The purpose of this study is the outcome evaluation of a small private Early Childhood Development (ECD) program in a developing country focusing on children’s social-emotional adjustment in elementary school. We established a preschool in a slum of the Philippines in collaboration with a local affiliate and proposed a program to promote ECD. It is the program that makes points on promotion of the social emotional development. We evaluated the emotion/behavior of the children who participated in the program from the viewpoints of (1) the short-term outcome at the end of their class and (2) the middle-term outcome when they were in the fourth grade in their elementary school by using the School Mental Health Index and CBCL-TRF. As for the result of (1), improvement was found in terms of the decline observed in the degrees of the “lack of attention/concentration”, “lack of independency” and “uneasiness.” As for (2), We compared the results for the intervention group (n=22), the control group 1 (n=9), and the control group 2 (n= 12). The comparison with the control group shows that the intervention group had fewer emotional/behavioral problems. Following this, we evaluate the ECD program and discuss its effects.

Previous studies of environmental support resources for school-aged children have mainly focused on individuals giving social support. This study reports the findings of support resources via the Photo Projective Method (PPM), which is an approach to understand children’s perspective on them and psychological environments through photographs focusing on friendship. Data were collected from two public elementary schools in Japan, and 63 children (aged 11-12) participated in our research in 2008 and 2009. After the PPM, semi-structured interviews were conducted where the participants were asked to choose their favorite photos and talked about the subjects photographed. The photographs were classified into “persons”, “places”, “animals”, and “objects”. Persons were the most photographed, particularly 69% of the participants photographed their friends. As for the relationship between the children and their resources, 11 categories appeared by KJ method: companionship, commitment, intimacy, perceived-being-accepted, personal reminiscence, feeling of relaxation, having positive emotions, being together, mood enhancement, affection, and indirectly relationship. Finding suggested the significance of using ecological models to comprehend support resources for the children. Discussion centers around psychological education and assessment tool to support children at school.

This study aims to understand the change in behavior of two hyperactive students who commenced primary school, based on their interaction with teachers and other students in the classroom. I observed the participants in their classroom and noticed various aspects of their interaction. Their respective processes of adjustment to the class were similar. First, the principal visited the kindergarten class to obtain information on the two hyperactive students before they commenced primary school, and then assigned class teachers who will be able to adjust for each hyperactive student. Furthermore principal reassigned one teacher to first grade classroom to treat these students. Before the entrance ceremony, each class teacher interacted with the parents of only the two hyperactive students to know the students better. After the orientation, the class teachers asked the other students’ parents to cooperate and adjust for the two hyperactive students. As the class teachers prioritized facilitating the adjustment of the two students and building a healthy rapport with them, they were not compelled to abide by the time schedule or school. Gradually these attempts were required to build limited settings, but this limitation heightened their dependency on their class teachers.

Gender Identity Disorder (GID) is the mental disorder described in DSM-N-TR. Earlier literature speculated that the cause of GID is genetic or biological, and thus physical treatments are selected (over psychological treatments) in clinical settings. However, physical treatments of GID have many problems, such as the ignorance of diversity within gender identity and the invasiveness of medical operation. Moreover, a large number of studies indicate that the psychological difficulties people with GID experience have a negative impact on the mental health of these individuals. These facts suggest that psychological support is needed for people with GID in order to understand cross-gender transition and experience the process of social re-adaptation in cross-gender transition by means of semi-structured interview to FTM individuals.

Results from Modified Grounded Theory Approach (M-GTA) show the following three phases: “Discomfort towards previous adaptive condition and anxiety of diverting from that situation”, “Exploration and conflict of social adaptation to new gender”, “Autonomous re-construction of social adaptation and struggle with the dichotomous (i.e. male to female) sex”. Among these three phases, difficulties regarding sex distinction pose different meanings. Furthermore, in the third process (i.e. autonomous re-construction of social adaptation), FTM accepts one’s characteristic as a person beyond his/her sex and hope for a society where GID can be as he/she is. These results suggest that psychological professionals have a potential role in not only assisting people with cross-gender transition, but in the advocacy and empowerment of these individuals. Future research should broaden the scope of the present findings to MTF and aim to benefit the QOL of all GID people.