New Jersey History (NJH - E-Journal)
Not a member yet
1151 research outputs found
Sort by
The Impact of Affect Phobia Therapy (APT) on Alcohol Use Disorders (AUD)—Evaluating Three Case Studies
No full textIn this commentary on the important cases of "Carey," "Michelle," and "Mary" conducted by Dr. My Frankl (Frankl, Wennberg, Berggraf, & Philips, 2020), I begin with some general considerations on the importance of assessment and case formulation in Affect Phobia Therapy (APT) and how these considerations impact on the experiential interventions of APT. Next I specifically review Frankl’s three case studies, with a focus on: how Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) is embedded in close family relationships; the connection between AUD and affect regulation; the role of feelings of shame in AUD; individualizing and adjusting APT treatment based on feedback from ongoing therapy; Frankl’s activation of transference feelings; the issue of sobriety before treatment; activating inhibitory affects and maladaptive defenses; Frankl’s missing some moments of connection; and an example of Frankl’s conducting the two-chair technique skillfully and successfully. I end with a proposal for enhancing Frankl’s narrative analysis with two methodologies from APT: the "Ten-Session Summary Form," and the micro-analytic coding approach of the "Achievement of Therapeutic Objectives Scales" (ATOS)
The Quest for Causality in Psychotherapy Research
No full textThis commentary on the article by Frankl, Wennberg, Berggraf and Philips (2020) focuses on methodological aspects of case studies versus group designs in psychotherapy research. Experimental case study designs such as ABAB design and multiple baseline design have a long tradition within behavior therapy. These research designs are especially useful for testing newly developed therapy methods and investigating the effectiveness for treatment of rare disorders. However, experimental case study design is most appropriate for single-component treatments for patients with one circumscribed problem. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered as the gold standard for testing and establishing the efficacy of a particular therapy method for a particular problem. However, the RCT design also bears some methodological shortcomings, such as low external and construct validity, simplistic epistemological assumptions, and only being able to establish average causal effect (thus not giving the clinician clear guidelines on how to work with individual patients). Rigorous process research is useful for identifying change mechanisms in psychotherapy. Finally, pragmatic case studies have a great potential of increasing our knowledge about psychotherapy and its effectivess. This potential could be increased even further if pragmatic case studies integrated some methods from process research and if the results from multiple case studies were analyzed together in meta-syntheses.
Understanding the Student Perspective of Art History Survey Course Outcomes Through Game Development
No full textThis heuristic, design-based research study examines student perceptions of their learning experience in the art history survey course as manifested through a game design process. With the purpose of improving upon the lecture model of the standard art history survey, two sections of a capstone class of interdisciplinary art and design studentswho had all taken the survey as part of their degree programsselected learning objectives and designed games to accompany the introductory class. The researchers used the game design process to understand first how students perceived the survey class, its learning objectives, and the students' experiences. Then the investigation addressed how these students designed games to aid learning of survey materials. The results offer survey course instructors significant insight into student perceptions of the structure and aims of art history's foundational class
Affect Phobia Therapy for Mild to Moderate Alcohol Use Disorder: The Cases of "Carey," "Michelle," and "Mary"
No full textAffect Phobia Treatment (APT) is based on an integrative theory involving the use of psychodynamic principles for understanding a client’s psychological dynamics, experiential principles for engaging and working with the client’s affect, and behavioral principles of exposure and response prevention for desensitizing the client to the fear of affect. APT’s goal is "to help patients function better by resolving emotional conflict through reducing their avoidance of adaptive, activating emotions" (Osborn et al., 2014). APT has not yet been systematically employed and researched for patients with mild to moderate Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) together with affect phobia. The present study was designed to begin this process by describing and comparing, both qualitatively and quantitatively, three illustrative, distinctive cases of APT in patients with AUD, assigned the names of "Carey," "Michelle," and "Mary." The focus was on exploring the process by which the different individual patients responded to the multifaceted APT therapy, and hence how the therapist had to adapt the therapy to each particular patient, as outlined in Stiles’ (2009) concept of "appropriate responsiveness." Following the manual for APT, therapy included 10 weekly sessions of individual psychotherapy. This short length for a therapy like APT, a treatment which usually has no determined session length (McCullough et al., 2003), was designed to make the therapy comparable in length to other therapies for AUD, like Motivational Interviewing. During the whole study period, patients gave weekly reports of their alcohol consumption and craving. In addition, at the beginning and at the end of the study, the patients answered questionnaires measuring affect phobia and psychiatric symptoms. Role expectations and experiences of psychotherapy were also measured. All three patients completed the treatment and the measurement period. No adverse events were reported. The patients had different trajectories of change regarding alcohol consumption, craving, and symptom change. The study showed that 10-session APT was a tolerable treatment for the patients with on-going mild-to-moderate alcohol dependence, who primarily used alcohol as a way of avoiding emotions, but that the therapy worked to different degrees and in different ways for the three patients due to their different presenting patterns of psychiatric symptoms and personality characteristics. Experience in the three cases suggests the advisability of (a) flexible treatment length in accordance to a patient's needs, and (b) complementary treatment strategies beyond APT focusing on reducing alcohol consumption per se for some patients.
