The following was published recently in the Eugene Register Guard.
The severe economic downturn that Oregon is experiencing will affect the psychological wellbeing of many Oregon families. These effects are just as real as the job loss and foreclosures that will result from the downturn. Their impact will be detrimental both to the economically distressed families and to their communities.
Job loss and economic difficulties have well established effects on marital relations and parenting. Oregonians who lose a job will naturally worry and feel sad and anxious. Indeed, these losses change brain chemistry and the immune system for the worse. Many may feel shame and a sense of loss of status. Husbands and wives will become more irritable and conflict will rise. For many families, the result will be divorce, which will further worsen families’ economic wellbeing and their children’s wellbeing. Children of divorce have more conduct problems, psychological difficulties, and academic failure. Many continue to have problems as adults.
Even if parents remain together, economic hardship will affect the quality of their parenting. Many parents will spend less time with their children, get into more conflict, and do a poorer job of monitoring and guiding them. As a result, more Oregon children will commit crimes and get into problems with substance abuse.
Thus, there are strong practical reasons to be sure that Oregon and the nation provide as much economic support to families as possible. Unemployment benefits have already been extended. Help in preventing foreclosures will also be important. Many Oregonians have never collected their stimulus checks from last summers’ fiscal stimulus. Governments should take steps to find these people and get them the money. Similarly, governments should be more vigorous in making sure that families take advantage of the Earned Income Tax Credit. Charitable giving also becomes more important, but unfortunately contributions to local United Ways are down.
But there are also things that Oregonians can do that don’t cost money. And, although intangible, the benefits of these things are just as real as the impact of economic hardship on families’ wellbeing. Thanks to decades of research, we now know that social support can prevent many of the most difficult consequences of economic hardship.
You can provide social support simply by listening and showing that you care—even if you can’t help economically. People who have supportive friends and family members are more resilient in the face of all kinds of difficulties, including economic hardship. They are less prone to depression and have less marital conflict. People with supportive friends and neighbors do more to find another job and are more likely to find a job. There is even evidence that support from others makes people less susceptible to colds!
As individuals and as a community Oregonians can communicate their support, concern, and caring to those who are having a hard time. You can give money and food to help others and you can let your friends and neighbors know that you are doing it so that we strengthen the social bonds among us and motivate others to get involved.
But even if you cannot afford to give material goods, you can let those who are having a hard time know that you want them to get through this difficult time. You may also be able to help them connect with others who can help them find jobs, material assistance, and social support. For children, you can write them notes of praise about their positive actions. This will reduce the effects of stress and trauma. And you can make special effort to include such children in your family outings.
In reading these suggestions, you may notice a feeling of resistance. It is a natural human tendency to avoid people who are having troubles. Certainly, you won’t want to intrude. But most people will benefit from being encouraged to talk about their difficulties to a sympathetic listener. You don’t have to be able to solve their problems. In fact most people find that unasked-for advice unhelpful. Just letting them know that you hear them and you care will make a difference.
Our state and local leaders can play an important role in encouraging every Oregonian to look for ways to help their friends and family; to reach out to others and to make their caring about every Oregonian’s wellbeing visible to everyone around them.
This is a difficult time for Oregon and the nation. But it is also an opportunity. By looking for ways to help others through this time, we can strengthen the bonds among us, reduce the pain of those who are hardest hit, and prevent much anxiety, depression, marital conflict, delinquency, and even sickness. In doing so, we could emerge as a state more firmly committed to everyone’s wellbeing and better able to make this value a reality.
Tags: Nurturing Environments
Some readers may doubt these ideas, as sort of woolly-headed thinking that could not make any real, measureable difference. It is useful to point out objective evidence of the power of nurturance in the midst of adversity. I’d like to point out some powerful research results that illuminate the practicality of what you are recommending.
