Parental Death and the Impact on Grieving Children: A Comparison of Homicide or Suicide and Natural or Accidental Deaths

This study examined the impact of parental death by homicide or suicide on child survivors. Two groups representing grieving children who experienced a parental death by homicide or suicide (N = 19) and children who experienced a natural or accidental parental death (N = 19) were compared. Children in the two groups were matched for age and gender. Scores from a screening instrument, developed by William Worden (1996) to identify grieving children at risk for emotional and behavioral difficulties, were used to compare these groups. No significant differences were found between the two groups for the total screener score and five of six predictor variables. One predictor variable, depression of the surviving parent, was an exception to this pattern. Surviving parents in the homicide/suicide group reported significantly higher levels of depression than did those in the natural/accidental group. These findings and possibilities for future research are discussed

A Practical Model for Teaching Supervision Through Vertically Integrated Teams

Teaching supervision is a relatively new practice and training area (Schindler and Talen, 1996). This paper describes a method of teaching clinical supervision to graduate students in clinical psychology. The method involves an intensive seminar, assigned readings, and a year long supervised practicum in providing supervision. Students in the first through fourth years of a doctoral program are assigned to a team with a faculty leader. The faculty member oversees the professional development of all students on the team. Additionally, the fourth year students oversee the first and second year students under the supervision of the faculty member. This method facilitates the initial development of supervisory skills in students prior to their internship. Training in supervision is thought to be important because many psychologists function as supervisors and the demand for supervision by clinical psychologists may be rising with current changes in the health care delivery system

Development of a management practicum in a clinical psychology program

Some clinical psychology programs are developing training in management in response to both the recognition that management is a major professional role for many psychologists (Clements, Rickard, & Kleinot, 1986) and the National Council of Schools of Professional Psychology’s (NCSPP) inclusion of “supervision and management” as one of six competency areas for the core curriculum in professional psychology (Peterson, R. L., McHolland, J. D., Bent, R. J., Davis-Russell, E., Edwall, G. E., Polite, K., Singer, D. L., & Stricker, G., 1991). At the Graduate School of Clinical Psychology at George Fox University (Newberg, OR), we developed a management practicum to facilitate specific and advanced training of selected doctoral students in this competency area. In this article, we compare and contrast our program with the one developed at West Virginia University (WVU), described in a previous article in this journal