In a 3- to 4-page paper, address the following: The best interests of the child, with a specific focus on how this is defined in the APA guidelines

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Forensic professionals are often called upon to provide opinions about custody in cases of divorce, parental termination, and reestablishment of custody after a child has been removed from the custodial parent’s home. Specific ethical and legal parameters govern when and how a professional should offer such an opinion in a legal setting. For this assignment, you will be asked to provide an analysis of factors relevant to custody evaluations or evaluations for termination of parental rights.

Tasks:

In a 3- to 4-page paper, address the following:

  • The best interests of the child, with a specific focus on how this is defined in the APA guidelines
  • The manner in which the best-interest decisions are influenced by the wishes of the child
  • The difference between a fact and an expert witness in the cases of child custody
  • The specific procedures, including parent interviews, child interviews, observations, and objective tests, used in custody evaluations
  • The issues surrounding confidentiality, privilege, and privacy in custody evaluations
  • The court testimony in custody evaluations, with emphasis on the collective use of data and opinion versus fact in reporting the results

Use three additional resources from professional literature to support your response. Professional literature may include relevant textbooks, peer-reviewed journal articles, and websites created by professional organizations, agencies, or institutions (.edu, .org, and .gov).

Compare and contrast each of Shneidman’s categories      of suicide and discuss their implications for prevention and post-vention      efforts. 

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Answers must be paraphrased (restated in your own words with no quoting permitted), properly source credited, using APA formatting requirements – including within-answer citations and a list of references included at the end of each answer – and at least 600 words each, not counting source citations and references. Answers should be succinct, thorough, articulated in well-organized paragraphs (lists, sentence fragments and bulleted items are not permitted), and more substantive than just definitions of terms, procedures, or issues.

To complete this exam, save a copy of it on your hard drive, construct your answers below each question on a separate page per question, attach a cover page to the front and a reference list to the end .

 

Questions:

 

  1. Psychological abnormality may include deviance,      distress, dysfunction, and danger. First, briefly explain what each term means in this context. Then, for each term, provide a      specific example of when it (e.g., distress) would be considered “normal”      and, separately, an example of when it would be considered      “abnormal”. Last, explain why is it      important to understand this distinction.
  2. Your nephew is taking Intro to Psych as a high school      senior and is confused about which of the models is “best” at explaining      abnormality. Describe for him, in no      more than 100 words per model and using terms he (as a layperson) can      understand, the six major theoretical models of abnormality AND the  biopsychosocial model. Then, briefly      answer his question – which model do you think is best and why? Be sure to support your answer.
  3. Answer both parts of this question. Imagine you are an intake clinician at a      community mental health clinic:
    1. If you had 30 minutes to conduct a preliminary       clinical interview, what information would you be sure to try to get, and       why? Be sure to support your       answer using the text.
    2. You’ve been tasked to give a lecture to new clients       explaining the format and major characteristics of DSM-5. What are the main points you want to be       sure to cover?
  4. For EACH of the following disorders, characterize three      specific factors you believe are most important for a basic      understanding of them. Be sure to      justify your choices using only about 100-150 words for each:
    1. Generalized Anxiety Disorder
    2. Panic Disorder
    3. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
    4. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
    5. Somatic Symptom Disorder
    6. Dissociative Identity Disorder
    7. Major Depressive Disorder
    8. Bipolar Disorder
  5. Compare and contrast each of Shneidman’s categories      of suicide and discuss their implications for prevention and post-vention      efforts.

Post a description of the peer-review process, including how it works, the benefits of this system, and an example of how this process might not work as intended. If you were a researcher or journal editor, what would you propose to do differently to improve the process?