In the dark days of the rise of youth violence in the 1990s in America, I received funds to conduct the largest youth violence prevention study in the US at the time (Embry, Flannery et al. 1996). In one of the roughest corridors in Tucson with a large proportion of poor white, Hispanic and Native American kids, we instituted a school-wide approach of nurturing positive, peaceful behavior by student-to-student written praise notes, adult-to-adult positive notes, and adult-to-child positive notes. Within in a year, the schools experienced significantly fewer real violent events as well as improved health, measured by the numbers of visits to the nurse in the schools (Krug, Brener et al. 1997). Normally, the school nurse had standing room only before, but not later. For example, one school saw a fall of over 1,000 nurses’ office visits in a year.
Over the length of the study, we were able to show that teachers and students reported much less aggression, violence, ADHD and bullying using standardized instruments (Flannery, Vazsonyi et al. 2003), and it had the largest impact on the kids who had previous contact with the police (Vazsonyi, Belliston et al. 2004). The nurturing did not just make the bad go down; the nurturing made a host of good things happen, again measured by standard measures—which happen to be invented by one of Eugene’s more illustrious behavioral scientists, Hill Walker. What was some of the good that was increased?
• Some 5,000 students now did their homework more often, did their work more of their class assignments and all the other things that require diligence and perseverance to succeed over adversity in the world.
• The same 5,000 students also developed patterns of behavior that create good friendships, so that they were less likely to be hanging out with kids who got into trouble a lot. Again, pick good friends and having good friendship skills are key for resiliency in the face of adversity.
In other sites, these same strategies increased achievement, reduced costly school and neighborhood vandalism, and decreased the rapid turnover of students AND staff in schools.
These big changes were achieved by very small things, which you and I have called evidence-based kernels in a recent paper (Embry and Biglan 2008). Little pads and sheets of paper, praising positive behavior on a daily basis nurtured a better future. Nurturing is not a noun; it is an active daily mindfulness to grow the world we would wish to live in rather than the world we inherited.
Dennis Embry
References Cited
Embry, D. D. and A. Biglan (2008). "Evidence-Based Kernels: Fundamental Units of Behavioral Influence." Clinical Child & Family Psychology Review 11(3): 75-113.
This paper describes evidence-based kernels, fundamental units of behavioral influence that appear to underlie effective prevention and treatment for children, adults, and families. A kernel is a behavior–influence procedure shown through experimental analysis to affect a specific behavior and that is indivisible in the sense that removing any of its components would render it inert. Existing evidence shows that a variety of kernels can influence behavior in context, and some evidence suggests that frequent use or sufficient use of some kernels may produce longer lasting behavioral shifts. The analysis of kernels could contribute to an empirically based theory of behavioral influence, augment existing prevention or treatment efforts, facilitate the dissemination of effective prevention and treatment practices, clarify the active ingredients in existing interventions, and contribute to efficiently developing interventions that are more effective. Kernels involve one or more of the following mechanisms of behavior influence: reinforcement, altering antecedents, changing verbal relational responding, or changing physiological states directly. The paper describes 52 of these kernels, and details practical, theoretical, and research implications, including calling for a national database of kernels that influence human behavior.
Embry, D. D., D. J. Flannery, et al. (1996). "PeaceBuilders: A theoretically driven, school-based model for early violence prevention." American Journal of Preventive Medicine 12(5, Suppl): 91.
A coalition of the Pima County Community Services Department, University of Arizona, and Heartsprings, Inc. are conducting a formal evaluation of PeaceBuilders®, a school wide violence-prevention program for elementary schools. PeaceBuilders activities are built into the school environment and the daily interactions among students, teachers, and administrative staff, all of whom are taught a common language and provided models of positive behavior, environmental cues to signal such behavior, opportunities to rehearse positive behavior, and rewards for practicing it. Four schools were randoly assigned to begin Peacebuilders in Year 1. The remaining 4 school begin in Year 2. Outcome assessments include student self-reports, standardized teacher reports, playground observations, and school and law enforcement records. Process assessments include school observations and surveys of teacher practices and satisfaction. Surveys were completed by 2,736 children (K-5th grade). Among Ss in grades 3-5, during the past week 15% had been sent to the office for disciplinary problems, 13% tried to start a fight, 27% hit someone, and 12% reported being threatened with a gun or knife. These findings show that violent behaviors and experiences are common among the studied children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
Flannery, D. J., A. T. Vazsonyi, et al. (2003). "Initial behavior outcomes for the PeaceBuilders universal school-based violence prevention program." Developmental Psychology 39(2): 292-308.
