Universal Prevention Strategies
These strategies target the general population group that has not been identified on the basis of individual risk. Because universal programs are positive, proactive, and provided independent of risk status, their potential for stigmatizing participants is minimized and they may be more readily accepted and adopted.
1. Seeding:
This involves describing a particular state to the children in order to evoke that state (and, additionally, that once evoked, it can be anchored, linked, directed, intensified, combined with embedded commands, etc). Preconscious processing can influence the ease with which certain ideas are brought to mind, and the manner in which objects and events are perceived and interpreted. Finally, in order for preconscious processing to affect action it is necessary that relevant goal structures be activated in procedural memory.
• Attribution Training: The theory about how people explain things is called Attribution Theory. The concept of attributions can be understood as a variety of theories that are interwoven to create a body of knowledge about people and the way in which they make decisions. Human beings have a strong need to understand and explain what is going on in the world; to answer the question ‘why’? Attribution relates to the placement of a cause to explain the effects of events and experiences. As with all other cognitive activities, the information which affects the causes are not simply from the environment, but also from the person’s own mental contexts and theories. Thus, such attributions are subject to the same types of errors. Predictably, the errors vary when the causes are placed on the effects of events and experiences of someone else and when they are placed on the effects of events and experiences of yourself. Because people must explain the world, it opens up some interesting influence possibilities. If you can affect how the child understands and explains what is going on, you might be able to influence how they behave and therefore, potentially change the outcomes and consequences. Changing personal attributions can occur either through individual self-examination or external manipulation. Internal self-examination can be focused either on the attributions or on the total cognitive set. External manipulation can occur either within the total culture or with a single significant individual. The seeding of balanced and rational antecedent internal attributions can have a positive effect on the individual child’s concepts of personal responsibility. Marshall’s Discipline Without Reward Or Punishment is one way of seeding the culture.
• Affirmative Mantras: The best affirmation mantras are based on a recollection of positive resources and successes in the past [See Anchoring to the Good Times]. Other wise, a general statement of ‘I’m doing the best that I can!’ or “I can do this!’ seem to make the best supportive mantras. When affirmative mantras are effective, children will begin to be able to diminish the voice of their internal critic for longer periods of time, and when it does say something, it will be at a much lower volume.
• Anchors: If someone is in a certain state, you can set up an anchor, that means you can trigger this state by associating it with an external stimulus. Anchors can be a specific hand gesture or a picture (visual), a word, sound or voice tone (auditory), a touch or a movement (kinesthetic), a smell (olfactory) or a taste (gustatory). With anchors you can easily change and control your/someone’s emotional state. When anchoring, you have to follow these conditions:
– Uniqueness of stimulus: The anchor should be something that children don’t do in other situations. So don’t anchor something like clapping the hands (Only if you want to go into a specific state when you are at the theater and have to clap your hands)
– Intensity of experience: You have to be associated into the experience. It should be strong.
– Purity of experience: Your experience should be without contamination.
– Timing of anchor: The experience should be at its peak. You have to wait for the right moment to set up the anchor.
– Accuracy of replication of anchor: Different kinds of touches are different anchors. You have to do the same thing when you set up and fire off the anchor.
• Anchoring to the Good Times: Facing psychological pain is a skill. If you know how pain works and how to cope with it, the actual encounters will be less overwhelming. At these times, all you want to do is escape. When you find yourself feeling this way, it can help to remind yourself that you have endured this feeling before and it will eventually pass. An anchor is a stimulus that evokes feelings from specific events in the past. For instance, if you think of your grandmother’s love and protection whenever you eat freshly made oatmeal cookies, then oatmeal cookies are an anchor for you. The cookies are the stimulus and the feelings of love and safety are your consistent response. Of course, many of your anchors are involuntary, but you can help children form voluntary ones to use to their advantage by giving the following directions.
– have the children sit in a comfortable position in a place where they won’t be disturbed. Have them close their eyes and relax, breathing deeply.
– have them go back in time, picturing a moment when s/he felt successful and confident.
– have the children notice everything about the time: sights, sounds, tastes, smells and feelings. See how you looked, how others looked. Hear the confidence in your voice; hear the praise from others. “Let yourself feel the confidence and praise from others. Let yourself feel the confidence and self acceptance”.
