Could this crime have been stoppped?

I was reading an article about a young man that was killed by the police during the commission of a crime. The neighbors said that he seemed to wanted more out of life; that he was looking for something that would make him feel connected to his community and the people around him. The article also stated that school was a challenge for him, but he was determined to get his GED. His need to succeed in school and the need of feeling connected were not being met. I think this situation could have been avoided had he received some OT services. Had he been engaged in something that he excited him, he might not have felt so alone. My thoughts were; he could take an “interest evaluation” to find out what excites him. Find local meet-up groups that were in his age range, or blogs that are in the area of his interests. He could benefit from other treatments that would include: study skills, job training, work place etiquette. Writing weekly in a journal and discussing his thoughts and feeling at the next treatment session. And finally, finding him a place where he could volunteer. A place where he could feel as if he were making a difference, a place where he could make a connection to the community and people around him.

Teaching DD Adults

I'm getting ready to do an oral care group with DD adults. I always search the internet for ideas as to how to approach anything and I wonder why I do. I found a journal article abstract entitled:

Comparison of three training procedures for teaching social responses to developmentally disabled adults.

What was the conclusion? The best procedure was: Modeling, Instruction and Feedback. Sounds familiar? I know this is for social responses but this procedure should work for almost everything we do. I should trust that we are getting sound instructions from our teachers and just listen to what they say. I found an news article on a series of CDs and DVDs to talk/guide DD adults through hygiene activities (click here to see product). The developers ran a group home for DD adults and after an accident, the woman was unable to be there personally to help cue her residents through their ADLs. She made tapes and found that the women would follow the tape and actually learned better because the instructions were exactly the same every time. Again, does this not sound familiar? (Consistency, specificity) If it's possible we might want to think of recording instructions. We can be more specific than pictures and would benefit our illiterate or vision impaired clients.

Correlation between psychological problems & Criminal Record

We went on a field trip yesterday, to a location where they employ people with mental and physical handicaps. It has been pointed out to me before that 50% or more of the people in the criminal system have a mental handicap. It makes me wonder if there needs to be more testing done, and intervention planning earlier in life. People are not getting the help they so desperately need to succeed in life. If intervention was planned and done right, could that prevent some crimes, and decrease the amount of people that are in our jails?
There are places out there that can help. But, once you have a criminal record, your choices are limited. A lot of work sites will not take a person with a criminal background to work in the health field, as well as education. A diagnosis of Schizophrenia often can land people in trouble, with little help other than drugs. I hope that more of these types of rehabilitation/work sites are built. But, with little resources it is hard to tell if another would succeed.


Schizophrenia

DECI and OT

DECI sounds like it fits in with the principles and goals of OT in the area of work. Helping people with job selection, job training and job placement in the community sounds just like what we would do. What we were able to observe today was just the actual tasks some of these people did but not so much the "training" that was being done. I am looking forward to seeing how DECI implements their job skills training and what role we will have while we are there.

Our visit to Durham Exchange Club today was interesting. It made me think about the constantly changing, complex task of providing social services. Some people pay to come and work at Durham Exchange. Some people will be rushed through vocational training process as fast as possible. Keeping up with the rules and regulations would be a full time job. I was also interested in the work being done. It was graded so that different ability levels would have something to do. They are involved in providing many different services to many different clients.
I am doing my fieldwork at this site and I am looking forward to learning more.

Eastern Medicine

I was not have a particularly great day on Monday, I was feeling alittle disappointed in myself and a little grouchy. But I had a massage scheduled that afternoon, yeah! I have to say that afterwards, I had a better out look on my day, that maybe it wasn't that bad. I was pondering to myself, thinking why isn't Eastern medicine incorporated into the treatment of chronic depression? Yoga, acupuncture, massage therapy they are all about healing your soul. Having a holistic approach and modern medicine would be the best of both worlds. I'm going to more research on this approach, if anyone has any information on this, please pass it on.

