Music therapy can help social workers deal with negative behaviors and symptoms of dementia in older adults without drugs or physical restraints, thereby improving the quality of care. This study tested the effectiveness of music therapy activities for improving agitated behavior in older adults with dementia living in long-term care institutions.…

Forgiveness involves a shift from negative thoughts, emotions, and behaviors to positive ones after a transgression. Previous research supports the benefits of forgiving, particularly for physical and emotional health. However, debates within the character development literatures exist regarding whether forgiveness is a strength that benefits all…

Purpose: Incarcerated women serving life sentences are a growing subpopulation with multiple mental health needs. However, no existing interventions have been designed for or tested with this population. Method: This study tested a gender-responsive, trauma-informed intervention ("Beyond Violence") and examined changes in incarcerated…

Background: Clients with attachment issues are over-represented in learning disability services. Forensic inpatient services are no exception. Treatment pathways comprise multidisciplinary interventions, and skills-based treatments are considered vital to recovery and maintenance of prosocial and adaptive behaviour and reduction in risk. An…

Children experience grief and loss from death, divorce, parental incarceration, and similar situations of being placed in foster care or adoption. These youths may be challenged in recovery due to lacking the necessary life experience and coping skills. They may also lack the appropriate support networks to work through their grief as their…

School counselors are regularly tasked with managing student's emotions and behaviors that impede school performance. This daunting assignment can be overwhelming for school professionals. With the many diagnoses that may provide an explanation for dysfunctional behavior amongst students, the possibility of grief is frequently overlooked. The…

This systematic review sought to understand the individual characteristics of incarcerated youth within the major risk factor domains identified by the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). A comprehensive search of the literature from 1979 to 2013 identified 85 articles of individual-level risk characteristics that…

A group of 124 children orphaned by AIDS (COA), who resided in two orphanages funded by the Chinese government, participated in a study investigating the efficacy of a grief-processing-based psychological group intervention. This psychological intervention program was designed to specifically help COA process their grief and reduce their…

Finding brief effective treatments for criminal justice populations is a major public need. The CJ-DATS Targeted Intervention for Corrections (TIC), which consists of six brief interventions (communication, anger, motivation, criminal thinking, social networks, and HIV/sexual health), was tested in separate federally-funded randomized control…

This monograph provides critical insights into identifying which threads to pull in the "web of causation" to discern the impact of adverse early life experiences, and it provides guidance regarding how to identify patterns of behavior that are likely to reflect the impact of such experiences. In this article, the author offers her…

This article deals with discourses of intimate partner violence and is based on interviews with professionals who meet violent men. The professionals emphasized the importance of men taking unreserved responsibility for their violent behavior. Intimate partner violence was viewed not only as "power and control" but as the result of…

The current study modeled trajectories of substance use from ages 15 to 20 among 1,095 male serious juvenile offenders (M age = 16.54; 42% African-American, 34% Latino, 20% European-American, and 4% other ethnic/racial backgrounds) and prospectively predicted trajectories from risk and protective factors before and after controlling for time spent…

The recent increase in prison populations has given rise to an unprecedented number of children in the school system with incarcerated parents. To cope with stressors before, during, or after parents' incarceration, children can exhibit a range of problematic and maladaptive behaviors. This article explores the negative behaviors these children…

This study examined the psychosocial functioning of 100 adolescent females (ages 12-17) sentenced to secure care in a southeastern state and the impact of a gender-specific, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) intervention on the psychosocial functioning of subjects who reported a history of sexual abuse. The Multidimensional Adolescent Assessment…

An anger therapy intervention was developed for incarcerated adult males. The therapy was an extension of cognitive-behavioral approaches, incorporating principles and practices drawn from Buddhist psychology. Adult males from a Midwestern low-security prison were randomly assigned to either a treatment group (n= 16) or a waiting list control…