My first slide share

1. Chapter 12

2. History of Prevention
• 1960s: a focus on providing information
– Many efforts based on scare tactics and moralizing
• 1970s: a focus on personal and social factors
– Affective education and self esteem
• 1980s: a focus on behavioral strategies
– “life skills” and building social competency
• 1990s: integration of affective, cognitive and
behavioral areas; more comprehensive
– Emphasized skills and prosocial attitudes
– Some focus on protective factors, but most focus still
on eliminating risk

3. Current Focus
• Risk factors continue to be targeted, but there is a
shift to greater focus on protective factors
• Program effectiveness is a current focus
– Research has found that many well-intentioned
prevention programs are ineffective and may even
have negative effects on participants
– Important criteria for an effective program:
• Evidence of program efficacy
• Program quality
• Educational significance
• Usefulness to others

4. Prevention Defined
• Romano and Hage (2000) define prevention as
having one or more of 5 dimensions:
1. Stops (prevents) a problem behavior from ever
occuring
2. Delays the onset of a problem behavior
3. Reduces the impact of an existing problem behavior
4. Strengthens knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors
that promote emotional and physical wellbeing
5. Support institutional, community and government
policies that promote well-being

5. The Approach Continuum
Approach
Universal Appropriate for all children
Selected Aimed at children who share some at-risk
factors (environmental stressors, etc)
Booster Sessions Follow-up sessions to help maintain
effects of short-term interventions
Indicated Aimed at children who are at imminent
risk or who have begun to engage in the
behavior
Second-chance Children who are already engaged in
chronic negative behaviors (dropped out,
using substances, etc.)

7. Comprehensive Framework
• Comprehensive programs intervene in all
environmental settings (community, family,
school)
• Intervention in each of these setting in
conceived as a continuum
– Early broad-based prevention
– Early intervention effort
– Treatment approaches

8. Environmental Settings

9. 5 At-Risk Categories

10. Universal Prevention
Anti-Bullying
• Bullying is a specific subset of aggression in
which
– There is an imbalance of power with a more
powerful person or group attacking a less
powerful one
– The behavior is intended to disturb or harm
– The behavior occurs repeatedly over time

11. Cyber-bully prevention
• A multi-faceted school- based approach
– Set limits and good examples of how to behave
online
– Develop educational campaigns for the parents
• Parents should know their child’s internet passwords as
well as “friend” their child
– Develop education campaigns for students related
to spotting and dealing with bullies, and not being
a cyber-bully
– Build coalitions to police the “halls” of cyberspace

12. Bullies and Victims
• Common bully characteristics
– Greater dislike of school, more conduct problems
– Feel comfortable in the social school environment, are
moderately popular and hold high status with peers
– Low empathy skills and are impulsive
• Victims
– Generally show higher levels of anxiety, depression
and unhappiness and display behavioral difficulties
years after the bullying
• Both bullies and victims demonstrate poorer
psychological functioning and academic skills

13. Specific Roles
• Victims
• Bullies
• Bully-Victims
• Bystanders
• “toadies”
• Parents

14. Plan of action
• Questions for developing a system-wide plan
– Does the plan develop an effective way to eliminate or
reduce student-to-student put-downs
– Are there as many opportunities for students to be
recognized for prosocial behaviors as opportunities to
be recognized for antisocial, negative behaviors?
– Does the plan include recognizing and promoting
students pro-social behavior?
– Does the plan establish ways to recognize and support
positive and kind acts done by staff and faculty

15. Plan of action
• The purpose of the school wide plan is to
change the context in which the bullying
occurs
– Social norms (of looking the other way, etc.) must
be changed to more positive responses
• In addition to responding systemwide, the
plan needs to consider interventions with the
specific people involved in the bullying.

16. Universal Program
GOPEP
• Group-Oriented Psychological Education Prevention
– Asked students to answer the question: “How can we
decrease violence in the school?”
• Common themes
– Increase support and encouragement through positive
peer models
– Change the structure of the school environment
– Increase positive adult role models and provide better
communication between school and home
– Develop specific classes that deal with student emotions
underlying issues leading to violence (stress, turmoil, etc)

17. Building competency
• The last suggestion –curriculum to use in
classes for all students – lead to the
development of several programs
– SCARE: anger management
– SOAR: optimism and resiliency
– ART: anxiety reduction
– BLOCKS: companion knowledge skills