Biomedical subjects

L R Barnhill

Publications and source records attributed to L R Barnhill.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1980

Clinical assessment of intrafamilial violence.

A common problem in clinical practice with cases of intrafamilial violence is incomplete assessments and, therefore, treatment interventions based on incomplete data. The problem is not surprising since the literature in the field is complex, multidisciplinary, unintegrated, and rarely comprehensive. In this article the author integrates theory and research on violence in families into five areas that need to be evaluated for a complete clinical assessment. Those five areas include physiological-medical factors, individual psychological factors, current interpersonal-familial factors, cultural and family-background factors, and level of life stress and available resources. Those factors must also be considered when a method of intervention is selected. In the article following this one, the author outlines stages of intervention in cases of intrafamilial violence.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1980

Basic interventions for violence in families.

Because there are few training programs for dealing with violence in families, clinicians often do not understand the phenomenon and have few coping strategies. As a companion piece to the preceding article, the author describes five stages of intervention in cases of intrafamilial violence. They include crisis management, an initial assessment and the making of a contract to avoid further violence, a more complete evaluation, brief treatment, and longer-term treatment. In most cases the stages are sequential, although clients may regress to the first or second stage during the course of treatment. Most clients drop out immediately after some symptom remission, usually following brief treatment. Long-term treatment occurs with only a minority of the cases.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1978

Fixation and regression in the family life cycle.

In spite of the obvious fact that families differ significantly depending upon their current stage of the life cycle, most of the family therapy literature focuses on intervening in ongoing family interaction without specific attention to the dimension of family development. Family sociologists, on the other hand, while not dealing with modifying family functioning, have provided more detailed tools with which to understand variations in family functioning based on stages of family development. Our work with families in acute distress suggests the need to increase the specificity with which our assessments and interventions are tailored, by incorporating the family developmental view. This paper explores the utility of the family developmental view using the concepts of fixation and regression in the family life cycle. These concepts were found to be relatively refined and quite pragmatic assessment devices that assist therapists in specifying developmental issues of the family. Case examples of actual families in crisis are presented in order to demonstrate the utility of these conceptual tools.

Adaptation, Psychological↗