Fieldwork

Field work was a learning experience last night. I have worked with a lot of children at jobs in the past. But nothing like my experience last night. These children are in a living situation out of the ordinary. They have pasts that were disheartening to hear about. One child for example said he did not have a window to hang a stain glass-looking (construction paper with tissue paper where they cut out holes) valentines window decoration he made. But, I pointed out to him, that it does not have to be for a window. It can hang on your bed, door nob, even the wall with some tape. As long as he made the valentine, it is worth something.

But that made me think. This child does not have a window to hang something he made. It made me want to work even harder to teach these kids the skills they need to live in society.

Last night was also a test of my hearing. I have very sensitive ears, and working in an atmosphere with children, as many others know, is usually a loud environment if some form of play is inolved. But, on the other hand, these kids need help to understand when it is okay to yell, and when it is time to listen so others may talk. This, I think will be one of our main goals during this fieldwork. Social norms, and how others act in the environment will be key to teaching these kids the ways of the world. So, as you would imagine, my team will be doing a lot of role modeling for these young open books. Maybe we can write a few chapters with them to further their learning, and perhaps have a little fun in the process.

OTA Presentation

I enjoyed the speakers today in 170. School and classes can be a drag on my enthusiasm and motivation. Seeing our speakers, reminded me why I am in school. The second year student was clearly engaged in, and enthusiastic about her field work 2 with the OTA. I could see that he is a capable, competent OTA who enjoys his work. In addition, the presentation was down to earth and relevant. I was feeling down after my test grade and those speakers were just what I needed. They reminded me that I need to push on through because it will get better.
It is also interesting that I have now heard from several people working in an Acute Care environment. All of the OT's involved seemed to enjoy it.

Mental Health in NC

I watched an interesting promotional video about evidenced based practice and the great programs that NC has for people with mental illnesses. It was easy to see how OT was being applied within these programs but the people implementing these programs were not in OT but in psychology, psychiatry, clinical social work, and public health. The programs sounded just like things we would do (goal setting/attaining, teaching parenting skills, educating on community supports, etc.). It just really brings home why we need to advocate for our profession since there is a great deal of overlap especially in mental health (click here for descriptions of professions in mental health). It's so difficult to tease out what makes OT different when we are all working on a person's mental health. If the mind is healthy, then occupational performance is improved which is easy to understand and then makes it easy to dismiss a need for OT. We have a hard road ahead of us to clarify how our focus on occupation affects changes in a unique way.

Starting Fieldwork

I am rather excited about starting fieldwork this upcoming week. I guess more excited about getting the planning done and implemented. To be able to start up a program to help school age children develop their social skills, fine motor skills, and many others. I was researching a lot of resources and came up with a lot of sights that were very helpful in getting together information and materials to plan a session with your students, clients, or patients. I thoroughly enjoyed finding resources for this project below.

Art Project- How do your kids see themselves?

Through my fieldwork, I am hoping to find out a lot more in how kids and teenagers see themselves today. And the difference between ages. This is very important in understanding how your kids think and how they feel about themselves. You may actually find out who may have low self esteem, if they are sad, happy, or upset with anyone around them. Then you can discuss with them why they drew themselves like this. It creates an open and safe atmosphere to talk openly about your feelings with others. It has been shown that people feel more free to express themselves in other ways than language.

Stanford's Study

Tupes of Drawing

Improving Fine motor

How Art can affect how we see others

Movie

In my Intro. to Film class, we watch a Korean film titled "Mother". It about an Autistic teen who gets arrested for killing a girl in the village. The police were interrogating him without a lawyer or his mother being present, they just railroaded this poor child into signing a confession. It makes me wonder how many "mentally challenged" people we have in jails? Do the mentally challenged understand the consequences of their actions or confessions? I can see that if this boy had had some services offered to him this whole situation might have been avoided. This was a realization to me that I was starting to put my knowledge of OT into real life circimstances.

I thought today's speaker was nice. She gave a lot of helpful information. There were times when I was confused about the definitions of some of the terms. After watching the video it helped me understand those terms. The video was definitely made before a lot of safety precautions were required for treating a patient. I was wondering if the first patient had sensory problems? He was brushing his teeth vigorously and scrubbing the left side of his face very hard.

