking in this area, the authors' arguments for alternatives to traditional special education services are sound and convincing. Moving beyond merely critiquing the mistakes of traditional service delivery models, the book rapidly builds a solid theoretical framework from which innovative solutions to old and persistent problems can be developed. Complementing the conceptual and theoretical elements of the book is a broad-ranging overview of pragmatic, "how to" information for the practitioner. If Helping Students Succeed in the Regular Classroom has a shortcoming, it is that some of these practice-oriented chapters suffer from trying to cover too much material in too little space. For example, while the authors acknowledge the critical nature of obtaining sanction and support at the district level for intervention assistance programs, they devote less than one page to this extremely complex topic. Overall, I recommend this book to the readership of School Psychology Quarterly with great enthusiasm. It addresses topics of critical importance to our field, and does so in a well-reasoned, scholarly and practical manner. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The clinician’s handbook.

Reviews the book, The clinician's handbook by Robert G. Meyer and Sarah E. Deitsch (see record 1996-97385-000). This book is an integration of a great deal of both diagnostic and clinical information concerning adult and adolescent psychopathology. It brings together a collective wealth of information about various psychological assessment tools. It also attempts to show the relevance of assessment data, both to case formulation and to treatment/intervention. Although, as the reviewer notes, there are a few expected flaws in the text, he believes that the authors should be congratulated for their superb effort to accomplish what they set out to do, which is to give a specific and concrete focus to psychopathology assessment. This book is recommended for psychotherapists, particularly those who are forensically oriented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Health consequences of abuse in the family: A clinical guide for evidence-based practice.

Reviews the book, Health consequences of abuse in the family: A clinical guide for evidence-based practice, edited by Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett (see record 2003-88342-000). This book is a comprehensive clinical guide that stresses the necessity of assessing and understanding the effects of abuse on physical health. Each chapter succinctly captures unique issues relevant to the assessment and treatment of abuse with at-risk populations (e.g., children with disabilities, battered women, those with traumatic brain injuries, elderly individuals, and minority women). The book gives thoughtful consideration to the barriers in assessing abuse and provides insightful suggestions on how to overcome those obstacles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)