– “When your images are clear enough to make you feel confident, touch your left wrist with your right hand. Touch it firmly, in a particular spot that you can easily remember. You are anchoring the feelings to this touch on the wrist, and you will what to exactly duplicate that touch later on.”
Have the children repeat this sequence with four other memories or fantasy scenes that are connected to feelings of worth and self-confidence. Now each child can combat negative feelings and images with a touch that anchors him or her to some very fine moments in his/her life.
2. Assertive Discipline:
This is a systematic behavior management protocol designed by Lee Canter to put elementary and secondary classroom teachers in charge of their classes. Combining tenets from assertiveness training and behavior modification, Canter (1979) believes that he has identified four discipline competencies that all teachers need to master to handle problem behaviors successfully. The competencies include 1) identifying appropriate behaviors that form the basis for classroom rules, 2) systematically setting limits for inappropriate behavior, 3) consistently reinforcing appropriate behavior, and 4) working cooperatively with parents and principals. In this cookbook approach to discipline the steps for acquiring these competencies are detailed, even to the extent of specifying the number of rules and the number of negative consequences.
• In this approach, it is recommended that the school district identify basic classroom rules, limit setting and reinforcement procedures and allow changes by individual teachers only after review.
• The cooperation with parents should be formatted into specific patterns and include the potential for social learning family interventions.
3. Life Space Crisis Intervention:
This is a process that can be used in almost any situation or location because it requires no props or equipment, only an understanding adult, skilled in verbal strategies that are essential requirements for helping roles. Every crisis requires talk! An adult’s skills in using verbal strategies will directly influence both the immediate solution to a crisis and the long term effect of the crisis on a student. Crisis handled well can lead to positive, long lasting changes; crisis handled ineptly will contribute to a devastating cycle of alienation, hostility and aggression. The six steps of LSCI can be divided into Diagnostic Stages
1) Drain Off – staff de-escalation and focusing skills to drain off the child’s intense feelings while controlling one’s counter aggressive reactions and focusing on the crisis;
2) Timeline – staff relationship skills to obtain and validate the child’s perception of the crisis;
3) Central Issue – staff diagnosis skills to determine if the crisis represents one of six patters of self-defeating behavior; and
Reclaiming Stages:
4) Insight – staff clinical skills to pursue the child’s specific pattern of self defeating behavior for personal insight and accountability;
5) New Skills – staff empowering skills to teach the child new social skills to overcome his/her pattern of self defeating behavior; and
6) Transfer of Learning – staff consultation and contracting skills to help the child reenter the social arena and to reinforce and generalize new social skills.
4. Psychological First Aid:
This is a crisis intervention technique aimed at assisting a person to move past an unsettling event so that the probability of debilitating effects [e.g., emotional scars, physical harm] is minimized and the probability of growth [e.g., new skills, new outlook on life, more options] is maximized. Reorganization after crisis may be towards growth or psychological impairment, depending upon a host of variables in each case – not the least of which is the kind of help available during the critical time. The question of whether teachers, aides, friends and other natural support people will be able to mobilize themselves to provide effective help is a critical one. Psychological first aid provides a five step [1) empathetic listening, 2) question about immediate past, present and immediate future, 3) explore possibilities, 4) assist in taking the next step, and 5) follow up] with which a layperson can help shape a crisis into an opportunity. All district staff and many students can be trained to provide this assistance to the person in crisis.
5. Assertiveness Training: The technique emphasizes the building of assertiveness skills, using model presentation, rehearsal, positive feedback, prompting, covert modeling, and homework assignments. Basic assumptions regarding one’s assertive rights are made explicit, traditional assumptions and fears that inhibit assertive behavior are challenged, and the pros and cons of assertive and nonassertive behavior are explored. The technique can be provided in all classrooms.
