Residental Treatment Centers for Disturbed Children

According to the Federal Register (1977), the "emotionally disturbed" child suffers from a condition in which one of the following five characteristics have occurred to a marked degree for a long period of time:

(1) an inability to learn which cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors;

(2) an inability to build or maintain satisfactory relationships with peers and teachers;

(3) inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances;

(4) a general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression;

(5) a tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems.

Also, the Federal Register (1977) reports that the term "seriously emotionally disturbed" includes all of the listed characteristics and also schizophrenic and autistic children but not socially maladjusted children unless they exhibit one or more of the just listed characteristics.

When behavior associated with serious emotional disturbance becomes too unmanageable or too disturbed for parents or teachers to handle, children are frequently placed in residential treatment centers (Gelfand, Jenson & Drew, 1982). Of residential treatment centers, Knopf (1984) reports:

These vary widely in size, philosophy, goals, and methods but as a milieu approach they all provide children with greater tolerance and consistency as well as with firm control. (p.169).

The assertion of control in residential treatment is also mentioned by Redl (1

staff to reduce the incidence of this need. Hypotheses It is expected that if any of the factors assessed in the survey (e.g. factors such as the degree of "sadness" being experienced by staff and/or children) are contributive to the increased incidence of physical restraint over the holidays, then there will be significant correlations between these factors (e.g. degree of experienced sadness by staff/children) and frequency of physical restraint (frequency measures being taken during a five day period before the holidays and during the period of the holidays themselves). If this expectation is applied to the provided example, then it would be observed that as degree of sadness of either staff and/or children increases, so to would the frequency of the use of physical restraint. In addition to expecting correlations between frequency of punishment (physical restraint) and contributive factors assessed on the survey instruments, it is also, of course, expected that frequency of punishment will in fact show the characteristic increase over the holiday period. This increase will be assessed through comparative analyses of the degree of punishment (physical restraint) taken both before and after the holidays with measures of the d

Category: Psychology - R