This article presents findings from a report on educational services for students with emotional and behavioral disturbances. It describes problematic findings related to curriculum, behavior management, and mental health services and considers alternatives to prevailing current practices. (Author/DB)

Methods of using values clarification techniques to meet the affective needs of students with emotional disabilities are discussed. The theoretical background and benefits of values clarification are briefly reviewed, and suggestions are offered for implementing such a program at three levels of student skill in the valuing process. (DB)

Five elementary students with severe emotional disturbance participated in a comprehensive functional assessment process designed to yield a useful understanding of their desirable and undesirable behaviors. Individualized hypotheses were developed regarding relationships between classroom events and the occurrence of target behaviors, and…

This paper on the relationship of language impairment, social skills, and socioemotional behavior introduces the following issues: the influence of language impairment on the social interactions of children; the association between language and challenging behavior; and the relationship between language impairment, social problems, and psychiatric…

This article reviews research indicating that teachers' behavior is negatively affected by disruptive and aggressive responses of students with emotional/behavior disorders. It presents strategies to reduce classroom aversiveness, to reduce students' need to escape or avoid instruction through aggressive or disruptive responses, and thereby…

Data on 117 adolescents identified or not identified as having serious emotional disturbance and served by public schools or private psychiatric hospitals indicated that girls were a small proportion of the group identified or served by public school, but made up the majority of the group not identified by schools but served by hospitals.…

A state-sponsored and county-sponsored program in Hennepin County (Minnesota) provides preventive and crisis intervention services in three schools serving severely emotionally disturbed students. The program utilizes a county social worker in the schools to coordinate services, intervene in crisis situations, and facilitate appropriate treatment…

Data from 162 special education teachers and 31 administrators in restrictive placements for students with serious emotional disturbance (SED) found that reintegration orientation, demographic characteristics of restrictive SED programs, and particular experiences/training of special educators predict reintegration rates of SED students into less…

This study compared adolescent child molesters (n=31) with non-sex-offending delinquents (n=34) and normal adolescents. Molesters showed significantly more global maladjustment than normals and were more socially anxious and threatened by heterosocial interactions than non-sex-offending delinquents. Results support the hypothesis that social skill…

Sixty-four charts from a child psychiatry outpatient department were reviewed before and after clinicians were instructed to directly query sexual abuse. Only 6.9 percent of charts initially indicated sexual abuse, compared to findings of 31.4 percent (11.5 percent of boys and 50 percent of girls) after children were asked about molestation.…

This comment on EC 600 431 addresses the debate about whether public schools are obligated to serve socially maladjusted children/youth. The paper conceptualizes the debate from a "system restructuring" perspective, which takes into account cultural and social forces and organizational structures, and concludes that antisocial individuals should…

Affiliation patterns of 19 emotionally disturbed children (ages 10-13) in a residential school were analyzed. Results indicated that robust peer clusters could be identified, within-classroom clusters were relatively stable over time, and considerable overlap occurred between findings of social network analyses and applied sociometric techniques.…

The first of two studies with two adolescent students with serious emotional disturbances examined the interaction between unequal rates of reinforcement and equal versus unequal delays to reinforcer access on performance of math problems. The second study examined the interactive effects of reinforcer rate, quality, and delay. (Author/DB)

A multivariate, criterion-referenced approach was used to assess prevalence of serious emotional disturbance among children on protective service case loads. Of 140 recipients of protective services, 72% were statistically indistinguishable from children in Washington State's most intensive mental health treatment programs. School problems,…

Compares rural and urban child and adolescent partial hospital mental health programs in Pennsylvania. Rural areas were much smaller, more exclusively served adolescents, had stronger financial and administrative links to local community health centers and special education authorities, and had more deficient educational facilities. (KS)