1 Running head: GROUP PLAN

Midterm Annotated Bibliography on Journal Articles for Group Plan Lindsay Mims Georgia Southern University

2 Running head: GROUP PLAN Adolescents today are having to deal with so many more issues and more difficult ones than previous generations ever before. Over 90,000 calls are made each year to the Department of Child and Family Services each year in Georgia (Statistics: Child Abuse and Neglect, Calendar Year 2006, 2006), so it is safe to say that abuse and trauma have affected a substantial number of high school students, and people in general, at some time in their childhood. For this reason we are developing the plans for an abuse support group within our high school. Group counseling settings provide an invaluable support system and allow people to see that they are not alone in what they are going through. When dealing with people of this age range having someone there who truly understands and can relate to their situation could make all the difference in the world. Our plan is to form a group of between five and eight high school students (grades 9th through 12th) and meet with them for an hour to an hour and a half once a week for six weeks. We are planning to meet on school grounds during school hours, but in a private room such a guidance office or private classroom. The group would be on a voluntary basis only because of its nature, and we are hoping for and expecting a fairly heterogeneous group because of how many diverse backgrounds and situations are in most school systems now-a-days. Once a group is formed it would need to then be closed off, which could be difficult in a school setting, but is essential to prevent any decrease in progress with such a delicate topic. Our primary goal is to help these adolescents be able to move forward in their lives and past whatever abuse or traumatic experience they endured. We plan to focus heavily on self-esteem, proper fault, and forgiveness. We have compiled a number of journal articles that we feel with act as an aid in reaching our goals as affectively as possible. Below are ten of those journals and how they relate to our group plan.

3 Running head: GROUP PLAN Lawson, D. M. (2001). The Development of Abusive Personality: A Trauma Response. Journal of Counseling & Development, 79, 505-509. The first article I looked at attempts to explain how abusive personality traits often develop. Lawson discusses a few different theorists ideas behind abusive personality and how to treat them. The entire basis of our program is to help these adolescents forgive their abuser or person who may have caused the trauma, and to be able to move forward in their lives. I feel that forgiveness could potentially be much easier for them if they were able to understand a little of where the behavior may have come from or what may have caused their abuser to become the way they are. This idea is not to be confused with making an excuse for a persons actions, but if an abusive behavior stems from a trauma in their past this newest victim, with which we are working with, may be able to let go a little easier. Also, because the article discusses treatment strategies for people with abusive personalities due to past traumas, it may help us know what path to go in order to help prevent our students from becoming abusive or violent themselves. My hesitation with this is that this article focuses on the abuser rather than the victim. All of our goals, subgoals, and ideas for this class stem from positivity and this may lean just a bit too far into the negative. For this reason I have not fully decided if this idea will be used or not yet, or how it will be used if it is. Also, not everyone with an abusive tendency had a traumatic experience in their lives and it may confuse or upset some people. Crespi, T. D. (2009). Group Counseling in the Schools: Legal, Ethical, and Treatment Issues in School Practice. Psychology in the Schools, 46, 273-280. It is essential to know legal and ethical issues in any counseling situation. This article talks about many of these issues that often arise in a group counseling setting. This will give us a deeper and more specific guideline on what is and what is not appropriate in different circumstances that may arise in our group. The article also breaks down group stages and tells