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Discussion: Research

All scientific fields change constantly, and this includes psychology. There are nearly 30,000 peer-reviewed scientific journals of every discipline available, and they publish nearly 2 million articles a year. These articles go through a process known as peer review before they are able to be published. Once the researchers complete a study, they write it up as an article to communicate their results to others. These papers are detailed and technical, and tend to include four sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. These articles are submitted to one of the many peer-reviewed journals, and the journal editor then asks other researchers who are experts in the field to read and critique the research. The feedback from the reviewers (usually two) is then given to the original authors, who respond to the comments, and, eventually, the article is published. While there are sometimes problems with this system, it generally works well to improve the quality of writing and the accuracy of information published. However, these articles tend to be technical and may not be easy to understand for someone who does not have a background on the topic. Conveniently, many of the more interesting and socially relevant results are rewritten for a more general audience. These may be brief summaries included in scientific journals or articles written for newspapers or magazines. Such sources are probably the primary way in which such information is distributed to the general public. However, such articles typically lack detail and tend to oversimplify the results of the research being described.

In this Discussion, you will review both types of information (popular media and primary research reports) on a topic of interest having to do with the brain and behavior. You will then compare these sources based on such things as their writing style and content.

To prepare for this Discussion:

  • Review this week’s Learning Resources about the peer-review process.
  • Go to the following website: http://www.biopsychology.com/news. In the top, right-hand corner box (Search Article Summaries), select a keyword link that you are interested in (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease). Browse through two or three recent articles (published within the past 5 years). Take note of the style of writing that is used, as well as the level of description of the studies. Note that these articles are typically written by science journalists about someone else’s research.
  • Next, visit the Walden online journal collection, and locate a peer-reviewed journal article related to the same topic (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease). Be sure that the article you select is a research report—that is, it should contain sections that describe in detail the sample of individuals studied, the methods of data collection, and the results of the study. As you read the article, take note of the style of writing used by the author(s) and the level of description of the study. Compare this article to those you read from the BioPsychology.com website
  • Record citations for all of the articles you read for this Discussion.

With these thoughts in mind:

By Day 3

Post a description of the peer-review process, including how it works, the benefits of this system, and an example of how this process might not work as intended. If you were a researcher or journal editor, what would you propose to do differently to improve the process?

In a second paragraph, post a brief summary of one of the BioPsychology.com articles and another brief summary of the research article (include both in-text citations and a complete reference in APA format). Compare the two types of information on criteria such as ease of understanding, level of detail, and accuracy. Address both similarities and differences in the papers. Finally, describe the benefits of each type of article for college students studying brain and behavior or for researchers studying the brain. (Note: You only need to address either students or researchers.)

Note: Put the keyword topic you have selected in the first line of your post. You will be asked to respond to a colleague who selected a different keyword topic than you did.

Support your postings and responses with specific references to the Learning Resources and any additional sources you identify using both in-text citations and complete references in APA format.

Read a selection of your colleagues’ postings.

Describe the criminal behavior in detail, including any research you have found on the origins or development of this behavior (in approximately 1 page).

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The goal of this course is to create a prevention plan for a specific criminal behavior. Throughout the course, you will complete interrelated assignments in each module that build toward the LASA assignment, a prevention plan.

The first step toward this end is to identify a specific criminal behavior for which you will develop a prevention program. The first chapter of the textbook describes a variety of criminal behavior problems, such as status crimes, juvenile offenders, and drug abuse.

Once you select the criminal behavior, you should do a preliminary literature search to ensure that you will have ready access to scholarly resources.

Create a 2- to 3-page paper describing your selected criminal behavior. You must consider the following when creating your paper:

  • Describe the criminal behavior in detail, including any research you have found on the origins or development of this behavior (in approximately 1 page).
  • Discuss the specific target area you want to address in the problem (in approximately 1 paragraph).
  • Describe the specific group you want to focus on from among those affected by the criminal problem, i.e., juveniles, women, etc.
  • Describe the possible prevention and intervention ideas (in approximately 1 page).
  • Discuss research support for the effectiveness of your proposed prevention or intervention ideas (in approximately 2–3 paragraphs).

For example, suppose you pick juvenile sex offenders and want to develop a prevention program for adolescent sex offenders. Specifically, you want to target risk factors associated with that population.

Support your assumptions by citing reputable source material used for this assignment in APA format.