COU 680 Week Eight Case Study: Nora Nora is a 41-year-old African American single mother of two young boys, ages 8 and 10. She and her sons recently evacuated from their home ahead of a major hurricane. They stayed with relatives for two weeks until they were able to return to their home safely. When they arrived home, they found their house uninhabitable—a tree had fallen on the house, which led to significant flooding and structural damage. They will need to live elsewhere until the home can be repaired. While they have made short- term arrangements to go back to her family’s house, Nora is unsure how long they will be displaced and is particularly concerned about the commute to her sons’ school and her work. To make matters worse, she has been formally reprimanded at work for taking time off to meet with the insurance adjuster and construction team. Nora is presenting with symptoms of hopelessness, tearfulness, and despair. She feels overwhelmed at the loss she and her sons have faced and her perceived powerlessness to fix the situation. She notes feeling disengaged at work and unable to focus in many areas of her life. History Nora has been a single mother for the past four years. She and her ex-husband divorced after her husband’s infidelity, and she and her sons remained in the home. Her ex-husband moved out of town two years ago and maintains somewhat regular communication with his sons—engaging with them on social media, speaking to them by phone roughly once a month, and seeing them every six months. Nora reports that although she has “no hard feelings” toward her ex-husband and strives to have a good co- parenting relationship, they do not maintain contact outside of his communication with the boys, and he is not a source of financial or emotional support to her. Nora has been employed as the general manager of a small chain of local restaurants for the past two- years. Prior to that she held the manager position for one of the restaurants for nearly ten years. Nora is hardworking and prides herself on doing a good job, providing strong support and mentorship to her team, and supporting the local community and its patrons. The recent hurricane has had a dramatic impact on her work life as well, destroying one of the restaurants and leaving many of her employees without a job. She has been charged by the restaurant owners to help in the effort to rebuild, which has only created more strain on her emotionally, mentally, and physically. Developmental Considerations Nora was raised as the middle child of three siblings. She reports being close to her siblings and parents throughout her childhood and being a highly sociable child. She indicates no physical traumas or developmental delays, but does report that she lost her mother to breast cancer when she was 18 years old. Nora reports that this was a significant loss for her and her family, and that she has taken on the role of the mediator and “ ...

1. COU 680 Week Eight Case Study: Nora
Nora is a 41-year-old African American single mother of two
young boys, ages 8 and 10. She and her
sons recently evacuated from their home ahead of a major
hurricane. They stayed with relatives for two
weeks until they were able to return to their home safely. When
they arrived home, they found their
house uninhabitable—a tree had fallen on the house, which led
to significant flooding and structural
damage. They will need to live elsewhere until the home can be
repaired. While they have made short-
term arrangements to go back to her family’s house, Nora is
unsure how long they will be displaced and
is particularly concerned about the commute to her sons’ school
and her work. To make matters worse,
she has been formally reprimanded at work for taking time off
to meet with the insurance adjuster and
construction team.
Nora is presenting with symptoms of hopelessness, tearfulness,
and despair. She feels overwhelmed at
the loss she and her sons have faced and her perceived
powerlessness to fix the situation. She notes
feeling disengaged at work and unable to focus in many areas of
her life.
History
Nora has been a single mother for the past four years. She and
her ex-husband divorced after her

2. husband’s infidelity, and she and her sons remained in the
home. Her ex-husband moved out of town
two years ago and maintains somewhat regular communication
with his sons—engaging with them on
social media, speaking to them by phone roughly once a month,
and seeing them every six months. Nora
reports that although she has “no hard feelings” toward her ex-
husband and strives to have a good co-
parenting relationship, they do not maintain contact outside of
his communication with the boys, and he
is not a source of financial or emotional support to her.
Nora has been employed as the general manager of a small
chain of local restaurants for the past two-
years. Prior to that she held the manager position for one of the
restaurants for nearly ten years. Nora is
hardworking and prides herself on doing a good job, providing
strong support and mentorship to her
team, and supporting the local community and its patrons. The
recent hurricane has had a dramatic
impact on her work life as well, destroying one of the
restaurants and leaving many of her employees
without a job. She has been charged by the restaurant owners to
help in the effort to rebuild, which has
only created more strain on her emotionally, mentally, and
physically.
Developmental Considerations
Nora was raised as the middle child of three siblings. She
reports being close to her siblings and parents
throughout her childhood and being a highly sociable child. She
indicates no physical traumas or
developmental delays, but does report that she lost her mother
to breast cancer when she was 18 years
old. Nora reports that this was a significant loss for her and her

