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The Impact of EMDR Therapy on Past Suicidal Ideation: Lived Experiences of Young Adults
Get PDFThis study explores the effectiveness of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy in reducing suicidal ideation and improving mental health outcomes among college-attending young adults (ages 18–24) with a history of trauma. EMDR is a body-based psychotherapy designed to alleviate distressing thoughts and trauma. It gained attention for its positive impact on PTSD and has more recently been applied to other mental health disorders. The literature review highlights risk factors including trauma, mental health disorders, suicidal ideation, and EMDR. The methods detail a phenomenological approach, interviewing four young adults who underwent EMDR and experienced past suicidal ideation. This provided insight into emotional experiences before and after treatment, and how effective EMDR might be for this issue. Results showed that, through thematic analysis, EMDR significantly reduced suicidal thoughts, lessened trauma-related symptoms, and improved overall mental health. Participants described traumatic experiences such as sexual assault, emotional abuse, and family-related trauma, leading to conditions like PTSD, depression, and anxiety. Other therapeutic modalities, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), talk therapy, and antidepressants were tried but found less effective than EMDR in reducing symptoms and improving functioning. These results contribute to growing evidence that EMDR can be effective for this demographic, addressing a critical gap in mental health interventions for young adults, and potentially reducing suicidal ideation and related outcomes. The study also underscores the need for more diverse and accessible mental health resources in educational settings, while acknowledging its limitations
Trapped in Polygamy: European Women Converting to Mormonism and Living in Polygamous Marriages in 1850s Utah featuring \u3ci\u3eShe Who Left Zion: A Wife, a Witness, a Woman Unsealed\u3c/i\u3e
Get PDFThis Honors Capstone project explores the lived experiences of European women who converted to Mormonism and entered polygamous marriages in 1850s Utah. Through rigorous historical research and creative writing, it culminates in a novel-in-progress titled She Who Left Zion: A Wife, A Witness, A Woman Unsealed. The story follows Phoebe Carter, a fictional English convert who immigrates to Zion after being promised eternal family unity—only to confront the brutal reality of polygamy, spiritual coercion, and patriarchal control.
Grounded in primary and secondary sources—including autobiographies, diaries, and letters from women like Ann-Eliza Young, Fanny Stenhouse, and contributors to The Women of Mormonism—the novel gives voice to the emotional truths and silenced experiences of plural wives. It challenges prevailing myths of polygamy as sacred and consensual, instead revealing how women were often misled, isolated, and coerced into submission.
In addition to the creative work, the project includes a detailed research component on current publishing trends, comparable titles, and potential paths for both traditional and self-publishing.
Rooted in the author’s personal deconstruction from Mormonism, the project seeks to reclaim erased narratives and amplify feminist resistance within a historical and religious context. She Who Left Zion is not just a story about Mormon history—it explores broader themes of religious trauma, spiritual reclamation, and the high emotional cost of obedience. As readers follow Phoebe’s journey from faith to disillusionment to liberation, they are invited to consider the courage it takes to leave behind what no longer serves
Modern Concepts of Health and Disease: An Introduction for Public Health Students
Get PDFThis course outline for Modern Concepts of Health and Disease provides a comprehensive framework for teaching foundational public health concepts to undergraduate students in an in-person setting, with flexibility for adaptation to online or hybrid formats. This outline is specifically designed to reduce financial barriers for students using Open Educational Resources (OER) and other free-to-students materials, ensuring equitable access to high-quality learning materials without the cost of traditional textbooks. The course is designed for a 15-week semester, divided into seven Modules. The course syllabus is available on request.
The assigned readings and videos were carefully curated to reflect diverse, evidence-based perspectives on key public health topics, including epidemiology, social determinants of health, chronic disease, and health promotion. These resources were selected from respected organizations and sources, ensuring students have access to accurate, current, and engaging content. The curated materials emphasize critical connections between individual behaviors, social contexts, and health outcomes, supporting a holistic understanding of public health.