Addressing Visual Literacy in the Survey: Balancing Transdisciplinary Competencies and Course Content
No full textInspired by partnerships between medical schools and museums that produce measurable outcomes in the frequency and sophistication of diagnostic observations through limited art history-based interventions, this paper documents the re-orientation of a traditional art history survey course to explicitly address foundational visual literacy skills. This Spring 2019 pilot implemented a series of exercises and assessments designed to directly target transdisciplinary components of visual literacy and to highlight these competencies through student discussion and reflection with minimal disruption. This study employed content analysis and qualitative coding of pre- and post-tests to capture and characterize the number and types of observations made on descriptive, timed writings. This data was combined with participant reflections to assess whether students enhanced their skills of observation and description. The results suggest that minimally-invasive, low-stakes assignments, coupled with reflection exercises, produced increases in both the quantity and quality of student observations; students also demonstrated more awareness of their audience, adjusting the information as appropriate to the specific task and recognized connections between this practice and other fields of study. This suggests that art history could better communicate the transdisciplinary skills of visual literacy and promote their development within the survey course without a radical course redesign
Lessons Learned: Conducting Cases of Manualized, Telephone-Based, Cognitive Behavioral Treatment for Depression in Parkinson’s Disease (dPD)
No full textMy current clinical practice has been shifted to a telehealth format for the last three months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it seems an apt moment to reexamine my participation in Dr. Roseanne Dobkin’s research on manualized telehealth therapy for depression in Parkinson’s disease patients (dPD), using a protocol titled "Teleheath Guided Self-Help for dPD," or "TH-GSH-dPD," for short (Dobkin et al., 2020). My participation involved, in part, being the therapist in four case studies I have written about with "Alice," "Carl," "Ethan," and "Gary" (Durland, 2020). In these case studies, a subset of those in Dr. Dobkin’s group studies, I explored my clinical decision-making, seeking insight into how best to flexibly apply the dPD protocol to meet the needs of a heterogeneous clinical population. Here, my aim is to recontextualize and expand on the conclusions of my four case studies, based on my dissertation and conducted over three years ago (Durland, 2017), in light of both my recent experience providing mental health services and the Commentaries on the four case studies so perceptively contributed by Dr. Dobkin and her colleagues (Mann, Miller, St. Hill, & Dobkin, 2020) and by Liza Pincus (2020). In particular, I will focus first on (a) continuing the analysis of clinical decision-making involved in the case studies described in my earlier article (Duland, 2020); and then on (b) general issues related to the delivery of telehealth treatment
Medicine and the Museum: An Experiential Case Study in Art History Pedagogy and Practice
No full textThis article brings three scholarly and professional perspectives to bear on museum-based learning experiences for undergraduate pre-medical and STEM students. In the first section, Marcia Brennan describes the seminar on "Medicine and the Museum: Clinical Aesthetics and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston" that she teaches at Rice University. Brennan is a modernist art historian, and her discussion focuses on the ways in which classes such as this can contribute meaningfully to undergraduate pre-medical and STEM education. Brennan collaborated with Joshua Eyler, who served as Executive Director of Rice University's Center for Teaching Excellence. In the second section, Eyler discusses the content and results of the accompanying questionnaires that were devised to assess the overall effectiveness of the pedagogical strategy. The tabulated data results are included for each of the measured sections, which encompass the students' abilities to make detailed visual observations and to formulate descriptions of complex subjects; to gauge their sensitivity to ethical concerns and their level of empathy regarding the emotional issues involved in caregiving; and to assess their understanding of the ways in which museums can serve as tools for continual learning and self-care. The final section is by Kelley Magill, an art historian who serves as University Programs Specialist for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Writing from the perspective of the museum educator, Magill comments on Brennan's seminar, and she provides a complementary perspective on the role and impact of the fine arts museum within higher education
