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Chapter 13 of the book "How to Change Your Career & Do the Work You Really Love: A Step-by-Step Plan for Making It Happen" is presented. It offers advice on how to adjust to a new career. When planning a career change, it is advisable not to share it to co-workers since it may create problems. For instance, a person planning a career change may appear to be a disloyal worker, thus, any mistake committed at work will be magnified. During a career transition, individuals may also exhibit behaviors relating to culture shock. One example is boredom.

Chapter 6 of the book "101 Ways to Score Higher on Your GRE: What You Need to Know About the Graduate Record Exam Explained Simply" is presented. It provides insights on making known one's preparation for the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) to all concerned relations and parties and on making the adjustments necessary for one's study schedule. It highlights case studies of the adjustments individuals made on preparing for their GRE.

Chapter 12 of the book "Emotional Intelligence: Perspectives on Educational and Positive Psychology" is presented. It reviews the field of emotional intelligence (EI) research and explores the role of EI on health and wellness. The chapter also discusses how people take positive perspectives on their life events and revisits the role of coping mechanisms.

Chapter 10 of the book "Emotional Intelligence: Perspectives on Educational and Positive Psychology" is presented. It presents an original study that examines life adjustment factors and emotional intelligence (EI) and extends previous research that typically explored EI as a singular entity. It discloses that high EI help people succeed in life and achieve a balance of work, family and leisure.

Chapter 2 of the book "How to Get Into the Top Graduate Schools: What You Need to Know About Getting into Law, Medical & Other Ivy League Schools Explained Simply" is presented. It offers a look at the life of a graduate student. Adjustments should be made by a student going to a graduate school. For students having difficulty finding a place to live, they can approach a university office or the Dean of Students office. Orientation program for new students is also being offered by universities.

Chapter 13 of the book "Social Perspectives on Death and Dying" is presented. It provides insights on coping with grief and bereavement. According to the author, ignoring grief or postponing the process of bereavement may only intensify pain at a later time. Also discussed are the phases of grief when a death occurs including confronting the pain and re-establishing connections.

Chapter 13 of the book "Sisters," Volume X, by Kathleen Norris is presented. It explores the discussion between Cherry Strickland and Peter Joyce on certain essential action to cope up with the sufferings of her marriage. Furthermore, it highlights the perception of Cherry that the actions taken are considered essential for recovery on the worsened condition of her marriage.

The article presents a summary of the topics discussed in the book "Applied Interpersonal Communication Matters." It is said that the researchers emphasized the vital nature of applied interpersonal research and its possible implications for more effectively managing and coping with adversities that individuals and groups face. It mentions that theories assist the scholars in their study of the interpersonal applied problems.

While communal coping can help families foster resilience against stress, this chapter examines the dilemmas that can be created when family members cope communally with divorce stressors. The dilemmas were drawn from group and individual interviews that were conducted with 60 custodial parents and one of their adolescent children. The chapter illustrates how parents can sometimes misdirect their stress onto their children, who, in turn, can either reject responsibility for the stressor or assume varying levels of responsibility for it. Often this displacement of the parent's stress makes it difficult for children to cope with the divorce. When parents directly or indirectly ask their children to assume joint ownership of a stressor that is better managed alone, it can produce parentification, inappropriate protective buffering, anxiety, and stress. Implications of these dilemmas for families and researchers are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interpersonal conflict is linked with various stress and stress-related outcomes. Working from a serial arguing framework, aspects of serial arguments, including duration, persistence, and perceived resolvability of the argument as well as the use of three coping strategies (selective ignoring, taking a resigned stance, and optimistic comparisons) were explored in relation to individuals' well-being. Specifically, resolvability was beneficial for individuals' stress levels, and was also associated with less stress-related problems. However, neither duration nor persistence of the serial argument was consistently related to any stress-related variables. With regard to coping strategies, being resigned toward one's serial argument was deleterious as it is linked with greater stress and stress-related problems. While it was predicted that making optimistic comparisons would be a beneficial coping strategy, it was unrelated to most of the outcome variables. Unexpectedly, selective ignoring was found to be a beneficial coping strategy. Theoretical and applied explanations for these findings are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapter 5 of the book "Insiders and Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa," by Francis B. Nyamnjoh is presented. It focuses on the strategies used by maids in Southern Africa to cope with insecurities and dehumanisation. Maids in the region are victims of exploitation and their basic human rights are violated.