Trip to LS

Since my trip to Learning Services, the images the victim's faces have remained in my thoughts. I was very eager to interact with them, but found myself very emotional throughout the entire visit. Though their faces often had smiles, I couldn't help but to hurt for them as they told the stories of what happened to them. I found myself looking at them and wondering how do they keep a positive attitude, despite remembering their quality of life prior to the accident. Knowing that the person is still inside, but inhibited because of this injury, makes me wish I could do so much more for them.

One case in particular will never leave my mind. That of the young soilder, who was a father, husband and son. Pictures of his family on the walls and letters from his children, that will never know their dad again as they did before. I had an extremely hard time to stay in the room and control my tears as I thought of this man who fought in the war for us, only to return with a severe TBI, that has left him basically lifeless.

I left from LS with a heavy heart. But also with the desire to live my days with more purpose. No one is immune to TBI, and we should all be thankful that we are healthy everyday. I also left from there with further reassurance that OTA is the right career for me. I was so moved to watch Ms. G work with the injured soilder. Though he gave little response, I could feel her heart shine through into his eyes, and hear it through her voice. She does what she does because she is passionate about her work. What better feeling than that?

Comment on Cost of War

This is actually a comment on the previous post. I couldn't figure out how to add links in the comment box so I'm doing it this way. I read a story of how injured vets are being denied services and wondered how Roger was able to receive the "Cadillac" treatment we discussed today in class. I took a class on ethics and medical care in regards to the elderly over 20 years ago and we talked about the social cost of prolonging life and should it be done. We are still debating it now. Another article I read was on Ethics and Medical Futility which defines medical futility as "proposed therapy that should not be performed because available data have shown that it will not improve the patient's medical condition." If we took this stance, should Roger be where he is? I don't agree with the way many of our vets are being treated in regards to getting care they deserve but with the financial costs of medical care you can understand why the Gov't is skimping.

Cost of War

Visiting a wounded soldier forced me to think about the human cost and the financial cost of war. This soldier may live a long time. With therapy, his quality of life could improve. For him to receive quality care and therapy for the rest of his life will be expensive. I worry that with time, some politicians may decide that it is not important to provide this soldier and others like him with the quality of care and therapy that he has earned as a veteran.
The numbers are scary, an estimated 360,000 US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered from TBI. Of the 360,000, 45,000 to 90,000 may need some long term care. Care and therapy for a "mild TBI" is almost $30,000 in the first year. Thirty percent of soldiers taken to a US Military Hospital, like Walter Reed, have suffered a TBI.
Treating and caring for our Veterans with this "signature injury" of the war will be very costly and is going to require a long term commitment by caregivers and society at large.

My Perceptions

Our LS field trip has had me thinking very hard about my perceptions of the people we met. When Ms. G asked us why we so easily gave hugs, it really set me thinking. Because they seemed more childlike and so eager to please, it was easy to treat them as less than adults and think they didn't have the sexuality of a "whole" man. My experience with the cognitively impaired has been mostly of elderly in the SNF I volunteered at and the generation gap was such as to see them as grandparents and therefore "safe" to hug. The occasional "dirty old man" was pointed out and I kept out of reach but he was usually w/c bound and frail. When our guest speakers spoke about behavior mgmt and the ABCs I can see how my perception of a client as childlike could allow me to treat them in a way that might be received in a way I didn't intend and the fallout I would have to deal with. I read a story on Sexuality and Brain Injury about a woman's struggle w/ caring for her husband and not wanting to have an intimate relationship with him anymore. Towards the end of her story, she tells how she goes about dealing with this while still taking care of all his other needs. Though her story is a personal one with a sexual history, the strategies she employs are relevant and we as OTAs need to remember that these men we may encounter are not children or asexual just because they have cognitive deficits.

