Assignment 5: Defining and Visualizing Concepts

1. List two concepts highly relevant to your sociological focus. Briefly state why you would like to learn more about them; especially why you would like to build multimedia around them.

1)      One of the concepts I would like to focus on is in the Marriage, Family, Couples, and Individual Counseling. In my opinion, building multimedia around these topics will help people understand the body movements and facial expressions of the individuals. The audience might see themselves in the roles of the characters and at the same time even acting in the exact same way.

 

2)      The second concept I would like to focus on would be in the field of treatment of a family member with schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder. With multimedia I would focus this into family therapy to help the other members of the family understand their relative's disorder and adjust to the psychological changes that may be occurring in that person's life.

2. Provide a brief description relative to how each concept has been defined and measured (i.e., operationalized) in the academic literature (books and/or journal articles). In so doing, consult at least two references per concept (be sure to provide citations for references (follow citation style of American Sociological Review).

 

1)      Marriage, Family, Couples, and Individual Counseling: The area has been defined and measured in many ways. The article I read talks about how in today's world councilor's deal with a variety of couple and family systems. Step-families, gay families, single-parent families and even childless families; the councilor's challenge is to decided how to "work with couple and family systems that may need premarital counseling, marital therapy, divorce counseling, family therapy, or individual counseling" (Smith, Carlson, Stevens-Smith and Dennison, 1995). The divorce rate in the United States is so high, even people divorcing in their second and third marriage. Many children are in single-parent homes, many are in step-families and let's not forget the abused women that still live with the men that threaten and beat them. "Changes such as those cited above are some of the reasons for the increased attention given to marriage and family counseling and the demand for competent training in this field" (Smith, Carlson, Stevens-Smith and Dennison, 1995).

In other studies, councilors help couples cope with victims of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). Many of these victims are women, but in some cases there are some men. In fact 20% to 40% of women and 5% to 15% in the U.S. are victims of CSA. These studies are conducted because these couples have problems when it comes to intimacy fear being the leading cause. "Emotional and psychological problems in adulthood are also common to those who have a history of CSA" (Hunt-Amos, Bischoff and Pretorius, 2004).

2)      Schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder in family members: according to this article the incorporation of family group therapy into therapeutic interventions for people with schizophrenia is suggested to be an integral component in enhancing positive treatment outcomes and reducing associated family burden. In this study the sessions are concentrated in a way that each week one family presents a current difficulty to the group and the group collectively focuses on formulating strategies to overcome or minimize the difficulty. The measures of this study is that the family of focus is provided with "action plans and assigned set homework to assist in learning how to apply strategies and achieve goals" (Deane, Mercer, Lambert and Pickard, 2012). According to the study, each family has equal opportunity to present their individual difficulties throughout the course of the therapy.

Schizophrenia is a major mental illness that impairs the functioning of thoughts, affects personality, and impacts almost every aspect of life. This concept has been defined and measured in a way that people with schizophrenia experience disturbances in thought, perception, cognition, and psychosocial functioning (Bardwell & Taylor 2009; Gournay 2009). "In caring for those with schizophrenia, psychiatric nurses play important roles in helping them in their recovery and their ability to live a normal life within their families" (Kertchok, Yunibhand, and Chaiyawat, 2011). Therefore, the caring for patients and the help they receive helps them live a normal life with their families and that is where it is an  important goal of psychiatric nurses"(Kertchok, Yunibhand, and Chaiyawat, 2011).

 

Works Cited

 

Bardwell, M. & Taylor, R. (2009). Schizophrenia disorders. In: R. Elder, K. Evans & D. Nizette (Eds). Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing. (pp. 248–266). Chatwood: Elsevier Australia.

 

Deane, F. R., Mercer, J., Talyarkhan, A., Lambert, G., & Pickard, J. (2012). Group Cohesion and Homework Adherence in Multi-Family Group Therapy for Schizophrenia. Australian & New Zealand Journal Of Family Therapy, 33(2), 128-141. doi:10.1017/aft.2012.15

 

Hunt-Amos, S., Bischoff, R. J., & Pretorius, R. (2004). The Husband's Experience of His Wife's Childhood Sexual Abuse: An Exploratory Study and Implications for Couple Therapy. Journal Of Couple & Relationship Therapy, 3(4), 1-21.

 

Kertchok, R., Yunibhand, J., & Chaiyawat, W. (2011). Creating a new whole: Helping families of people with schizophrenia. International Journal Of Mental Health Nursing, 20(1), 38-46. doi:10.1111/j.1447-0349.2010.00706.x

 

Smith, R. L., Carlson, J., Stevens-Smith, P., & Dennison, M. (1995). Marriage and Family Counseling. Journal Of Counseling & Development, 74(2), 154-157.

 

 

3. For each concept, briefly describe how you might approach it via multimedia representation.

 

1)      Marriage, Family, Couples, and Individual Counseling: Approaching this concept in multimedia representation might come hard to do. Interviews and session are to be kept confidential, unless written permission to do so. If I was to conduct a multimedia presentation, I would do a bogus session, but concentrating on actual events. Humor might give the audience a peace of mind that everything is going to be ok and send out a positive message. 

 

2)       Schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder in family members: Being that my two fields of interest are therapeutic, it would be unethical to convert the sessions and interviews into multimedia representation. On the other hand, making the same bogus session and making sense of the true nature of these problems, the audience will get a positive message and see that therapy helps in many ways. For example, the show "United States of Tara" was an awesome demonstration of this concept. It showed firsthand how a person with MPD acts and how the family copes with her problems. It also shows the therapy the married couple attends and how the study is conducted.

 

4. Relative to A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods, determine the following for each of your concepts:

a. Would “structure” or “process” visualization work best?

·        Structure will work best

 

b. Which of the six broad types might be most applicable?

·        Data, Information and Concept will work for both my sociological focus. 

 

c. Within that broad type, which particular visualization device might be most appropriate?

·        Communication Diagram

 

d. Run each concept through Wordnik, Visuwords, Lexipedia, and Ngram Viewer. Did you discover anything noteworthy?

·        Yes I did. It has different meanings and it can be looked at in many different ways. Visuwords and Lexipedia are my favorite ones. Lexipedia gives you more like a thesaurus and you can use those terms to help you find other research in that field.