Chapter 6 of the book "Living Through Loss: Interventions Across the Life Span" is presented. It explores the primary developmental considerations of adolescence in coping with losses associated with parent's death or divorce, death of a sibling or friend, death from suicide or violence and abortion or miscarriage. It highlights the discussion on developmental challenges in the early, middle and late adolescence.

Chapter 3 of the book "Living Through Loss: Interventions Across the Life Span" is presented. It discusses the two models that are useful in understanding different mediating variables and outcomes of the grief process through loss such as the traditional stress and coping models and the model of resilience. It highlights the resilience process which focuses on the background characteristics and personal, family, social, and cultural capacities.

The article considers the role of information and the authorities in a chemical and biological weapon terrorist incident, and the psychological and social responses to a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attack. It discusses the reasons why people panic or do not panic during a terrorist incident and the uses and abuses of reassuring the public about threats. It discusses the measures to reduce psychological distress and promote resilience/coping and outlines the instances wherein the effects of terrorist attack could be easily manage.

The article explains different ways to understand and help children deal with loss and grief as it may affect children's emotional, social, behavioral, cognitive and spiritual lives. Children live their lives within the context of families, neighborhoods, communities, cultural groupings and societies as they do not construct meanings and coping skills by themselves. Factors that influence differences in the grief response may include the relationship of the child with the lost object or person and the relative centrality of the lost object of person.

The article focuses on how a family with children with disabilities copes in a crisis situation shaped by its unique circumstances and challenges as they encounter stresses and challenges. Families with children with disabilities need both immediate and long-term services that help them cope with a different reality. The realization that a child has a disability or is different from other children is a gradual process that takes much observation and convincing of medical authorities that something is wrong.

Chapter 16 of the book "A Long Way to Go: Conversations About Race by African American Faculty and Graduate Students" is presented. It discusses the adaptive coping strategies of African American faculty members. It provides an overview of the struggle of African American scholars for participation in U.S. higher education since the beginning of U.S. colleges and universities. The tendency of White college administrators to downplay the race-based stress experienced by African American professors at the classroom is mentioned.

Chapter 9 of the book "A Long Way to Go: Conversations About Race by African American Faculty and Graduate Students" is presented. It focuses on preparing for, enduring and surviving the first year of the professorate for African Americans in predominantly White institutions (PWI). The author relates her experiences as an African American woman teaching at PWI. Also noted are several behaviors and micro-aggressions that may be encountered by novice minority faculty. She offers coping strategies that she learned as a novice minority professor.

This paper examines the needs and stress reactions of children of mentally ill parents, as well as coping and resilience. The study is based on the interviews of six 9-11 years old children and narratives of seventeen female grown up children of mentally ill parents. The younger and older children of the mentally ill parents had not been informed about their parent's illness. The illness of the parent aroused a variety of emotions in them. The children used both practical problem solving and emotional coping mechanisms. Informal social support was available to them but seldom from the public services. It is recommended that professionals in mental health and child welfare services clarify their roles when working with mentally ill parents. The best interest of the child and the parenting they need should be carefully assessed. Open care measures should be offered to families early enough to prevent serious child welfare and mental problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, a study of 77 families was undertaken to examine the long-term psychosocial effects of cancer on children and their families. This paper focuses specifically on the findings in relation to the parents' subgroup of the overall study. Key findings were that the majority of parents and their children readjust to ordinary family life following completion of treatment. Gender differences in parents' coping mechanisms emerged. The period immediately following the cessation of treatment can create feelings of isolation and vulnerability, and many parents have ongoing worries about their child's continued well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter describes the practice of self-disclosure by the social group worker. It also analyzes the effect of self-disclosure on pre-group planning, on group participants and on the group processes and results. A definition of therapeutic relationship is presented. Several reasons for a social group worker's self-disclosure include the promotion of feelings of universality, to give client encouragement and hope, to model coping strategies, to establish rapport, and to increase awareness of alternative points of views. The major types of counselor self-reference are self-disclosure and self-involving responses.