4 Running head: GROUP PLAN what to expect which will be a vital resource as well. It discussed group counseling as a whole, so it encompasses our group as part of that, and it discussed ethical, legal, and treatment issues which applies to all areas of counseling; therefore, I did not find any limitations within this article. Erin Kroskob , L. (2011, September 18). More kids reporting sex crimes. Wyoming Tribune-Eagle (Cheyenne, WY). Retrieved from EBSCOhost. In this article Kroskob discusses the sex crime rates specifically in Laramie County. She states that they have been able to prosecute more of these cases because more are being reported. After interviewing 96 children the director of a local childrens advocacy center said Children are seeing that its safe and its okay to talk about their story. (Erin Kroskob, 2011) The article goes on to discuss possible reasons behind the increase in children reporting sex crimes. They say there does not seem to be an increase in offenders, so the increase in reports seems to be coming from the knowledge of appropriate and inappropriate touching coming from the schools. I feel this would be of great help to us in developing our group plan because it helps show what has worked in the past to make victims feel more comfortable. Working with abuse and trauma victims is a very difficult area, but this article talks about strategies that have worked in Laramie County in Wyoming to help these victims feel comfortable enough to talk about what happened to them. Marotta, S. A. (2000). Best Practices for Counselors Who Treat Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Journal of Counseling and Development, 78, 492-495. This article focuses on the area of treating Posttraumatic Stres Disorder in counseling. It first goes into the how to recognize PTSD, the guidelines for diagnosis, and the symptoms associated with it. The next area discussed is treatment strategies for PTSD. Regardless of the age, the severity level, and whether PTSD is acute or chronic, the experts agree that

5 Running head: GROUP PLAN psychotherapy is the treatment of choice. (Marotta, 2000). Many experts also feel that for the first three months of treament, combining medication with the psychotherapy will result in the best outcome. This section also went over the types of psychotherapy and medications used depending on certain factors such as comorbidity and age. Types of psychotherapy used more often are anxiety management, cognitive therapy, exposure therapy, and psychoeducation, but play therapy is also used quite often specifically with children. This relates to our group plan tremendously because there is a very good chance we would run into many cases of PTSD or similar symptoms. The breakdown of how to tell if a person is improving from methods, and what to do in each situation would also be very beneficial for us to know. Knowing what types of therapies work best with trauma victims is obviously very crucial with what we are trying to accomplish. The main drawbacks of this article as it relates to our group would be that it is does not deal with group settings, also we would not be prescribing medication, although there is a chance we may be working in collaboration with someone that is. Williams, A. (2011). Bullied no more: Former bully victim speaks out against harassment and violence in schools. Bemidji Pioneer, The (MN). Retrieved from EBSCOhost. The article is about a boy who was repeatedly bullied and harassed for being openly gay in middle school. After the boy attempted suicide multiple times and was told by his school that he needed to accept harassing behaviors because of his choice to be openly gay, he was the first student to successfully sue a school district due to anti-gay harassment. He eventually became a spokes person for school harassment and travels to schools to speak out against it. To me this is an essential tool that highlights how traumatic bullying and harassment can be. It is not all normal middle school/high school activity that kids should just be forced to put up with. This article helps to show that anyone can be affected by traumatic experiences or

6 Running head: GROUP PLAN PTSD, and also how it is still possible to come out of it and use it for good. The limitations to this article are that it does not actually talk about counseling strategies at all. Its focus is more on how this person was able to turn it all around. This is one article I am considering not using for our group plan, but it does help give some insight and perspective on things. Clark, A. J. (2002). Scapegoating: Dynamics and Interventions in Group Counseling. Journal of Counseling & Development, 80, 271-276. The article focuses in scapegoating in group counseling, which is perfect for what we want it for. It talks about the functionality of scapegoating and how it can actually work as a tool if directed and responded to correctly. It talks about the different types of scapegoating and how they can reveal themselves differently depending on the situation. This will be an extremely useful article for our group plan. It will help us to know what to expect in regards to scapegoating in a group counseling situation. It will also give us some insight into how to handle the scapegoating depending on the type, who is acting as the scapegoat, and if they are doing it willingly or not. All in all I feel this could be one of our most useful articles to use. Some limitations of this article are that this is not specifically geared towards group counseling in high schools, also it does not specifically discuss trauma/abuse groups, just group counseling in general. Harris, A. H. S., Thoresen, C. E., & Lopez, S. J. (2007). Integrating Positive Psychology Into Counseling: Why and (When Appropriate) How. Journal of Counseling & Development, 85, 3-13. With this article, Kim and I both actually found an article pertaining to the same topic of positive psychology. We felt this would be a very useful approach to use with our demographic. The article discusses different strategies to integrate this idea of positive psychology into the practice of counseling and how to do it. This idea will work very well with for what we want to accomplish in our group. Although we know that these students will have to face the negative