PeaceBuilders is a universal, elementary-school-based violence prevention program that attempts to alter the climate of a school by teaching students and staff simple rules and activities aimed at improving child social competence and reducing aggressive behavior. Eight matched schools (N > 4,000 students in Grades K-5) were randomly assigned to either immediate postbaseline intervention (PBI) or to a delayed intervention 1 year later (PBD). Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze results from assessments in the fall and spring of 2 consecutive school years. In Year 1, significant gains in teacher-reported social competence for students in Grades K-2, in child self-reported peace-building behavior in Grades K-5, and reductions in aggressive behavior in Grades 3-5 were found for PBI but not PBD schools. Differential effects in Year 1 were also observed for aggression and prosocial behavior. Most effects were maintained in Year 2 for PBI schools, including increases in child prosocial behavior in Grades K-2. Implications for early universal school-based prevention and challenges related to evaluating large-scale prevention trials are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
Krug, E. G., N. D. Brener, et al. (1997). "The impact of an elementary school-based violence prevention program on visits to the school nurse." American Journal of Preventive Medicine 13(6): 459-63.
INTRODUCTION: In Tucson, Arizona, an elementary school-based violence prevention program (PeaceBuilders) was implemented during the 1994-1995 school year. Anecdotal evidence from school nurses suggested that children were visiting the nurse less often following the implementation of the program. We examined nurses' logs to assess whether the program had an impact on visits to the school nurse. METHODS: For
the school years 1993-1994 and 1994-1995, the weekly number of nurse visits for all reasons, all injuries, and injuries caused by fights in each of the four PeaceBuilders schools were compared with those for three control schools. As part of a planned evaluation, schools had been matched on demographic factors and randomly assigned as intervention or control schools. RESULTS: Between 1993-1994 and 1994-1995, the rate of visits/1,000 student days decreased 12.6% in the intervention schools while remaining unchanged in the comparison schools. The same trend was detected for injury-related visits. Rates of fighting-related injuries changed little in the intervention schools but increased 56.0% in the control schools. An analysis of covariance confirmed that injuries and visits to nurses decreased in intervention schools relative to control schools. CONCLUSIONS: These data indicate that in the intervention schools, injuries and visits to the school nurse decreased over the two-year period and that the intervention may have contributed to this change. They also suggest that visits to the school nurses' office may be a useful tool to evaluate some types of elementary school-based violence prevention programs.
Vazsonyi, A. T., L. M. Belliston, et al. (2004). "Evaluation of a School-Based, Universal Violence Prevention Program: Low-, Medium-, and High-Risk Children." Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 2(2): 185-206.
largescale,universa lviolence prevention program, on male and female youth identi-fied a slow,medium,orhighriskforfutureviolence.Itincludedeighturbanschoolsran-domlyassignedtointensiveinterventionandwait-listcontrolconditions.ThecurrentsampleincludedN=2,380predominantlyminoritychildreninkindergartenthroughfifthgrade.Resultsindicateddifferentialeffectivenessoftheintervention,bylevelofrisk;high-riskchildrenreportedmoredecreasesinaggressionandmoreincreasesinsocialcompetenceincomparisontochildrenatmediumandlowlevelsofrisk.Findingsaddtoagrowingnumberofpromisingscience-basedpreventioneffortsthatseektoreduceaggressionandincreasesocialcompetence;theyprovideencouragingevidencethatrelativelylow-cost,schoolwideeffortshavethep
Hard science and soft little things like praise notes equal a saner planet. Thank you, Dennis.
It does seem hard for us to understand that science is not just something that occurs in a test tube or a positron emitter. Science is a way of figuring out what works to improve a situation–a classroom or a typhoid epidemic–and then how to do it over and over again with similar results. Perhaps a world that went wild over Dolly, the cloned sheep, can celebrate this other wooly-headedness of science. Hekate