The outline includes weekly topics, discussion questions, and suggested in-class activities, along with quizzes and assignment worksheets available upon request. These resources encourage active learning and critical thinking, helping students connect individual health behaviors to broader social contexts and structural health determinants. This course is designed to foster critical thinking, cultural awareness, and practical skills, encouraging students to address health inequities and promote social change. It emphasizes the importance of adapting to real-time developments in public health, making it a valuable resource for instructors seeking to create engaging, relevant, and affordable learning experiences for their students
Nurturing Students: A Qualitative Case Study Analyzing the Perceived Impact of Tiered Mental Health Support for Elementary Students
Get PDFIn this qualitative case study, I explored the perceived impact of providing tiered mental health support to elementary students. I developed Randall Elementary Nurtures, or The Nurture Program, a flexible yet structured initiative grounded in a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) model to provide intentional and scaffolded mental health support for elementary students. The purpose of this instrumental case study was to examine The Nurture Programs\u27 perceived impact from the viewpoint of the program stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers, administration, the school counselor, and the school’s MTSS team. To understand the program’s impact during the pilot program years of 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, I conducted interviews, surveys, and focus groups with eleven key stakeholders. Findings were oriented around the study’s research questions including the program\u27s strengths, challenges, impact on the school community, and advice for others considering mental health programing. The findings specific insight into The Nurture Program, as well a broader understanding of school-based mental health support in relation to the strenghts, challenges, and overall impact. I further distilled these themes into three main lessons: the need to support all students mental health, the need to consider a multi-tiered structure for differentiated support, and the need to reflect on the impacts of programing and make adaptations. Finally, this work addresses a gap in the existing literature by focusing on an elementary school setting and amplifying a diverse range of stakeholder perspectives
A New Approach: Supporting Traditional Jazz Pedagogy Through Neuroscience
Get PDFJazz musicians face a considerable learning curve in their performance endeavors. Numerous factors must be taken into account, including performance anxiety, memorization, active listening, ear training, mastery of musical techniques, and improvisation. Through the effective preparation of these skills, musicians tend to achieve success; however, this success fundamentally relies on the practice habits of the jazz musician.
A common approach in jazz pedagogy emphasizes the development of musical techniques such as scales and chords, modulating across various harmonic progressions. I will define this as a “traditional approach” used in jazz pedagogy. This method has been widely embraced by jazz musicians over the years, as it promotes essential skills necessary for improvisation within the complex structure of the genre. Additionally, notable jazz educators, such as David Baker, Jerry Coker, and Jamey Aebersold, have created pedagogical resources that articulate and support this instructional approach.
Referencing David Baker’s resource, Jazz Improvisation: A Comprehensive Method for All Musicians (Revised Edition) as an example to outline this traditional methodology, one can find a thorough overview of jazz theory and techniques presented through a series of progressive exercises (Baker, 1988). Notably, in Chapter II: Foundation Exercises For The Jazz Player, Baker outlines a framework designed to help musicians cultivate essential foundational skills, including scales and chords, that support improvisation (Baker, 1988, pp. 4-11). Additionally, two other significant texts—Jerry Coker\u27s Patterns for Jazz and Jamey Aebersold\u27s Jazz Handbook—offer similar pedagogical frameworks that emphasize the acquisition of musical techniques across various harmonic movements (Aebersold, 2000; Coker, 1970).
While this traditional approach has effectively supported the learning of jazz music\u27s technical requirements, it presents significant challenges for jazz musicians, particularly regarding performance demands. Today\u27s musicians often have to manage multiple musical requirements simultaneously while also finding ways to mentally process what they\u27ve learned. This can lead to various internal challenges, including difficulties with retention, psychological and cognitive fatigue, inconsistent progress, and a lack of effective mindfulness strategies for self-regulation.
Although the traditional approach to learning musical techniques through various harmonic movements has been effective in building skills to support improvisation, it remains incomplete due to the scarcity of resources that clarify how to practice these techniques effectively. Additionally, it is crucial to have methods that prioritize the well-being of musicians during this learning process. Thus, I contend the importance of creating a supportive framework that addresses these challenges, especially the relationship between acquired knowledge, the biological requirements of the nervous system, and the integration of mindfulness.
This research aims to tackle the common challenges jazz musicians face when learning musical techniques modulating across various harmonic contexts. It seeks to enhance the traditional pedagogical framework by integrating strategies for chunking, neuroscientific principles to aid in skill consolidation, and mindfulness, all aimed at fostering healthy myelination.
