Disruptive behaviour and conduct problems among children have a significant effect in their school presence, and affect the quality of their interactions with their teachers. As a consequence, teachers face difficulties in their work, resulting in higher dropout rates and burn out, while students are not supported adequately. The present review discusses the need for teachers working with children exhibiting challenging behaviour to receive help from professionals, in order to gain better insight into the psychological processes of such children. Studying the interaction between disruptive children and their teachers within the classroom, it can be deducted that each child requires an understanding of the roots of their problematic behaviour, as it is critical to find out which clinical/ therapeutic or psychosocial/psycho-educational intervention fits best each case. The need for the implementation of a holistic model that incorporates therapeutic interventions in school is explained; it is critical to integrate counsellors, who will connect with the children and alleviate part of the stress that causes the disruptive behaviour. Meanwhile, the role of counsellors in this context should be to facilitate communication among students and teachers, helping the latter to gain a psychodynamic insight into each case, and to handle conscious or unconscious hostile feelings and rejecting attitudes toward the-problematic‖ pupil. Finally, key points are presented that summarize the steps that need to be done in order to develop a productive and functioning relationship among all parts within a school framework.
The present case study focused on a 14 years old teenager who struggled with addiction to computer games and subsequent issues of aggression and social withdrawal. Drawing from theories on addiction, self-esteem, and mentalization, we focused the connection of addiction to low self-esteem and poor mental representations. In addition, we examined the effectiveness of psychodynamic psychotherapy on treating addiction improving levels of self-esteem and alleviating aggressive behaviour over a course of two and a half years. Indeed, the use of a combination of three projective tests, namely the Thematic Apperception Test, the Kinetic Family Drawing, the Family Apperception Test and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale helped us determine our patient's emotional state and lack of self-esteem at the beginning of therapy. The same tests were administered at the end of the therapeutic sessions and the results are discussed in relation to the progress of the patient over the course of the therapy.
The present research focuses on the link between emotion regulation in preschoolers and the efficiency of sociodramatic play as a means of developing emotional and social skills appropriate for each developmental stage. In particular, we examined the effects of sociodramatic play on a four-year-old boy named Andreas, who demonstrated signs of limited emotional regulation, such as angry outbursts, inability to control his emotions and inability to cope in emotion-inducing situations. This swift in his behaviour, caused by his mother's negative control behaviour, was measured through the Emotion Regulation Checklist, the Delay Gratification Task and the Task of Effortful Control. Drawing from a plethora of theorists who support the benefits of sociodramatic play for the development of emotion regulation skills, we designed a three months school based intervention for Andreas and employed the tests beforehand and after the end of the sociodramatic sessions to explore the efficiency of the intervention. Results are discussed in regards to relevant literature.
Working therapeutically with trauma survivors carries a risk of vicarious traumatization (VT) for the therapist, as well as the potential for vicarious posttraumatic growth (VPTG). Despite a growing interest in this area, the factors that therapists feel that conduce to the development of both VT and VPTG have remained relatively unexplored. In this study, we focused mainly on the differences and similarities between the experience of VT and VPTG in therapists who work with trauma survivors in private offices and nonprofit organizations. In total, 14 therapists, 7 private therapists, and 7 therapists who worked in nonprofit organizations with trauma survivors participated in semistructured interviews that were later analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Analysis of the data demonstrated that only therapists who worked in private offices experienced VT (e.g., suspicion, intrusive images, and dissociation). Both groups experienced VPTG; nonprofit therapists reported an increased sense of their humanity and a positive point of view in their lives. Independent practice therapists experienced positive changes in their personalities and tighter family bonds. Teams used the same protective strategies; in addition, nonprofit therapists reported that sharing their feelings and struggles with colleagues immediately after the trauma session was a strong protective factor. The study concludes that the solid existence of VPTG in nonprofit therapists indicates that the work context and specific coping strategies can prevent VT. In contrast to previous findings, it highlights the possibility that therapists who work with trauma could experience explicitly VPTG, without the prior coexistence of traumatic stress.
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