Workplace Chaplains

[Garrette]

Are you joking? Burning bushes, tablets given to Moses by god, the OT is replete with direct communication by "g-d." A rabbi who said that defition #6 doesn't apply would have to explain how having "g-d" dictate ten commandments and making a covenent doesn't constitute "direct communitcation with the divine."

The rabbi interpreting the text is not claiming direct communication. Most rabbis, in my experience, even admit to human bias in translation and copying.

It is therefore to them an academic exercise in finding the legalistic interpretation of the Torah.

If you do not allow that leeway then I suggest you need to aim your criticism at the entirety of Common Law as their is not rational basis for even the Magna Carta save that it works.

And if you're going to use that defense then you'll have to allow it in the case of chaplains.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

The rabbi interpreting the text is not claiming direct communication. Most rabbis, in my experience, even admit to human bias in translation and copying.

It is therefore to them an academic exercise in finding the legalistic interpretation of the Torah.

Good point. However, that still does leave the issue "g-d" to be dealt with as well as why people should be interpreting a book of dubious value in the first place. If it isn't dictated directly by "g-d," what value does it have as a guide considering that it makes claims to be?

 

[Garrette]

Good point. However, that still does leave the issue "g-d" to be dealt with as well as why people should be interpreting a book of dubious value in the first place. If it isn't dictated directly by "g-d," what value does it have as a guide considering that it makes claims to be?

Too much of a tangent for me.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

Too much of a tangent for me.

Perhaps too much of a tanget for this thread.

I'll remove "mystic" and replace with "spiritual leader."

 

[Dancing David]

People think I am joking or exaggerating when I tell them that in psychiatric settings the lowly security officer is frequently a better counselor than the psychologist when it comes to crisis counseling. I am not.

The psychologist is interested in a clinical outcome and perceives little immediate risk and so does not, in my experience, focus efforts on calming someone; he can simply call security if it gets out of hand.

That must be some cherry hospital, the ones I worked in the psych ward was far removed from the security. So techs and other staff were very aware of these issues. And all staff were required to perform safety measures as needed, the first is personal awareness, the second is de-escalation, the third is running like heck and the fourth is physical restraint.Must have been some sort of bone head haven. In my experience in mental health the more front line you are the more you are aware of these issues, including the psychiatrists. The ones I worked with did daily rounds on the ward and took calls in the middle of the night for admissions, they were very concerned about the potential for safety and personal safety. So your setting sounds very bone headed. especialy given the cost conserving nature of modern treatmen such boneheadedness is usualy not tolerated in central Illinois.

Now the ER/ED is a different setting, there are times when you are doing crisis intervention in the ED when you don't have the time or authority in the ER to calm a person down. And they may be physicaly agitated and because of thier mental condition not capable of deeescaolation. In that setting the security is usualy on stand by. Often in crisi work you make people upset because you tell them they can't go to the hospital and they start acting out. i know that there are times security in the ER had to deal with some hopped up yahoo or some anti-social trying to angle into the hospital. But then if I had three to four people to see in the ED, I didn't have the time to spend with someone hopped up on meth or coke, especialy if I got a jail call at the same time. So the ER is a different setting.

Security, on the other hand, have a vested interest in not tangling with the 280 pound paranoid schizophrenic deemed mentally unfit to stand trial for killing his sister and her boyfriend (actual patient I dealt with; not made up).

The forensics suck, the antisocial is a bite. As a male case manger I often got them on my case load. State OPs in general suck because of the concetration of really sick people.

I lost track of how many times clinical staff called for us to physically restrain a patient so they could administer medication he was refusing only to personally calm the patient down and convince him to take it orally without the need for restraint.

Yeah, that is bad practice to say the least. i have to wonder why that was happening, at the state OPs in Illinois there just isn't that luxury. And you can not administer meds to someone against thier will unless they are already in physical restraint and still at risk.
Illinois has a guy who is unfit to stand trial for over thirty years because of his refusal to take meds.

I lost track of how many times I cautioned psychiatrists (not just psychologists) to look through the glass window into the common room before they open the door to get a sense of where the patients are and to take one minute every day with the dangerous patients just to say "Hi. I hope you're okay."

Again sounds like a bone head haven.

The security officers I trained and supervised did this. When that dangerous patient got rowdy with clinical staff, it was rare that security had to physically restrain. We could simply show up and say "John, John, John. What's going on? Come on, man, tell me what's bothering you."

