New Article: Freud et al, Stuttering among People who Stutter from the Ultra-Orthodox and Secular Community

Freud, D., R. Ezrati-Vinacour, and N. Katz-Bernstein. “The Experience of Stuttering among People who Stutter from the Ultra-Orthodox and Secular Community in Israel.” Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 193 (2015): 304-305.

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.03.283
 
Abstract

Stuttering is a disorder which is manifested during a communicational interaction, and is experiential in nature. While the etiology for stuttering is still in question among researchers, most agree that the experience of stuttering may be highly related to various factors, of which environment plays a significant role. The environment of an individual has been described in circles (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), to depict the different layers which encompass the person in his daily life, such as family, friends, educational or work settings and strangers. Beyond those, the largest external circle of Bronfenbrenner (1979), i.e., the macro-system, represents society or culture. The behavior and approach of society to the PWS has been described repeatedly ascrucial towards the quality of life and coping strategies of the PWS. Negative attitudes and stereotypes towards PWS have been reported in several countries from around the world (Kuwait, Turkey, China) and specific behaviors towards PWS within African countries or Indian tribes have been described. Nevertheless, only few researches have explored the experience of stuttering within the social context. The present qualitative study explored the experience of stuttering within two opposing social groups in Israel: the ultra-Orthodox Jews and the secular Jews, in order to characterize the different needs of PWS in these groups and identify differences in their ability to cope with their stuttering, which might be the result of their specific social context. Eight adult PWS were recruited for this study, between the ages of 22-62 years: four ultra-Orthodox Jews and four secular Jews. In-depth interviews were conducted with each participant separately for two hours on average, using a semi-structured format which consisted of nineteen open ended questions. Questions included various topics, e.g. child and adolescence memories of living with stuttering, the influence of stuttering on the individual, self attitudes toward stuttering. After concluding the interviews, a transcript of each interview was achieved and analyzed. Analysis of the transcriptions was performed using concept driven and data driven strategies. Holistic reading of interviews suggested four main dimensions: the experience of stuttering across the life span, coping strategies with the stuttering, the experience of therapy, and personal insights. Each of these was then categorized into categories and sub categories. Initial analysis demonstrated a great emotional content, different anxiety experiences and special speech roles among ultra-orthodox interviewees in comparison to the secular interviewees. Our findings describe the experience of stuttering and its relation to the social context. However, it is also suggested that the experience of stuttering is “universal” and despite the different circumstances, similarities may be found in the individual’s coping strategies and experiences with therapy. Following the presentation of findings, clinical implications will be suggested.

 

 

 

New Article: Perkins, Translating the Television ‘Treatment’ Genre: Be’Tipul and In Treatment

Perkins, Claire. “Translating the Television ‘Treatment’ Genre: Be’Tipul and In Treatment.” Continuum 29.5 (2015): 781-94.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2015.1068730

 

Abstract

In Treatment (2008–2010) was the first Israeli series to be remade for US television, and its largely positive critical reception established a reputation for Israel as a home for quality drama – setting the stage for the remake of Hatufim (Prisoners of War, 2009–2012) into Homeland (2011–). This article takes up the case of In Treatment to examine how the process of transnational television remaking can illuminate the concept of US quality television in the millennial era. Arguing that the aesthetic and industrial brand of ‘quality’ is defined by the theme and device of transformation, the article analyses how the American remake gradually diverges from the original series Be’Tipul (2005–2008) to accentuate this concept in its stories and narrative style. The resulting text presents the quintessential contemporary example of what I call the television ‘treatment’ genre: a mode of programming that operates by centripetal narrative complexity to present ‘serial selves,’ or characters whose time in therapy produces progressive or regressive modifications in their emotional state. When read against the more halting and circular narratives of Be’Tipul, this format demonstrates a clear socio-cultural remapping of its topic: where therapeutic culture in America is presented as a site that is underpinned by contested neoliberal ideologies on the government of subjectivity.

