Psychological traumas of war: training school counselors as home-front responders.

PURPOSE: With nearly 3 million U.S. troops having deployed for Operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, and New Dawn (OEF/OIF/OND) since the conflicts began, an estimated 2 million children have been separated from a parent. This manuscript describes a collaborative project between a state's Veterans Healthcare System, a branch of the American Counseling Association, and a medical university on the OEF/OIF/OND deployment experience. METHODS: The project sought to educate school counselors about experiences of OEF/OIF/OND families and learn from their observations as home-front responders in public schools during a 2-day summer workshop. This manuscript describes the framework of the workshop, pre/post evaluation results, and implications for counselors, educators, and supervisors. FINDINGS: School counselors identified childcare and parenting, emotions and behaviors, finances, and barriers to counseling services as challenges for military children and families. Following the workshop, school counselors reported a greater knowledge concerning understanding aspects of outreach for schools and communities in working with veterans and their families. They also reported a better understanding of the impact of war on military families and knowledge of local and state resources for this population. Specifically, attendees felt they could better identify issues and needs of OEF/OIF/OND families with young children, recommend parenting skills to assist these families, and recognize their psychiatric or medical issues. CONCLUSION: In addressing the mental health disparities of military children experiencing combat-related parental separation, it is important to identify protective environments that could provide prevention interventions for this population. Collaboration between the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and Department of Education could help support military families and a society facing continued conflicts abroad.

Voucher-based incentives for cigarette smoking reduction in a women's residential treatment program.

Participants were women (N = 16) living with their children in a residential substance abuse treatment facility. In this within-subjects repeated measures study, a 1-week baseline was followed by a 4-week intervention and a 2-week follow-up (same as the baseline). The intervention consisted of exposure to an educational video and a smoking cessation workbook, brief individual support meetings, and an escalating schedule of voucher-based reinforcement of abstinence. Throughout the study, three daily breath samples (8 a.m., noon, and 4 p.m.) were collected Monday through Friday to determine carbon monoxide (CO) concentration. In addition, urine cotinine (COT) was assessed on Monday mornings to monitor weekend tobacco use. Participants received vouchers of escalating value for CO-negative breath and COT-negative urine samples. Positive samples reset the voucher value. Significantly more negative tests were submitted during the intervention than during baseline and follow-up. The intensive behavioral intervention evaluated in this study produced a substantial reduction in cigarette smoking, and 25% of participants remained abstinent 2 weeks after the intervention was suspended. Nevertheless, the percentage of CO-negative samples submitted during the follow-up returned to baseline levels. While retaining many real-world characteristics, residential treatment facilities provide important opportunities for smoking cessation treatment and research.