Inflexibly Enacted Traditional Masculinity Norms (IE-TMNs) and Their Impact on Adolescent and Young Adult Depression: The Hybrid Case Study of "Tommy"
No full textThe purpose of this study is to explore and discuss the effects of inflexibly enacted traditional masculinity norms (IE-TMNs) on adolescent and young adult males with depression and how to address such issues in therapy. This study provides a literature review of the subject of IE-TMNs and how such a worldview holds a potentially negative influence and impact on the physical and mental health of boys and young men. Specifically, the study aims to highlight how these beliefs, attributes, and values influence the extent to which these individuals seek help, express emotion, and utilize healthy coping skills when experiencing depressive symptoms and how such behaviors can be addressed in therapy. Treatment considerations are explored through the hybrid case example of "Tommy," a depiction of a depressed college freshman following IE-TMNs while going through a difficult life transition. A fictional case, Tommy serves as a composite character informed by real life psychotherapy cases and clinical examples found in relevant literature. Tommy’s course of treatment depicts potential clinical issues that could come up when working with a depressed male client with strong internalized masculinity norms and how some of these themes can be adequately addressed to create a more flexible masculine identity. Through use of a qualitative, disciplined inquiry approach, I explore therapeutic interventions that could be utilized to meet the unique needs of such a client within the context of historical, contextual, and cultural factors. Tommy’s case material is analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively in accordance with the pragmatic case study research format (Fishman, 2013). The hybrid case of Tommy explores how client-centered therapy, motivational interviewing, harm reduction interventions, and cognitive-behavioral interventions can be integrated to assist adolescent boys and young men with strongly internalized and rigid beliefs about masculinity, while also utilizing Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory to explore the proximal and distal factors in one’s environment that contribute to such a worldview. The hybrid case study of Tommy is designed to serve as a resource for therapists working with clients with IE-TMNs and provides guidance about how to alter unhelpful coping strategies; increase emotional expression and help-seeking behaviors; and explore personal beliefs, goals, and values. This case study concludes with a critical discussion of future directions for research on this topic, as well as the advantages and limitations of the hybrid case study design
The Metacognitive and Exploratory Use of the Concept Map for Thematic Art History Papers in the Survey Course
No full textThis article examines how the introduction of pedagogical interventions in the art history survey class, made by using concept maps beyond an initial brainstorming phase and rather as an active-learning strategy in aid to developing thematic papers, impacts students' perception of their usefulness. The qualitative and quantitative data gathered included two questionnaires, one submitted periodically throughout the semester and one after the concept map and term paper were completed. Additionally, this study presents a visual analysis of three sample sets of students' concept maps to illustrate the levels of deep, surface, and non-learning. The results reveal that assigning students the task of developing the concept map and the paper in tandem throughout the semester presents some pros and cons. By using concept maps, students reflect more deeply on the nature of connections between two ideas, on the process of narrowing down the main theme, and on the overall structure of the concept map. However, students' perception of the concept map's usefulness beyond an initial brainstorming phase is diversified, and the sets of concept maps developed produce mixed results relative to surface learning, deep learning, and non-learning. The limitations of such use of concept maps include possible correlations between learning and motivation