Stanford Pilot Program for at-Home Caregivers of Veterans

It's a great idea and they need to stop forgetting about the families that end up taking care of them. Most of the time, our lives really end when they come home wounded. We give up jobs so that we can give them the care they need or end careers so that we can make our schedule fit what works. We need all the support we can get, especially the new generation of wounded. They are battling trying to take care of the kids, helping their spouse and taking on a lot more responsibility they never planned on.

Stanford Pilot Program for at-Home Caregivers of Veterans Seeks ...
Reuters - USA

STANFORD, Calif.--(Business Wire)--
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine are recruiting
participants for a pilot program aimed at improving at-home caregiving for U.S.
veterans. The study will assess the effectiveness of an online workshop that
provides training to at-home caregivers of veterans who suffer from traumatic
brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, Alzheimer`s disease or other forms
of dementia. Veterans who are caring for people with these disorders are also
eligible.

The six-week-long workshop, called "Building Better Caregivers," will train
informal caregivers, such as family members and friends, how to not only provide
better care, but also to manage their own emotions, stress and physical health.
The interactive online workshop will also provide a forum in which small groups
of caregivers can share personal experiences and insights on solving problems,
handling difficult emotions and celebrating milestones. Each week, participants
will be asked to log on at least three times and spend two hours on lessons and
homework.
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"The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil."

Charting the psychology of evil, decades after 'shock' experiment
Story Highlights
Experts: Any person, when placed in a particular situation, may do harm when told

In the Milgram experiment, participants believed they were giving electric shocks

Recent research confirms Milgram's findings

The Stanford Prison Experiment explored the horrors of a prison environment


By Elizabeth Landau
CNN
(CNN) -- If someone told you to press a button to deliver a 450-volt electrical shock to an innocent person in the next room, would you do it?


Common sense may say no, but decades of research suggests otherwise.

In the early 1960s, a young psychologist at Yale began what became one of the most widely recognized experiments in his field. In the first series, he found that about two-thirds of subjects were willing to inflict what they believed were increasingly painful shocks on an innocent person when the experimenter told them to do so, even when the victim screamed and pleaded.

The legacy of Stanley Milgram, who died 24 years ago on December 20, reaches far beyond that initial round of experiments. Researchers have been working on the questions he posed for decades, and have not settled on a brighter vision of human obedience.

A new study to be published in the January issue of American Psychologist confirmed these results in an experiment that mimics many of Milgram's original conditions. This and other studies have corroborated the startling conclusion that the majority of people, when placed in certain kinds of situations, will follow orders, even if those orders entail harming another person.

"It's situations that make ordinary people into evil monsters, and it's situations that make ordinary people into heroes," said Philip Zimbardo, professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University and author of "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil."

Turning the principle around

But while ordinary people have the potential do to evil, they also have the power to do good. That's the subject of the Everyday Heroism project, a collection of social scientists, including Zimbardo, seeking to understand heroic activity -- an area in which almost no research has been done, he said.


Acts such as learning first aid, leading others to the exit in an emergency and encouraging family members to recycle are some heroic behaviors that Zimbardo seeks to encourage.

"Most heroes are everyday people who do a heroic deed once in their lifetime because they have to be in a situation of evil or danger," he said.

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http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/12/19/milgram.experiment.obedience/index.html