Psychoeducation curriculum for incarcerated adult male sex offenders.

Alternative Therapies

April 2021

Full Citation

Roys, D. (1996). Psychoeducation curriculum for incarcerated adult male sex offenders. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.

Abstract

This Project Demonstrating Excellence is an inquiry into the nature of psychoeducation and a program of structured psychoeducation for incarcerated sex offenders. The process of training prison personnel in the implementation of such a program is discussed. The PDE also contributes to the body of knowledge concerned with educating the educator to utilize a highly structured curriculum to impart a specific body of knowledge. Psychoeducation is a formal informational intervention process that has been shown to have a positive impact on client and patient populations throughout the fields of mental health, medicine, criminal justice, rehabilitation therapies, children and youth services, sports enhancement and salesmanship. Numerous studies have reported its efficacy established through tests administered before and after the intervention. There are two major thrusts of the PDE. The first major contribution is a new focus on fifteen areas of change that must be within the sex offender's cognitive set in order for him/her to recognize the depth of therapeutic work in which he/she must engage to make positive change to reduce relapse. The second major contribution is the educating of the educators themselves as they are imparting the curriculum; the educators are learning the cognitive set of the offenders with whom they work and how to effectively bypass the offenders' shame and denial in order to educate. In addition to a review of psychoeducation literature, the PDE presents the sex offender curriculum, examines some of the literature on therapeutic needs of the sex offender from which the curriculum was derived, and reviews a training session with 48 Department of Corrections group facilitators. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)