Social Work Commons^™

Reflections On The Bgj Anti-Racism Seminar, Michelle Billies

Publications and Research

In this Letter to the Editor, Billies (2021) responds to critical and supportive opinion pieces in the British Gestalt Journal (BGJ) following their plenary presentation at BGJ’s 2018 annual seminar (see Asherson Bartram, 2019; O’Malley, 2019). As author of the companion article "How/ Can Gestalt Therapy Promote Liberation from Anti-Black Racism?” (Billies, 2021), Billies, who identifies as white, discusses the intent at the seminar to support white people to increase accountability and reduce harm in dialogue with people of color, while supporting the work and needs of people of color on their terms from a Gestalt perspective. Describing a fishbowl …

How/Can Gestalt Therapy Promote Liberation From Anti-Black Racism?, Michelle Billies

Publications and Research

Anti-Black racism is an interruption of contact that often takes place out of awareness, and is continuously enacted through innumerable fixed gestalts at every level of human experience. Gestalt therapy as a movement does not leverage its great potential for undoing fixed gestalts of anti-Black racism, or supporting fluid gestalts of racial liberation; this article explores GT theories and practices that do so. I first discuss how concepts of the field, ground, awareness, consciousness, and contact can be informed by ideas such as intersectionality and double consciousness from Black liberation history as well as theorists such as Crenshaw, DuBois, Fanon, …

Preliminary Efficacy Of Motivational Interviewing On Problem Drinkers 55 And Older Compared To Younger Counterparts, Alexis Kuerbis, Sijing Shao, Nehal Vadhan, Jon Morgenstern

Publications and Research

Background: Older adults who drink problematically are the largest group of substance users among those 55 and older. This group often chooses moderation as a goal instead of abstinence, and motivation and self-efficacy are found to have less of an impact on drinking compared to younger adults. No study has examined age effects (specifically 55 and older vs. younger counterparts) on motivational interviewing (MI) compared to brief advice with a sample that includes individuals over 65. Objective: To explore the moderating impact of age on heavy drinkers’ (aged M=50.7 years SD=11.6, range 23-73) response to MI. Methods: Data …

Poetic Representation Of Immigrant Bengali Women From Queens, New York: A Qualitative Exploration Of Narrative In Relation To Physical And Cultural Migration, Tabashshum J. Islam

Publications and Research

Poetic Representation of Immigrant Bengali Women from Queens, New York: A Qualitative Exploration of Narrative in Relation to Physical and Cultural Migration is a qualitative poetic inquiry and collaborative creative writing project. Five participants were interviewed and invited to engage in a collaborative writing process with the themes of immigration, cultural negotiation, and oral family history. All participants identified as college-educated Bengali women with a connection to Queens, New York, as well as being an immigrant or relative of an immigrant in the United States. From transcriptions of one-on-one interviews and personal notes, research-poetry was created to center on the …

A Replication Of Failure, Not A Failure To Replicate, Gary Holden, Kathleen Barker, Sofie Kuppens, Gary Rosenberg, Jonathan`

Publications and Research

Purpose: The increasing role of systematic reviews in knowledge production demands greater rigor in the literature search process. The performance of the Social Work Abstracts (SWA) database has been examined multiple times over the past three decades. The current study is a replication within this line of research.

Method: Issue level coverage was examined for the same 33 SWA core journals and the same time period as our 2009 study.

Results: The mean percentage of issues missing in the current study was 20%. The mean percentage of issues missing in the current study was significantly greater than …

Law Enforcement And The Mentally Ill: Thirty Years Of Police Literature, Jennifer Noe

Publications and Research

This study applies the methodology of content analysis to 30 years of law-enforcement literature to determine whether online access to scholarly research in social work and mental health made a difference in police policy toward the mentally ill. Keywords from the controlled vocabulary of these fields were found in the body of content analyzed prior to easily accessible online resources in 1997 , yet the number of articles on the subject grew from approximately one per year prior to 1998 to nearly five per year by 2011. The imprint of these two fields from outside of law enforcement was discernible …

A Few Thoughts On Evidence In Social Work, Gary Holden, Ellen Tuchman, Kathleen Barker, Gary Rosenberg, May, Sofie Kuppens, Katie Watson

Publications and Research

Social work practitioners must act every working day in the face of uncertainty. This uncertainty arises in part because knowledge is often difficult to locate or sometimes lacking regarding: the systems context the population being served; the particular client system; the set of problems the client system is experiencing; as well as the various interventions that could be selected. It seems reasonable to explore ways to reduce the experience of uncertainty, and narrow, if not eliminate, the knowledge gaps that arise in such situations. The generic idea of evidence based practice has been advanced for some time as an approach …

Disabled Women: Sexism Without The Pedestal, Michelle Fine, Adrienne Asch

Publications and Research

The position of the disabled woman in current U.S. society deserves political, theoretical and empirical attention. In this paper we have delineated the economic, social and psychological constraints which place her at a distinct disadvantage, relative to disabled men and nondisabled women. We evaluate the ways in which having a disability is viewed as an impediment to traditional or nontraditional sex role development. The construct rolelessness is introduced, defined and examined. We conclude with reconmiendations for needed research and policy.