 

 

New Article: David and Schiff, Trauma Intervention for Infants and Young Children

David, Paula and Miriam Schiff. “Learning from Bottom-Up Dissemination: Importing an Evidence-Based Trauma Intervention for Infants and Young Children to Israel.” Evaluation and Program Planning 53 (2015): 18-24.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2015.07.012

 

Abstract

This article describes a pilot study of a “bottom up” dissemination process of a new evidence based intervention for treating early childhood trauma. Clinicians applied to learn Child–Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), imported to Israel from the U.S. A focus group of six graduates of a CPP training program responded to questions concerning their experiences learning and using CPP. All 39 CPP graduates from two cohorts also completed a cross sectional survey related to their use of CPP. Within the focus group, the openness of the workplace and the intervention’s characteristics were considered major factors impacting CPP use; the training program was perceived to promote CPP implementation, and lack of supervision and secondary traumatic stress were the major inhibiting factors. Using CPP-informed therapy, as opposed to CPP with fidelity, was perceived to be one of the main outcomes of the training. Survey results showed that 53% of graduates were using CPP in over three cases, and almost all intended to use CPP within the next year. Ninety-five percent were using CPP principles in their therapeutic work. The implications of importing a new evidence based intervention to a foreign country that utilizes a different dissemination system within a different professional culture are discussed.

 
 
 
 

New Article: Lahad and Shoshana, Singlehood in Treatment

Lahad, Kinneret, and Avi Shoshana. “Singlehood in Treatment: Interrogating the Discursive Alliance between Postfeminism and Therapeutic Culture.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 22.3 (2015): 334-49.

 
 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1350506815580398

 

Abstract

This article offers a critical discourse analysis of the Israeli television series In Treatment. The series unfolds the therapy sessions of a 40-year-old single female attorney with her therapist. The main objective of the study was to identify the scripted tactics or narrative strategies that establish and maintain singlehood. The findings indicate that the therapeutic discourse plays a central role in the construction and interpretation of single women’s subjectivities, prompting a narrative that encourages the ‘discarding’ of singlehood as well as therapeutic work slanted towards a more familial and maternally oriented subjectivity. This narrative unfolds through two dominant scripted tactics: the symbolic annihilation of singlehood and the construction of feminine identity hierarchies (what the authors term ‘hierarchies of happy endings’). Moreover, it is also prompted by the discursive alliance between the therapeutic discourse and the postfeminist discourse. Consequently, long-term singlehood is portrayed as an unnatural and pathological life script characterized by its lack and deficiency. Furthermore, as opposed to childless singlehood, single motherhood by choice emerges as a preferred and desirable life option. The category of single motherhood is endowed with new forms of legitimacy, reinforcing new-old patriarchal and postfeminist conceptions of women’s reproductive potential and what is considered to be women’s primary life purpose.

 
 
 

New Book: Safir et al., Future Directions in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Safir, Marilyn P., Helene S. Wallach, and Albert Rizzo, eds. Future Directions in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment. New York: Springer, 2015.

 

 

Ours is an era of increasing tension, both global and local. And not surprisingly, PTSD is recognized not only in combat veterans and active military personnel, but also disaster and assault survivors across the demographic spectrum. As current events from mass shootings to the debate over trigger warnings keep the issue in the public eye, the disorder remains a steady concern among researchers and practitioners.

Future Directions in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder presents findings and ideas with the potential to influence both our conceptualization of the condition and the techniques used to address it. A multidisciplinary panel of experts offers new analyses of risk and resilience factors, individual and group approaches to prevention, the evolving process of diagnosis, and effective treatment and delivery. Chapters on treatment allow readers to compare widely-used prolonged exposure and VR methods with innovative applications of cognitive processing therapy and interpersonal therapy. And an especially compelling contribution surveys empirically-based programs relating to what for many is the emblematic trauma of our time, the events of September 11, 2001. Included in the coverage:

• Predictors of vulnerability to PTSD: neurobiological and genetic risk factors.
• Early intervention: is prevention better than cure?
• The functional neuroanatomy of PTSD.
• The development of evidence-based treatment for PTSD.
• Enhancing exposure therapy using D-Cycloserine (DCS).
• PLUS: a case example as seen through five therapeutic perspectives.

While millions experience trauma, relatively few develop chronic PTSD. Future Directions in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a practical and proactive reference for the health and clinical psychologists, sociologists, psychiatrists, and primary care physicians dedicated to further decreasing those numbers.

 

Table of contents

• Vulnerability to PTSD: Psychosocial and Demographic Risk and Resilience Factors

  Bar-Shai, Marina (et al.)