The psychological and social consequences of having a diagnosis of cancer can continue beyond the initial year of diagnosis. However, very few empirical studies examine the long-term adjustment of cancer survivors and the factors that promote survivors' well-being. This paper presents an 18 month follow-up study of 26 women who were treated for various types of cancer at a major medical center in the United States. They completed questionnaires during the initial treatment phase of the illness and 18 months liner. The questionnaire consisted of standardized scales measuring relationship factors (i.e., mutuality, silencing-the-self schemas, and relationship-focused coping) and psychosocial well-being (i.e., quality of life, depression, self-care agency). The results of the follow-up study revealed that the women's psychosocial well-being changed for the better between Time 1 and Time 2. while their relationship factors remained constant. Only one relational Factor, silencing-the-self beliefs, at Time 1, was significantly correlated with a well-being variable at Time 2. However, relationship factors at Time 2 were significantly correlated with psychosocial wellbeing at Time 2, indicating that relational Factors continue to play a significant role in the sample's psychosocial adjustment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a grounded theory qualitative research, this study explored the strategies used by children to cope with abusive home environments. Through a series or three interviews, a group of adolescents and child care professionals were asked their perceptions regarding protective factors of resilience. These were then categorized into common patterns that emerged as five themes showing a progression of skills used by adolescents who were maltreated as children. These themes are: loyalty to parents, normalizing of the abusive environment, establishing a sense of safety through a perception of invisibility to the abuser, self value, and a future view. This research adds important knowledge to the body of practice skills in working with abusing families. Those children who have developed methods to cope provide us with valuable tools to assist other children who may continue to live in abusing environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this chapter is to take a first step in beginning to bridge the 'awareness gap' in the field of expatriate adjustment. The authors examine the theoretical literature of expatriate adjustment, and broadly summarize the general empirical findings in relationship to the field's theories. Additionally, they attempt to link the literature review to issues of application and practice. Topics covered in this chapter include: a typology of expatriate adjustment models; future directions for scholars; applying the models to international human resource management (IHRM) functions; and maintaining relationships with the home country. The authors observe that expatriates have acquired detailed knowledge about the global marketplace and have enhanced cross-cultural skills that are critical for managing multinational corporations (MNCs). The difficult transition to the new job in the home country is made easier by giving expatriates recognition, by letting them function as a mentor, or by giving them the opportunity to share their knowledge and experience through training sessions. On the other hand the company can create the perception within the organization that an overseas assignment is valued.

The article examines the effects of social and environmental stressors, coping behaviors and social support on psychological distress, relatively little is known about their effects on neurotic disorders in the elderly. The author addresses the degree to which these studies are consistent with a conclusion that similar effects of stress, coping and support on neurosis are present among the elderly.

This study examines the correlates of depression among Japanese American elders among 131 community-dwelling Japanese American elders aged 60 years or older. Predictors of depression were examined from a stress and coping framework. Depression was measured using the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). Close to 20% of the respondents were mildly depressed. Multiple regression analyses revealed that health, fear of dependency on family, number of close friends, and availability of emotional support were associated with depression. Previous studies indicate that traditional Japanese values of interdependence facilitate dependency on family among Japanese American elders. The findings of this study, however, suggest that the prospect of becoming dependent on family is a source of distress in this population. Culturally appropriate ways for social workers to address fear of dependency among Japanese American elders are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The chapter defines terminal illness. It cites the various coping patterns of a person diagnosed with terminal illness. It describes models of the dying trajectory and explains the concept of social death. It enumerates the tasks of a social worker dealing with the terminally. It also describes the conceptual and clinical models of the dying process. A theoretical framework for working with dying patients is presented. This framework is defined by several concepts: process, cumulative loss, and denial.

Discusses the theoretical framework and empirical evidence for the hypothesized relationship between self-blame attributions and psychological adjustment. Background on attributions and adjustments; Relationship between attributions and outcomes; Correlation between perceived control and adjustment.

Trillat concluded his 'Histoire de l'hysterie' with the words, "Hysteria is dead, that is clear. She has taken her riddles with her to the grave". We must stress, however, that this is not entirely true. Patients still suffer from the often strange symptoms of conversion hysteria. This paper covers the following topics: The D.S.M. IV criteria for conversion disorder, the similarities between conversion disorders, dissociation and hypnotic phenomena and the therapeutic application of hypnosis for patients with a conversion disorder. The treatment strategy and the relatively favourable treatment results of three patients - a woman suffering from flaccid paralysis of both legs, a patient referred for treatment of a clenched fist and a patient suffering from pseudo-ataxia - are described. In the discussion special attention is given to the difficulties in diagnosing the disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This chapter examines how perceptions of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) can have a strong influence on how individuals cope with the disorder and reviews the theoretical background to illness perceptions in understanding CFS. Patient cognitive models of their illness are, by their nature, private. Patients are often reluctant to discuss their beliefs about their illness in medical consultations because they fear being seen as stupid or misinformed. CFS patients appear to have a distinct view of their illness. Their illness representation is characterized by an illness identity incorporating a broad range of symptoms. Attributions about the illness are typically external and physical, and beliefs about the chronicity and consequences of the illness are generally negative. Comparisons with other medical illness groups reveal that these negative beliefs and lack of personal responsibility for their illness are not solely a consequence of having a chronic disabling condition. The beliefs most associated with CFS-related disability are identity, or the tendency to ascribe a wide range of symptoms to the illness and a belief in the serious consequences of the illness. The process of finding a cause or causes for the illness helps individuals make sense of their illness experience and provides a framework to guide their future actions to cope with it.

