23 Transformational Ideas

A person always makes decisions that at the time they consider to be in their best interest. Thus, when people have obvious problems in living, it should be apparent that their ‘inner logic’ is flawed. To help identify a flawed inner logic, it is necessary to help the individual articulate his/her own goals, personal preferences and desires and to seek to understand the barriers to achievement.

24 Comprehensive Understanding

This article is concerned with addressing the differences between children with developmental difficulties who manifest behavior problems and those whose behavior IS the disability. Since the traditional Functional Behavioral Assessment has been developed and oriented towards the former group and the ‘mental health’ assessments have little meaning other than establishing a diagnosis, we offer here some suggestions as to how to improve the assessment methodology.

25 Measuring Social Competence Through Sociometry

Personal support systems are a well-known concern for people suffering from what is commonly known as ‘chronic mental illness’. It has been reported that emotional healthy individuals live in functional psychosocial kinship systems of between twenty and twenty-five persons with whom they are mutually interdependent for affective and instrumental support. Later study found that people with thought disorders had networks averaging thirteen in size. If social competence is a cause, not an effect – we will want to address the issue at an early stage in child development. This article discusses one way to accomplish that goal.

27 Schema

As an analogy, a schema could be considered to act as a ‘strange attractor’ for mental processing. A strange attractor is a term used in chaos theory to indicate how seemingly chaotic processes seek order. An analogy of a ‘strange attractor’ might be easily seen in a stream of water. As the water flows, each molecule of water is independent and random in its behavior.