Ultimately, this interdisciplinary approach emphasizes the integration of neuroscience concepts and mindfulness techniques into jazz pedagogy, showcasing their potential to enhance learning efficiency, improve awareness and consistency in practice, and foster overall physical and cognitive well-being. By creating a framework that enables jazz musicians to address common learning challenges, this research aims to make a significant contribution to the advancement of jazz pedagogy and provide comprehensive support for aspiring musicians
College Students with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: A Phenomenological Study of Inclusive Post-Secondary Education Experiences
Get PDFThe purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the college experiences of students with intellectual and/or developmental disability (IDD) who are attending an inclusive post-secondary education (IPSE) program in the United States. Inclusive post-secondary education program numbers have been increasing since 2008, when the Higher Education Opportunity Act passed and authorized federal student aid to students in IPSE programs. Most research on IPSE programs to date has been on their structure and employment outcomes, with scant research on what students experience during their time in an IPSE program.
Participants were 12 third or fourth year IPSE students with IDD from six different IPSE programs in the United States. Additionally, 4 program administrators were interviewed and 3 person-centered plans were collected to aid in data triangulation. Participants were interviewed using a semi-structured interview format. Trustworthiness procedures included peer debriefing, reflexive journaling, a clear audit trail, researcher bracketing, rich thick descriptions, and the collection of participant demographic information. Five major themes emerged from this study, each with subthemes: (a) social experiences; (b) academic experiences; (c) vocational experiences; (d) vocational goals; and (e) social goals.
Implications for practice include: (a) the purpose of IPSE programs; (b) emphasizing social goals after graduation; (c) encouraging students to engage in vocational experiences; and (d) requiring students to engage in social experiences. Future research should emphasize a more detailed exploration of the relationship between experiences and goals, the development of self-determination skills, whether any vocational experiences increase employment outcomes or if there are specific vocational experiences that increase employment outcomes, and person-centered planning in IPSE programs
Does Universal Screening Increase the Proportion of Culturally, Linguistically, and Economically Diverse Students in Gifted Education?
Get PDFThe purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the impact of implementing a universal cognitive screening tool on the proportional representation of culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse (CLED) first-grade students in Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) programs. This study employed a comparative interrupted time series design utilizing a difference-in-differences (DiD) regression model along with additional statistical analyses (two-proportions z-tests and Mann-Whitney U tests) due to limitations in the sample sizes.
Participants included first-grade students (N=425) from two demographically and socioeconomically similar districts in a Rocky Mountain region. One district implemented the universal screener (intervention group n=368), and the other did not (control group n=57). The study was guided by the research question: Does universal screening increase the proportion of culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse students in gifted education?
Descriptive analysis revealed a noticeable increase in the proportional representation of CLED students, particularly among culturally diverse and multilingual learner (ML) groups, following the screener\u27s implementation. Z-tests demonstrated statistically significant increases in GATE qualification rates within the intervention district for culturally diverse (p\u3c .001), multilingual learners (p=.004), and economically diverse students (p\u3c .001). However, Mann-Whitney U tests comparing intervention and control groups yielded non-significant results most likely due to the small and homogeneous control sample.
These findings indicate that universal screening positively influences the identification of CLED students for gifted education but highlight methodological constraints including limited sample sizes and insufficient demographic data tracking. Recommendations include systematic demographic data collection, multiple screening opportunities, local/group norming, and early enrichment program integration to enhance equitable gifted identification practices. Future research should address these limitations by utilizing larger, more diverse datasets and examining the longitudinal effects of universal screening on equity in GATE programs
Development and Validation of a Baseline Clinical Tool for Primary Care Providers to Address Nicotine Delivery System Usage in Adolescents
Get PDFFamily practice providers are a pillar of the health care system as demonstrated through helping patients of all ages achieve health. Adolescents are a unique patient population in an age where they are moving toward adulthood, out of childhood, and vulnerable to influence. Providers could help adolescents shape their future in health through prevention. Preventative care including evidence-based evaluations and treatments could provide adolescents with a strong foundation in healthy adulthood. Adolescent electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) use is a public health issue that increases the risk of nicotine addiction and long-term health consequences. Giving providers tools to assist in this task could help improve screening and interventions. Currently, there are validated screening tools and clinical guidelines but a lack of brief clinical tools created specifically for ENDS in managing these patients. The purpose of this scholarly research project was to develop a proposed tool for evaluating and treating adolescent usage of ENDS usage. The following research question guided this study:
Q1 Can a review of the literature combined with feedback from a panel of experts be used to create a clinical tool addressing ENDs screening, prevention and treatment in adolescent patients in primary care?