This chapter looks at the different ways in which patients deal with their chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and how these different strategies are related to both illness beliefs and adaptative outcome. Most CFS patients believe that rest and reduced activity is helpful in controlling symptoms, while maintaining activity is unhelpful. This limiting coping style, distinguishes CFS patients from depressed patients, and suggests that this form of coping may be one of the defining features of the illness. The behavioural responses of limiting activity and stress are associated with patients' beliefs that resting is a helpful way of controlling symptoms. Similarly, a sense of personal control over the illness is positively associated with limiting activity. Thus, for CFS patients limiting activity appears to be a way of controlling the illness. Limiting activity is also related to a more positive outlook on the illness. CFS patients who have a very negative view of the consequences and time-line of their illness are less likely to use limiting activity than those who do not. Disengagement strategies are also associated with more negative illness beliefs. CFS patients' beliefs about illness identity, serious consequences, and chronic time-line is positively associated with both disengagement strategies and focussing on symptoms, while a sense of internal control over the illness is negatively related.

This article describes the problems and coping of a sample of mainstream Jewish-Israeli youth. Jewish-Israeli mainstream society consists of third or fourth generation families with European or established Sephardic backgrounds who have resided most of their lives in major metropolitan areas or kibbutzim. With both male and female Jews drafted into military service at 18 and males continuing to serve in an active reserve system until the age of 50, military service is considered a "Certificate of Entry" into adult Jewish society. This can be seen in the preoccupation of young people in defining their military status and social standing in the military organization with emphasis going well beyond the borders of conventional armies' services. The State of Israel has always encouraged immigration. With its opengate policy allowing automatic citizenship to all Jews who come to live on its shores, vast numbers have arrived from all over the world to create a truly pluralistic society. Israel has a compulsory education law which promises education to all citizens aged 5 through to 16. In cases of special education recipients, these benefits are extended to the age of 21. This law enables at least ten years of education. Most Jewish adolescents study in college preparatory programmes or in technical schools.

This article focuses on a study of the educational system of Brazil. Brazil's educational system also has problems. Fifteen per cent of Brazilians are non-literate, a high figure compared to the world average. Because of local inefficiencies and insufficient allocation of funds for basic education in many parts of the country, school "dropping out" and poor performance in primary schools are high. Not surprisingly, most of those who remain non-literate are the poor. This study asked advantaged and non-advantaged youth, the problems that concern them, the coping strategies they use and the types of helpers they seek. Socio-economic status was determined by the Hutchinson Professional Categories Inventory which classifies seven levels of professions in relation to their social prestige and the financial condition of the family measured by the amount of minimum wages that compose the family income. The results point to a complex relationship between employment, finances and schooling in the lives of Brazilian youth. Although schooling is needed to provide non-advantaged people, the tools to increase their social status and better their lives, adequate financial resources are also required.

The chapter presents a study on how families manage the strains they encounter. Coping strategies are the behavioral and/or cognitive attempts to manage specific situational demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding ones ability to adapt. All of the families studied felt they had a choice in moving, and some had even worked actively to make it happen. Families were able to prepare for the move to a new culture. For the four families who moved because at least one of their members worked for the government, the meaning of this particular event other moves across cultures. A mobile style of life had been chosen long before, when the career was chosen, either by taste for travel, for the type of work involved in a government career, or because government work paid better than other options available. For these families the specific move to Geneva, Switzerland was a relatively low key matter in contrast to previous moves, many of which had involved significantly more adaptation. The specific city of Geneva was chosen for a pleasant style of life.

Chapter three of the book "Listening for a Change: Oral Testimony & Development" is presented. It discusses the efforts from those involved in the developmental projects to ensure that undertakings are people-centered. It describes the role-reversal concept where the subject is the expert and the researcher is the learner. Details on the role of oral testimonies in recording technical knowledge of locals, their coping strategies during natural calamities and the tracing of their family history are desribed.