movie

The discussion in class had me thinking about a movie I saw about two weeks ago. It was about a young couple engaged to be married after high school. They have been together most of their high school years. The girl was having second thoughts about getting married and had plans on tell her fiancee. When she planned on telling him he had a bad accident which left him paralyzed from the neck down. He hit his head on a rock and broke his neck after jumping in shallow water. She refused to touch and kiss him. She would go days without seeing him before she confessed to him how she felt. I guess seeing her fiancee hooked to machines and metal bars in his head cause her to look at him different. She left him to explore her needs and wants in life. To make a long story short she came back to him when she realized she couldn't get him out of her mind. He did have family support from mom and dad, along with friends, He was able to get the use of his upper extremities so he could direct his wheelchair. I really didn't like the movie. I was a bit disappointed by the way she handled the situation and at the end she went to her ex-fiancee without any explanation.

Anorexia Insights

After our brief discussion on eating disorders yesterday in Psychosocial Class, I was reminded of a fascinating article I read in my Abnormal Psych class last year. I dug up the article and the paper I had written on it. Here is an excerpt from my paper:

"The article I chose to read was titled "Portrait of a Hunger Artist" (Psychology Today, March/April 2010). This story provides insight into the life of a young anorexic woman. The author, Emily, debunks myths that anorexics don't feel hungry and don't like food. On the contrary, she states that "eating was the point of living, precisely because it was so special, it had to be waited for, made more and more perfect by the hunger that would grow deeper and deeper so that nothing else mattered." Emily explains that her anorexia was probably born out of a desire to be thin, however it manifested itself into a ritual that provided a sense of control, a sense of power and strength from being able to "defer" food. Then the ritual grew into an entity all its own, an all-encompassing lifestyle where her sense of self worth was completely tied into "deferring, restricting, and meticulously, secretively orchestrating the eating of food."
I can relate to the feelings and thoughts in which Emily became entangled through her anorexia. Though I've never had an eating disorder, I can see how easily one could fall into the trap. Having dieted in the past, there is a point, after a few days, where I felt I had triumphed over the emotional, desire-based need for food and had entered into the realm of need-based eating. That sense of control and domination was very powerful. Emily explains how "deferring food was proof of strength." I think anorexics take one more step than the rest of us and cross the threshold into another world that totally envelopes them in a sense of intoxicating mastery."

Stigmas attached to learning disabilities

I thought it was very interesting to learn that the students, in the video we watched yesterday about the DSS (disability student services), felt that there are racial prejudices applied to learning disabilities. I had never thought about learning disabilities vs. race/religion. However, in the research I found last night I came to a realization that there are many generalizations applied to different races as well as religions & nations. Just a couple I learned in the video are that people think Asian's should be "genius," or african americans who sit in the back of the class are "lazy." Another I found last night stereotyped Jewish people as great "doctors & lawyers." It blew my mind that people think just because you are a specific race or religion that you have to be a genius or a doctor. At the same time, just because you have a learning disability does not mean you can not be a genius or a doctor. The learning disabled are NOT "dumb." A learning disability just means that you learn new information in a different manner, i.e. hands on, audio, or in text.

The stigma attached to the learning disabled can be crippling to the individual who needs to seek help. As one student said in the video, "What if my friends see me going into, or coming out of the DSS lab?" Teachers are included in this stigma. Some teachers do not know how each learning disability works. They may have never dealt with an individual who needed the extra notes, or needed to tape the class lecture, and thinks that it is odd and scary. But, at the same time the amount of help that can be provided for the individual with a learning disability far out weigh the stigmas attached. It never hurts to ask. You have to advocate for yourself!

It was brought to my attention during discussion with fellow students enrolled in school, that, a lot of students feel they should be tested for learning disabilities. Many students, including myself, could relate to what was said in the video...how are they understanding this; why am I getting a lower grade even though I study twice as much? All of these comments made me wonder if testing should be done at the beginning of each level of schooling. Which brought up a question that I will leave you to think about... If learning disability testing was done, would it decrease the stigma related to these disabilities?

Click Here for a checklist for learning disabilities

Below are links to the sights I found my information.

Stereotypes of Jewish Community

Learning Disabilities in Children