Clinical Study of the Effectiveness of Constant Therapy in the Treatment of Clients With Dementia: Implications for Telepractice

Purpose The purpose of this clinical focus article was to advance interventions for person living with dementia by exploring the implications of integrating technology through telepractice to strengthen memory in clients with dementia. This study focused on individualized treatment plans using the software Constant Therapy (CT) for clients with dementia. Method This study utilizes an exploratory research design with nonprobability sampling of existing data analyzing the frequency, duration, and percent correct of CT exercises completed from two case studies of persons living with dementia. This study received exempt status for institutional review board approval from the Florida Department of Health, since it is secondary research. One participant had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and the other participant had vascular dementia. Both clients utilized CT as part of the clinical services provided by the University of Central Florida's Communication Sciences and Disorders Clinic at Brain Fitness Academy. Results The results of this exploratory research study indicate that both participants demonstrated an increase in percentage correct on CT exercises from baseline to current (Participant 1, 70%, and Participant 2, 50%). A substantial disparity of exercises completed confirms the necessity of an individualized treatment plan based on a specific type of dementia. Both participants demonstrated a 631% and 632% increase respectively in exercises completed at home versus in the clinic. This finding is especially significant as it relates to telepractice. Conclusion This study adds to the literature that clients with dementia demonstrate substantial improvement in global cognitive function when speech-language pathologists provide skilled individualized services using the digital software CT, whether in traditional or remote clinic settings.

A Qualitative Study of Practitioners’ Views on Family Involvement in Treatment Process of Adolescent Internet Addiction

Despite emerging evidence of the effectiveness of a family-focused approach as an Internet addiction (IA) treatment modality for adolescents, little research has been done to explore family involvement in the treatment process from the clinician’s perspective. This study employed a qualitative design to examine practitioners’ views pertaining to the roles and challenges of family participation in IA intervention. In total, 10 practitioners working with adolescents with IA were interviewed. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the transcribed interviews. Three overreaching themes were synthesized: That family involvement in IA intervention is challenging yet important; shifting the focus from the adolescent to the relationship; and provision of individualized services and intervention to address the heterogeneous nature of cases. The findings show that family participation in IA treatment is successful in enhancing positive outcomes. The needs of adolescents with IA and family members are addressed through individual counseling and psychoeducation, respectively. Conjoint therapy sessions foster effective communication, improve family interactions and functioning, and restore relationships. However, caution regarding family dynamics is required when considering whether family involvement is appropriate. Practitioners need to establish therapeutic alliances and be flexible when working with family members in terms of the degree and arrangement of participation.

An Evaluation of the Outcomes of a Court Outreach Program for People with Severe and Persistent Mental Illness Who Are Legally Involved

The current study evaluated the outcomes of an outreach program that provides individualized services to people with severe mental illness who are legally involved. Client outcomes included increased community ability and reduced homelessness for a group of 45 clients still receiving services from the program, and increased community ability and diminished severity of mental health symptoms for 50 clients who had been discharged from the program. Only 2 of the 50 discharged clients (4%) were found to be incarcerated at termination; 1 other client (2%) was detained at termination through the Ontario Review Board.

Web Service Discovery and Composition for Virtual Enterprises

One main characteristic of virtual enterprises are short-term collaborations between business partners to provide efficient and individualized services to customers. The MOVE project targets at a methodology and a software framework to support such flexible collaborations based on process oriented design and communication by Web services. MOVE’s framework supports the graphical design and verification of business processes, the execution and supervision of processes in transaction-oriented environment, and the dynamic composition and optimization of processes. A business process may be composed from a set of Web services, deployed itself as Web service and executed in the framework. The composition of processes from Web services is implemented with methods from AI-planning. We apply answer set programming (ASP) and map Web service descriptions and customer requests into the input language of the ASP software DLV. Composition goals and constraints guide a composition challenge. We show the performance of our program and give some implementation details. Finally we conclude with some insights.