3. family, and that she has taken on the
role of the mediator and “mother” for the family since her
mother’s death, owning responsibility for
family gatherings and being responsible for taking care of her
father’s health needs in the past few
years.
Relational Considerations
Nora has a strong support network in her family. Her two
siblings live within 20 miles of her, and her
father is 45 miles away. None of their homes were significantly
impacted by the hurricane, and all have
offered temporary support for Nora and her sons. That being
said, Nora is concerned about
overextending her stay, particularly given that there i s not a lot
of extra space for her family at any one
of her family’s homes. Additionally, the commute for school
and work is weighing heavily on her.
Nora also has a strong friendship network she has been leaning
on for emotional support. She reports
that her friends, largely from her faith community of Jehovah’s
Witnesses, have been what has gotten
her through the hard times thus far. Unfortunately, many of
Nora’s friends have also been directly
impacted by the hurricane, and the Kingdom Hall she attends
was hard-hit as well.
Multicultural Considerations
Nora is a woman of strong faith. She has struggled with the loss
of her home and the displacement this

4. has caused, but she has also been particularly challenged by the
damage at the Kingdom Hall where she
worshipped twice a week. Between the commuting, additional
need for time at work, and the
challenges with her own home and children, she has found
herself unable to seek solace through
worship. She has tried to continue her practice of daily prayer
and Bible study and has found herself
grateful for the support she has received from the disaster relief
committee and nearby congregations;
however, she notes this is one of the most challenging parts of
the disaster experience for her.
Diagnosis
Nora’s symptom presentation is consistent with a diagnosis of
adjustment disorder with depressed
mood (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
Reference
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and
statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.).
Washington, DC: Author.
CASE STUDY OF [TOPIC] 4
[Note: To complete this template, replace the bracketed text
with your own content. Remove this note before you submit
your paper.]
Intervention Paper: Case Study of [Topic]

5. [Your Name]
Running head: CASE STUDY OF [TOPIC] 1
Southern New Hampshire University
Description of Intervention
[Include in this section a brief overview of the intervention you
have selected, based on how it was described in the article.
Please do not copy and paste the description from the article—
use your own words. Think of this like you are explaining it to
your best friend. What does it do, how do you do it, and to
whom would it apply? You also want to make sure you are
looking for any limitations to the intervention noted in the
article or important to consider. Most journal articles will have
a limitations section or speak to any considerations you might
want to think about before applying it. Others may not have this
concretely stated, so you will need to do some analysis and
consider to whom the intervention might not be applicable and
why. A couple of limitations you are likely to see are that they
are relatively new and untested or that they only apply to a
specific group of people. Those are great things to consider
when selecting an intervention and part of what I want you to
get savvy at looking for.]
Rationale
[This section should center on why you have chosen this
intervention for the case study. Why is it appropriate to the
specific client? You want to use the details of the case study to
help you justify the approach based on factors like diagnosis,
culture, family dynamics, developmental influences, etc.
Remember, the goal in any intervention is to choose one that
will be most effective to the needs of the client. To that end,
you will really want to consider and speak to the details of the
case study and why they tie back to your chosen intervention in
this section.]
Explanation of Support
[In this section you will speak to the actual application of the
intervention to the case study client. What would it look like
when applied to the client from the case study given the details

6. of the article and the description above? This takes your
rationale a step further and has you really think about what i t
would mean to put the case study client in the intervention. This
step moves you from why it would be valuable (rationale) to
how it would work.]
Future Applications
[This final section is designed to have you consider to whom or
under what circumstances you might apply this intervention in
the future. How might you use this tool in your toolbox to help
you in future work? Can it apply to more than one type of issue
or client? This is where you should consider expansion beyond
the particular case study and speak to how you think you will
use this intervention to help your future practice.]
References
[Include any references cited in your paper in full APA format.
Don’t forget to include in-text citations as well.]