  Pages 3-30

• Neurobiological Risk Factors and Predictors of Vulnerability and Resilience to PTSD

  Bar-Shai, Marina (et al.)

  Pages 31-63

• The Early Adolescent or “Juvenile Stress” Translational Animal Model of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

  Richter-Levin, Gal (et al.)

  Pages 65-77

• An Attachment Perspective on Traumatic and Posttraumatic Reactions

  Mikulincer, Mario (et al.)

  Pages 79-96 

• Delayed-Onset PTSD in Israeli Combat Veterans: Correlates, Clinical Picture, and Controversy

  Horesh, Danny (et al.)

  Cutting Edge Research on Prevention of PTSD

  Kearns, Megan C. (et al.)

  Pages 133-153

• Systems of Care for Traumatized Children: The Example of a School-Based Intervention Model

  Brom, Danny (et al.)

  Pages 155-169

• Is Prevention Better than Cure? How Early Interventions Can Prevent PTSD

  Freedman, Sara A. (et al.)

  Pages 171-186

• Evolution of PTSD Diagnosis in the

  Echterling, Lennis G. (et al.)

  Pages 189-212

• Functional Neuroanatomy of PTSD: Developmental Cytoarchitectonic Trends, Memory Systems, and Control Processes

  Gilboa, Asaf

  Pages 213-241

• Prolonged Exposure Treatment

  Nacasch, Nitsa (et al.)

  Pages 245-251

• Cognitive Processing Therapy: Beyond the Basics

  Chard, Kathleen M. (et al.)

  Pages 253-262

• Interpersonal Psychotherapy for PTSD

  Rafaeli, Alexandra Klein (et al.)

  Pages 263-272

• Inclusion of Virtual Reality: A Rationale for the Use of VR in the Treatment of PTSD

  García-Palacios, Azucena (et al.)

  Pages 275-287

  
  

• Initial Development and Dissemination of Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for Combat-Related PTSD

  Reger, Greg M. (et al.)

  Pages 289-302

• Update and Expansion of the Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan PTSD Exposure Therapy System

  Rizzo, Albert (et al.)

  Pages 303-328

• Mental Health Problems and Treatment Utilization of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Enrolled in Department of Veterans Affairs Health Care

  Seal, Karen H. (et al.)

  Pages 329-345

• Enhancing Exposure Therapy for PTSD Using

  Burton, Mark S. (et al.)

  Pages 347-365

• Implementation of Evidence-Based Assessment, Treatment, and Research Programs Following the World Trade Center Disaster on September 11, 2001

  Olden, Megan (et al.)

  Pages 367-387

• Case Presentation of a Chronic Combat PTSD Veteran

  Nacasch, Nitsa (et al.)

  Pages 391-409

• Matching Treatment to Patients Suffering from PTSD: What We Know and Especially What We Don’t Know

  Wallach, Helene S.

  Pages 411-415

• Erratum to: Case Presentation of a Chronic Combat PTSD Veteran

 

New Article: Lavi et al, Therapeutic Intervention in a Continuous Shared Traumatic Reality

Lavi, Tamar, Orit Nuttman-Shwartz, and Rachel Dekel. “Therapeutic Intervention in a Continuous Shared Traumatic Reality: An Example from the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict.” British Journal of Social Work (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcv127

 

Abstract

Growing political instability around the world has exposed an increasing number of communities to military conflict. Social workers and other mental health professionals who work as trauma workers, and who both live and practise within these communities, are doubly exposed: directly and indirectly, personally and professionally. The present study examined the consequences on trauma workers and on the therapeutic process itself of working in a continuous Shared Traumatic Reality. The study was based on content analysis of three focus groups conducted among thirty trauma workers, between the ages of thirty and sixty, who were trained in a variety of therapeutic professions, mainly social work. Findings suggest that a high level of exposure to life threats and emotional distress can coexist with high levels of professional functioning and resilience. Results further point to complex implications associated with therapeutic relationships and settings that include: diminution of the transitional space, strengthened sense of identification between workers and clients, and acceleration of the therapeutic process. The discussion reviews the variables that facilitate and impede the professionals’ functioning and highlights the unique effects of continuous exposure.