HN144-Human Behavior and the Environment

For this Assignment, you will write about Sandra Lombardino’s ecomap that you submitted in Unit 8. In your paper, you will summarize and evaluate the influences of the environment on Sandra’s behavior and family system.

Using the ecomap you created as a resource, discuss the following topics about Sandra and her family:

1. Provide a one paragraph history about Sandra’s life to this point.
2. Explain whether Sandra is in Integrity or Despair as defined by Erik Erikson in his Theory of Psychosocial Development. Explore how this transition crisis may be resolved by a HSP conducting a life review with Sandra.
3. Using Sandra’s ecomap, describe what systems (influences) are causing the most stress and negative influence on Sandra’s behavior and decision making.
4. Considering Stress Theory, what are some recommendations a HSP could make to Sandra to help her cope with her trauma/stress that may help her meet her goal of a long life expectancy?
5. If you were working with Sandra and she provided consent to contact her family, do you believe that involving her adult children would make a positive impact to her family system? Explain why or why not.
6. What role could Sandra’s adult children play in helping Sandra cope with her trauma/stress?
7. Name one human services agency that serves older adults that may provide assistance to Sandra and her family. Explain how this agency would specifically help Sandra and her family with their current stressors.
8. Considering all you have learned in HN144, what are some best practice approaches that a human service professional could use to help a multigenerational family experiencing a negative environment?

2.Although Sandra has finished her career, she does not feel contented of fulfilling his career. This makes her be in a sad moment. This can be resolved by a HSP through making her understand that, even though she has not fulfilled her dreams or expectations she had put after the completion of her career, she has performed part of her dream of teaching to the time she had retired and therefore no need to despair at the moment.  

3.Sandra’s husband is the cause of the negative influence and emotional stress on her behavior and decision making.  Her previous decisions about travel and the volunteer work cannot be fulfilled since her husband has health issues which require close attention. Besides, she is not able to leave him to make her wishes and chooses to keep on looking after him and live miserably. Sandra also accepts the fact that her husband is an alcoholic and even abusive. She stays angry but keeps on with it and has to take care of him since she feels it is required of him to take up the responsibility of caring for her husband.  

4.A HSP may help her manage her stress and trauma by ensuring she focuses on the relationship between the physical demands which are the stressors, and stress. This may, in turn, ensure she can cope up with the stress her husband has subjected her to. There are many steps an individual may decide take personal charge in handling their stresses, while others require the professional guidance to be assisted fully (Walsh, 2003). A HSP may hence help Sandra to find ways to reduce the impact of emotional stress. They may suggest visualization, meditation or even talk therapy. The techniques will allow someone to reduce their stresses while they counteract the negative physical impacts.

5.No, Sandra involving her children in his motional struggles would have little impacts on her family system.  Since her children have also undergone the same abuse by their father, looking for professional help or counsel would be better instead of helping their mother. By involving her adult children, this would, in turn, add more emotional stress from what they have been undergoing together instead of helping her.

6.Sandra’s children would play a significant role in helping her cope with the trauma since she must have felt that they have distanced themselves from her due to the behavior of her husband.  They can hence give her happiness for them being around and keeping her company since her husband is ill and thus makes her feel stressful and unhappy.

7.Union Family Services may help Mrs. Lombardino and her family. They would assist them in finding an emotional healing and also emotional comfort. The Union Family Services comprises of skilled clinicians who have been licensed with over twenty years of professional experience and expertise in mental health (Union Family Services, n.d.). The agency will focus on family therapy to reduce emotional stress by improving the interaction system within the family. This would, in turn, help everyone acknowledge their problem and make their father know that violence and alcoholism affect the entire part of the family.  

8.The multigenerational family practice aims at promoting health, equality and also development across different generations through multidisciplinary practices, community-based partnerships and through research (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 2013). The approach gives the understanding of what processes have to lead to various outcomes in families. The multigenerational practice framework includes the values and knowledge base recognizing importance of life-course development, knowing how psychological, emotional and physical health including the strengths and challenges may be transmitted across generations, awareness of  inequities(this can be ethnicity, socio-economic status, gender,  and race), identifying the strategies to address age-based services and policy fragmentation and support the interventions whose aim is strengthening the families and reciprocity among generations, and finally the  awareness on the impact of historical, generational and cohort influence on the physical, social wellbeing and other life experiences (Minkler & Wallerstein, 2011). .

References

Minkler, M., & Wallerstein, N. (Eds.). (2011). Community-based participatory research for health: From process to outcomes. John Wiley & Sons.

Union Family Services. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/union-family-services-monroe-nc/292449

Walsh, F. (2003). Clinical views of family normality, health, and dysfunction. Normal family processes, 27-57.

Zastrow. C, Kirst-Ashman. K. (2013). Understanding Human Behavior and the Social Environment (9th ed). Brooks/Cole Empowerment Series.