The article informs that the interdependence of secure accommodation with all aspects of public child care has both spatial and temporal dimensions. Spatially it is variably used by different courts, agencies and regimes, all of which are in consequence actively defining and redefining the nature both of the primary deviance and of secure accommodation as a social response to it. Attempts at "reform" by one actor in the process will provoke--as no doubt they were in turn provoked by--different and possibly conflicting actions by another. The social world differs from the natural scientist's laboratory in that, while the chemist's new compounds do not hit back, those of the social actor almost invariably do, and in ways which it is almost always difficult, and sometimes impossible, to predict, control or even manage. Whereas to the practitioner or administrator secure accommodation is a facility to be used as the law permits, to the social analyst it is a small corner of the social totality, a social product mediating the relations of state, family and child.

The article informs that secure accommodation is available to, and normally provided by, local authorities for use in respect of three main categories of youngster: children committed to care, those remanded awaiting trial or sentence and those serving sentences of detention under the Children and Young Persons Act 1933. In spite of occasional appearances to the contrary, an authorization is not a sentence; indeed the local authority is not empowered to hold a youngster in secure accommodation once the circumstances which led to the making of the authorization have ceased to exist: the 3- and 6-month periods are maxima, and early release is formally encouraged. Secure accommodation is a fundamentally ambiguous facility, and to view it in isolation from the much larger child-care and delinquency systems of which it is a part is to miss both the nature and significance of this ambiguity. Secure accommodation is both incarceration and an alternative to incarceration, a form of control imposed in order that care can be provided.

The article presents a critique of previous research methods and theory, exposing serious gaps in our understanding of the problems of both suicides in prison, and young prisoner suicides in particular. Statistics and recorded information on suicides and suicide attempts in prison are unreliable and a preoccupation with prediction has limited research: few studies discuss the possible reasons for suicide or suicide attempts in prison. Research on prison coping behaviour offers significant insights into the notion of vulnerability to suicide, and suggests a new route for research for our theoretical understanding. Suicide figures and records, based as they are on the outcome of coroners' inquests, provide an inadequate data source for any analysis of rates or explanations of suicides in prison. One of the assumptions of prison suicide research implicit in virtually all of the studies so far discussed is that "prison suicides" are in fact a meaningful and valid group comparable to suicides amongst the general community.

• The research programme identifies four key factors that influence adjustment. These are family patterns of interaction, `doctor-parent' communication, the ward and health care environment and health beliefs. • A number of theories from health psychology and systems therapy are identified that underpin these factors. These include Minuchin a al.'s (1975) model of family functioning, Korsch et al. (1968) and Ley's (1988) models of doctor-patient communication, Menzies Lyth's (1988) notions of systems developing defences and Rosenstock (1974) and Leventhal et al.'s (1982) theories of how health beliefs develop and impact on adjustment. • In explaining why Wallander et al.'s (1989b) model has not been largely supported, it appears that it fails to pay sufficient attention to these dimensions and often lacks conceptual and theoretical precision when it discusses the relationship between the risk and resilience factors and their impact on adjustment. Furthermore, Wallander et at have relied extensively upon descriptive pen and paper measures that may not be adequately sensitive to test their model or to tap the issues involved in chronic disease. • Studies need to adopt approaches that define adjustment in ways other than the absence of pathology. Equally they need to take a more longitudinal perspective and rely more upon observational methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The early models of adjustment (for example, Lipowski, 1970; Pless and Pinkerton, 1975) have tended to emphasise the role of coping strategies and the child' s self-concept in attempting to explain the variability in child adjustment to chronic disease. A number of criticisms can be made of these models, not least that that they commonly fail to be supported by research studies. • Wallander et at.'s (1989b) conceptual model arises from the tradition of exploring how individual risk and resilience factors interact to influence child and family adaptation to chronic diseases. Wallander et at's (1989b) formulation represents the most coherent theory to date, and by specifying the relationship between factors, the model is unique in making specific predictions as to which children and families are most at risk of poor coping, as well as the reasons why. • The review of Wallander and colleagues' research indicates that several of the predictions made by their conceptual model have not been substantiated, whilst others have received only tentative support. There is a need to reformulate Wallander et at.'s (1989b) model so that its predictive validity can be strengthened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter examines the role of metaphor in adjustment to chronic illness. According to the author, adjustment to chronic illness is more than the functional adaptation of an ailing body to the demands of a healthy society, and more than the telling of stories by patients about the course of the illness itself. The illness experience is not only the precipitating feature in the person's reconstruction of events, but is also part of the claim that the person makes about his or her standpoint in the world of health. To this end, the author notes that there are two meanings that can be given to the word metaphor when speaking of how sick people reconstrue their lives. First, the way that individuals use figures of speech in how they represent their illness to themselves and to others, and second the way that certain adjustments involve a re-figuration of the subject in his or her dealings with other people. The use of figurative language to capture fleeting experiences, particularly in cases where the medical diagnosis is unclear or the prognosis uncertain, has been seen as having either positive or negative consequences.

