Browsing by Author "Dennis, Barbara"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Exploring perceptions and experiences of patients who have chronic pain as state prescription opioid policies change: a qualitative study in Indiana
    (BMJ, 2017-11-12) Al Achkar, Morhaf; Revere, Debra; Dennis, Barbara; MacKie, Palmer; Gupta, Sumedha; Grannis, Shaun; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Objectives The misuse and abuse of prescription opioids (POs) is an epidemic in the USA today. Many states have implemented legislation to curb the use of POs resulting from inappropriate prescribing. Indiana legislated opioid prescribing rules that went into effect in December 2013. The rules changed how chronic pain is managed by healthcare providers. This qualitative study aims to evaluate the impact of Indiana’s opioid prescription legislation on the patient experiences around pain management. Setting This is a qualitative study using interviews of patient and primary care providers to obtain triangulated data sources. The patients were recruited from an integrated pain clinic to which chronic pain patients were referred from federally qualified health clinics (FQHCs). The primacy care providers were recruited from the same FQHCs. The study used inductive, emergent thematic analysis. Participants Nine patient participants and five primary care providers were included in the study. Results Living with chronic pain is disruptive to patients’ lives on multiple dimensions. The established pain management practices were disrupted by the change in prescription rules. Patient–provider relationships, which involve power dynamics and decision making, shifted significantly in parallel to the rule change. Conclusions As a result of the changes in pain management practice, some patients experienced significant challenges. Further studies into the magnitude of this change are necessary. In addition, exploring methods for regulating prescribing while assuring adequate access to pain management is crucial.
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    Gender, subjectivity, and the material-discursive school entanglement
    (2018-04-04) Robbins, Kirsten Rose; Pike, Gary; Thorius, Kathleen King; Dennis, Barbara; Engebretson, Kathryn; Medina, Monica
    New materialist scholars argue that schools are important material-discursive entanglements for engendering, racializing, and subjectivizing human subjects. Despite this claim, there is a dearth of research that examines the perceptions that students have of the messages they are sent from schools about how to perform their gendered subjectivities in schools, particularly from a material feminist framework. This study used native photography through a post qualitative methodological framework to explore the messages that students’ receive from their school related to subjectivity and gender. This study took seriously both the voices and perceptions of the participants and the significance of the material environment of the school. Within the course of the research study, students both resisted and conformed to messages the school sent them about their subjectivities. Students conformed to many of the dominant ideas about gender, including privileging maleness. Students resisted the school’s control of their bodies, as well as the school’s attempts at rendering the student population homogenous. The students, though aware that there were differences in the way the school treated them based in gender and other identity markers, struggled to articulate those differences because the school sent a false message of equality. This false message of equality performed an erasure of their experiences of differences and denied them the language they needed to discuss the inequities they experienced. The results of the analysis contribute to conversations about the ways in which school environments contribute to narratives about identity, particularly as it relates to gender. Additionally, the way in which this post qualitative study unfolded has implications for research, including the importance of emergent design. Finally, the tensions that exist in using the new materialisms as a framework when studying schools led me to question the benefits of choosing to decenter humans in this type of research.
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    My life is in their hands: Latina adolescent border-crossings, becoming in the shadows, and mental health in schools
    (2016-06-22) Elfreich, Alycia Marie; Thompson, Chalmer; Dennis, Barbara; Helfenbein, Robert; Medina, Monica
    This project endeavors to move beyond traditional conceptualizations of voice in conventional qualitative research and instead focuses on embodied, liminal experiences of Latina adolescents, the intersections of identity, gender, spirituality, ethnicity, etc., how these junctures broadly impact mental health, and more specifically, how we perceive mental health and well-being within educational institutions. The study draws upon an intervention pilot study that sought to increase resiliency and self-mastery in Latino adolescents while simultaneously reducing their depressive symptoms. However, this project aims to take these findings and focus upon the complex and multiple factors that influence depression, including citizenship status, trauma in crossing the border from Mexico into the United States, and racial and gendered oppression specific to the experiences of Latina adolescent immigrants. Thus, this project explores ways in which four Latina adolescents make sense of their lived experiences through a critical feminist theoretical framework that integrates post/anti colonial feminism. The framework provides a nuanced conceptualization of power, oppression, and marginalization that creates opportunities to explore alternative notions of thinking that encourages new paths to transform interdisciplinary, university, community, and family relationships surrounding mental health concerns within educational institutions. Finally, theory, research, epistemology, and ontology are interwoven to inform a methodology that is fluid, interchanging, and always becoming.
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    A study of Ugandan children’s perspectives on peace, conflict, and peace-building: A liberation psychology approach
    (APA, 2018) Mayengo, Nathaniel; Namusoke, Jane; Byamugisha, Gastone; Sebukalu, Paul; Kagaari, James; Auma-Okumu, Santo; Baguwemu, Ali; Ntare, Edward Rutondoki; Nakasiita, Kirabo Nkwambe; Atuhairwe, Richard; Goretti, Maria Kaahwa; Okumu Oruma, Gerald Ojok; Thompson, Chalmer E.; Dennis, Barbara
    Bulhan (2015) urged psychologists to advance their research and practice by attending to metacolonialism, a structural phenomenon built on a history of violence and oppression that assaults all manner of individual, community, and societal well-being. In line with this urging, a primarily Ugandan team of researchers conducted a study of primary schoolchildren’s perspectives on conflict, peace, and peace-building. In the original study, which is briefly reviewed in this manuscript, the children were drawn from 2 Ugandan schools, one located in the northern region and the other in the central region. At each stage of the research process, the team members sought to recognize and resist the reproduction of metacolonialism while move toward more emancipatory practices. In this theoretical article, we explain how we applied a liberation psychological approach to the design, conduct, and analysis of the study. We also show how the findings of the study contribute to our ongoing work in fostering structural changes in one of the schools, its surrounding region, and the nation as a whole.