6. Emotional Literacy
An effective social – emotional – cognitive program is important because children frequently have difficulties with self-control, self-affirmation, understanding of emotions and social problem solving. The Promoting alternative THinking Strategies [PATHS] Curriculum provides school personnel with a systematic developmental procedure for enhancing social competence in children. Experience has shown that PATHS has demonstrated its effectiveness as a prevention program. It has been implemented in entire schools of elementary aged children [Kindergarten through Grade 6]. It is structured as a generic model for the elementary school years and not written by specific grade levels, which allows for multiple methods of use.
7. Interpersonal Cognitive Problem Solving
Although very different from other popular methods of child management, the Interpersonal Cognitive Problem Solving [ICPS] approach, now called I Can Problem Solve, [also ICPS], developed by Myrna Shure continues the movement toward positive childrearing. As Shure states “In 1965 Haim Ginott sparked interest in positive parenting by suggesting in his book, Between Parent and Child, that instead of telling a child what not to do [“Don’t run!”], parent should emphasize the positive by telling them what to do [“Walk!”]. Then, in 1970, Thomas Gordon wrote the acclaimed book Parent Effectiveness Training [PET], which opened the door to the idea that active listening and using ‘I’ messages [“I feel angry when your room is messy”] instead of ‘you’ messages [“You are too messy”] are learned parenting skills.” These two landmark books paved the way for Shure’s book Raising a Thinking Child to take parents a step further. “ICPS moves from a primary focus on skills of the parent to focus on skills of the child as well. The thinking child does not have to be told how people feel or what to do; the thinking child can appreciate how people feel, decide what to do, and evaluate whether the idea is, or is not, a good one.” The historical assertion that relief of emotional tension can help one think straight is reversed – the ability to think straight can help relieve emotional tension. Children learn to:
• think about what to do when they face a problem with another person;
• think about different ways to solve the same problem;
• think about the consequences of what they do; and
• realize that other people have feelings and think about their own feelings too.
ICPS has been taught to children as young a four years of age and should be taught to every child in the district before the age of eight years.
8. Problem Management & Decision Analysis: A five-step problem-solving strategy for generating novel solutions to any kind of problem, combined with a decision analysis of ‘MUSTS’ and ‘WANTS’. A convenient acronym is SOLVE, which stands for:
State the problem.
Outline your goals.
List your alternatives.
View the consequences.
Evaluate your results.
9. Relaxation Training
Relaxation training refers to the regular practice of one or more of a group of specific relaxation exercises. These exercises most often involve a combination of deep breathing, muscle relaxation, and visualization techniques which have been proven to release the muscular tension that the body stores during times of stress.
During relaxation training sessions the children will discover that racing thoughts will start to slow, and that feelings of fear and anxiety will ease considerably. In fact, when the body is completely relaxed, it’s impossible to feel fear or anxiety. In 1975, Herbert Benson studied how the body changes when a person is deeply relaxed. During the state that Benson termed the “relaxation response”, he observed that the heart rate, breath rate, blood pressure, skeletal muscle tension, metabolic rate, oxygen consumption, and skin electrical conductivity all decreased. On the other hand, alpha brain wave frequency—associated with a state of calm well being—increased. Every one of these physical conditions is exactly opposite to reactions that anxiety and fear produce in the body. Children can be taught these techniques and practice them in class in specific parts of the day.
10. Social Skill Training:
This is a direct approach to improving a person’s interpersonal relationships. Critical elements in their approach are:
• definition of the problem or target behavior for improvement
• assessment of the extent to which the problem or behavior occurs, and
• development and implementation of systematic intervention plan.
Goals associated with general affective growth, such as enhancement of self concept or the development of a personal set of values, are NOT a primary focus. Instead, friendship skills, such as greeting, asking for and returning information, inviting participation in activities and leave taking are taught. Other programs target social maintenance skills [such as giving positive attention, helping or cooperating], or conflict resolution skills [such as nonaggressive, compromising or persuasive behaviors]. Any behaviors believed to contribute to successful interpersonal functioning may be the focus.
Selective Prevention interventions
These interventions target individuals or a subgroups (based on biological or social risk factors) whose risk of developing psychological disorders are significantly higher than average. Examples might include children from single parent homes, children with exceptionalities, or children who are not participating with peers. These are not children who have been identified as having social problems in living, but rather are groups who have the potential for future problems because of heightened susceptibility.