The article focuses on an analysis of stratification in an ethnically heterogeneous society in which residential distribution and socioeconomic status are viewed as crucial dimensions of a society's social integration. In the 1961 census, the foreign-born Jewish population was enumerated at 1,198,000 and the Israel-born population at 734,000. Of the foreign-born population, 86% lived in urban areas and 14% in rural areas. The analysis focuses on each of 12 Jewish ethnic immigrant communities whose 1961 population represented 3% or more of the total foreign population. These 12 groups may be classified on two dimensions, on representing a geographical region or continent of origin and the second representing the predominant cultural tradition of the community. In the book, The Absorption of Immigrants, three main interdependent indices of the absorption of immigrants within their new country were identified. Of these three indices, the first two, acculturation and personal adjustment, deal principally with the way in which individuals adapt to their new surroundings. The third index, institutional dispersion, deals with the properties of a group. The latter index was considered to be the most powerful indicator of the extent of immigrant absorption or social integration.

The article presents a collection of letters between the author and her friend, Diana, about the experience of losing a husband. The author shares the difficulties of coping with the loss of her husband, and the almost anesthetizing effect of shock during the first week after the death. She acknowledges the strength and support given by her family and friends, and discusses the more external aspects of grief.

While the important role families play vis-à-vis illness is generally recognized, there are relatively few clinical encounters with entire families reported by social workers in health settings. Some of the possible explanations for this are examined, with a recommendation for the design of interventions based on a family systems perspective. Two areas requiring further investigation are highlighted: the element of uncertainty which confronts families coping with chronic life-threatening illness and the impact of serious illness on children. By conceptualizing new ways to help families adapt, social workers can make a significant contribution clinically and reaffirm their position in this domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forty families of patients who had suffered from their first heart attack were studied during the hospitalization and after discharge. Areas of family functioning examined were maintenance of the emotional health of family members, financial management, household management, and dealing with children and their needs. Impacts of this family crisis varied among these areas as well as over time. Families employed different sets of coping strategies in different areas of their life. Implications of these findings for social work intervention in such crises are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The course and outcome of severe chronic illness are decisively affected by social and emotional variables. The conceptual approach of this article emphasizes an understanding of the individual, the family, and health care personnel as all facing a series of adaptive tasks in relation to the illness. Each of three phases of the illness--the diagnostic, chronic, and end stage--poses special tasks and requires different defenses and coping capacities from the patient, family, and health care personnel. These are discussed as interdependent factors in a holistic framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alzheimer's Disease is a neurological disorder that causes memory and cognitive impairment. The progression of the disease causes distress to the afflicted person and the caregiver. The interactional patterns of family members are severely altered as the disease progresses. An Educational/Support group was formed to assist families in learning more about the disease, community resources, and effective coping strategies. In addition it was an opportunity to share emotional reactions and develop a network with others experiencing a common issue. The findings suggest that awareness of family tasks, pre-planning, time-limited sessions and professional facilitation were important elements in releasing the supportive potential of the group members and increasing their adaptive capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of social work practice within an acute rehabilitation setting for older people. Patients are accepted into or rejected from the Rehabilitation Unit based on his estimated rehabilitation potential. It is the responsibility of social workers to provide the diversity of services required to assist families in crisis. In discharge planning, social workers help patients to cope with hospitalization, cope with illness, move through the healthcare system and return to the community with appropriate supports.

A review of the literature on the psychosocial consequences of abortion reveals that abortion can be a positive experience for the majority of women, but it can be emotionally stressful for a smaller group. The sources of stress are attributed to ambivalence, lack of social support, and inadequate coping skills. A model for post-abortion support groups is proposed which would assist women in clarifying feelings, reduce alienation and isolation, facilitate appropriate mourning, increase self-esteem, and bring closure to the abortion experience. Recent experience with such a group is described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]