Utilizing the Stetler (2001) model and a systematic literature review, this evidence-based project created a clinical tool. This clinical tool will be validated by clinical adolescent care experts and then trialed at a later date. It was created to provide the best care for this patient population, manage ENDS use in adolescents, and increase a lifetime of health benefits. A questionnaire was completed by 12 adolescent primary care providers from the primary investigator’s professional network. Data were analyzed using basic descriptive statistics, and the findings and participant suggestions were used to revise the clinical tool. Support for the tool was evident in responses, and revisions were made based on suggestions. Through an expert panel of adolescent providers, this Doctor of Nursing Practice scholarly project developed and validated a clinical tool for use in addressing adolescent ENDS knowledge for cessation and prevention
A Pilot Study Exploring Vitamin D, Mental Health, and Gastrointestinal Health in Humans
Get PDFMental disorders are experienced by nearly one billion people worldwide. Depression is one of the most common. Treatments exist, yet a devastating 75% of individuals suffering from depression do not receive adequate treatment. An emerging treatment strategy includes exploring the connection between mental health and nutrition, which includes the areas of gut health and nutrient deficiencies. Vitamin D is obtained through food, supplements, and sunlight. Many individuals are considered deficient (25[OH]D concentrations \u3c 12 ng/mL) or insufficient (25[OH]D concentrations \u3c 20 ng/mL). Purpose: This study aimed to explore mental and gastrointestinal (GI) health using surveys and lipopolysaccharide binding protein (LBP) concentrations, a biomarker of GI health, in individuals considered 25(OH)D deficient (DEF) vs not deficient (N-DEF). Methods: This cross-sectional study recruited physically active participants aged 18-45 years who underwent three evaluations in one visit. Health was assessed using surveys to evaluate mental health, GI symptoms, and vitamin D intake. Serum from fasting blood samples was used with an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to determine 25(OH)D and LBP concentrations. Unpaired t-tests were used to compare DEF vs N-DEF and significance was set at p \u3c 0.05. Results: Thirty-two participants (mean age 25.3 ± 6.3 years) with mean and body fat percentage of 24.0% ± 10.7%, were placed into DEF (n=16) and N-DEF (n=16) categories. Interestingly, five of the 16 participants in DEF (31%) showed some level of depression (scores ranging from mild to severe) and only two of the 16 participants in N-DEF iv (13%) scored positively in the depression category (scores ranging from mild to moderate). Additionally, the participant with the lowest 25(OH)D concentration (5.42 ng/mL) was the only participant to meet the “severe” depression category criteria, with a score of 24 compared to other participants who scored within 0-16. Also, the only participant who scored “severe” in the stress category, was in the bottom 20% of 25(OH)D concentrations. As for GI health, the difference between average GI scores and average serum LBP concentrations between the groups were not statistically significant. Conclusion: There were no significant differences between DEF and N-DEF in perceived depression (p = 0.16), anxiety (p = 1.0), stress (p = 0.96), GI symptoms (P values ranged from 0.27 to 1.00), nor in LBP concentrations (p = 0.77). Funding: Support was received from the Graduate Student Association and College of Natural Health Sciences at the University of Northern Colorado
Pre-service Teachers’ Development of Four C Skills in Early Field Experiences through Reflective Writing
Get PDFThis longitudinal trend research study (Creswell & Guetterman, 2019) investigates how pre-service teachers (PSTs) in a K-12 licensure program that includes a Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) added endorsement develop the 4Cs (creative thinking, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration) through reflective writing during early field experiences. The study involved five PSTs who submitted three reflective journals during the 2020-2021 school year and nine PSTs who participated in an online virtual focus group. Compared to the 2019-2020 school year, where PSTs observed in-person classes, the shift to online learning in 2020-2021 resulted in maintained Analytic skills (M = 39.40) and increased Metacognitive (M = 30.60), Communication (M = 30.60), and Empathic (M = 30.00) skills. In addition, this study identified significant correlations (ρ \u3c 0.05) in the second and third journals between (1) communication and empathic strategies, (2) creative thinking skills and descriptive reflection strategies, (3) creative thinking skills and empathic reflection strategies, and (4) critical thinking skills and descriptive reflection strategies. Emerging with the thematic analysis of the focus group interview findings shows that PSTs adapted to online learning by linking personal experiences to observations and seeking creative solutions, highlighting the evolving relationship between the 4Cs and reflection strategies under different learning conditions