7 Running head: GROUP PLAN things in their past it is important to focus on and utilize positives as well. There is also an extensive section in this article about forgiveness which is key in our group and we are actually having an entire session devoted to it. As far as limitations, there are very few in this article. There was even a little part that mentioned the best type of psychotherapy to use with positive psychology while working with high school students. Viney, L. L., Henry, R. M., & Campbell, J. (2001). The Impact of Group Work on Offender Adolescents. Journal of Counseling & Development, 79, 373-381. This article focuses on, as the title says, group work with adolescent offenders. Although this may not seem to be very closely related with our demographic group and what we are trying to accomplish, I believe it does. In our group we are going to be working with many deeply troubled high school students. These students have experienced abuse, trauma, loss, victimization, etc. and all too often teenagers channel the emotions from those experiences into negative behaviors. I believe it would not be a stretch of the imagination to assume we will encounter a student or two that has been in trouble with the law at some point and it would be beneficial to understand if and how group therapy has helped adolescents who are already at that point. This was a great study because it used 200 people that were directed in our focus age range. The main limitation with using this article is that the participants in the study are actually all in juvenile justice facilities rather than just maybe troubled youth, so that could very well change how it would affect a person, but I still believe it will be helpful to us in providing some insight. Phillips, A. & Daniluk, J. C. (2004). Beyond Survivor: How Childhood Sexual Abuse Informs the Identity of Adult Women at the End of the Therapeutic Process. Journal of Counseling & Development, 82, 177-184.

8 Running head: GROUP PLAN Since we will be dealing with teenagers and possibly even some very early adults, I feel it is important to explore how childhood abuse and trauma effects who those children become. The article based its ideas on interviews with 30 women who had been sexually abused as children (Phillips, 2004). Now I realize that everyone reacts and is affected differently, and I also realize that sexual abuse victims may make up a small percentage of our group, but I feel that any perspective on prolonged effects of trauma will be helpful to us. There are quite a few things in this article that could be considered limitations in regards to what we are using it for. First of all this study is obviously meaning more adult women rather than teenagers. Also, although I am sure we will encounter participants who have been sexually abused that is not our entire demographic, and neither is just women victims which is what this article uses for its research. Lemoire, S. J. & Chen, C. P. (2005). Applying Person-Centered Counseling to Sexual Minority Adolescents. Journal of Counseling & Development, 83, 146-154. Person-centered counseling was another area of counseling that we were hoping to utilize in our group sessions. This article focuses on how to use this approach with persons of sexual minority, but I feel it came be applied to anyone. Much like the LGBT community our students often feel alone and deal with many of the same psychological distresses. Person-centered counseling focuses on six key factors: unconditional positive regard, adopting the clients perspective, encouraging the clients locus of evaluation, emphasizing the clients notion of selfconcept, believing in the clients potential for self-growth, and ensuring that the growth process is client-directed (Lemoire, 2005). These factors would be ideal to use with our group in order to uplift them.

9 Running head: GROUP PLAN While this article does focus on adolescent, the main limitation for our use of it is that it deals solely with sexual minority persons. Also, for this article in particular I would have really like for it to have had an actual study so that there was comparable data on the subject since this will be one of our main approaches. All in all, adding this group to any school would be extremely beneficial. The group topic relates to a large number of people in todays society and would give those students a place they feel they are able to open up and confide about their past without any judgment. It would aid in giving adolescents a brighter and more hopeful outlook on life, which is a priceless gift to give to anyone.

10 Running head: GROUP PLAN Other References

Prevent Child Abuse Georgia. (2006). Statistics: Child Abuse and Neglect, Calendar Year 2006. Retrieved from http://www.preventchildabusega.org/html/statistics.html