At our local psych unit, you will be dead before security can get there, so there must be some darwinian selection at work. Being nice to people is good practice and a survival skill. i got through many sessions with very violent people and I am still here to talk about it.

 

[Dancing David]

You're still not following.

The chaplains themselves are not resources wasted. Remove the counseling part that you object to and they still fill a role which is not only useful but mandated.

Adding a counseling role to a position already in place is a smart use of resources, not a wasteful one.

And no one has demonstrated that anyone else is more qualified to perform the counseling role, short of a psychologist.

I agree with your post, small point of order, that should read trained psychologists.

many ministers like police officers have life skills training already.

 

[Garrette]

That must be some cherry hospital, the ones I worked in the psych ward was far removed from the security. So techs and other staff were very aware of these issues. And all staff were required to perform safety measures as needed, the first is personal awareness, the second is de-escalation, the third is running like heck and the fourth is physical restraint.Must have been some sort of bone head haven. In my experience in mental health the more front line you are the more you are aware of these issues, including the psychiatrists. The ones I worked with did daily rounds on the ward and took calls in the middle of the night for admissions, they were very concerned about the potential for safety and personal safety. So your setting sounds very bone headed. especialy given the cost conserving nature of modern treatmen such boneheadedness is usualy not tolerated in central Illinois.

Now the ER/ED is a different setting, there are times when you are doing crisis intervention in the ED when you don't have the time or authority in the ER to calm a person down. And they may be physicaly agitated and because of thier mental condition not capable of deeescaolation. In that setting the security is usualy on stand by. Often in crisi work you make people upset because you tell them they can't go to the hospital and they start acting out. i know that there are times security in the ER had to deal with some hopped up yahoo or some anti-social trying to angle into the hospital. But then if I had three to four people to see in the ED, I didn't have the time to spend with someone hopped up on meth or coke, especialy if I got a jail call at the same time. So the ER is a different setting.

The forensics suck, the antisocial is a bite. As a male case manger I often got them on my case load. State OPs in general suck because of the concetration of really sick people.

Yeah, that is bad practice to say the least. i have to wonder why that was happening, at the state OPs in Illinois there just isn't that luxury. And you can not administer meds to someone against thier will unless they are already in physical restraint and still at risk.
Illinois has a guy who is unfit to stand trial for over thirty years because of his refusal to take meds.

Again sounds like a bone head haven.


At our local psych unit, you will be dead before security can get there, so there must be some darwinian selection at work. Being nice to people is good practice and a survival skill. i got through many sessions with very violent people and I am still here to talk about it.

Didn't realize your background. Very interesting. Mainly I set up and ran security departments at hospitals that incidentally had a psychiatric ward. Generally, I had fewer issues with clinical staff there, at least after they saw how I worked.

The most hopping place, though, was always the ER and not the psych ward because, as you say, you have to deal with people who are simply distraught now but who are normally level-headed. When the mother of the 16 year old boy brought in from his first car wreck is panicking to see her kid but getting in the doctor's way, you can't put a full nelson on her but you still have to get her out of the way.

At one hospital in central Kentucky, security was also the receiving/holding/observation unit for five counties for the MIWs (Mental Inquest Warrants). Always fun when a (probably) psychiatrically-in-need patient is, by definition, in an agitated state when you meet him/her for the first time.

The examples in my last post, though, referred to Central State Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. It's a psychiatric hospital completely with a high security unit. That portion looks like a prison from the outside, and, yes, there were several bonehead staff there.

 

[Garrette]

I agree with your post, small point of order, that should read trained psychologists.

many ministers like police officers have life skills training already.

Which is what we're trying to get across to ImaginalDisc.

 

[ponderingturtle]

By this reasoning, parents are unqualified to be parents. Many of them abuse their children, you know.

So profeshional child care should have no qualifications or regulation? As we don't enforce such things on parents.

 

[ponderingturtle]

If their job includes counseling duties, then they should become qualified to do so. I think your definition of "counseling" is too broad in this respect.

This is wrong though. It would be like when I suggested having people with real training to do the job and told that phychiatirst are in to short a supply.

That rational holds just as well as saying that medics where a mistake because there are not enough doctors to put them in the units that need them. So we should just have the clergy lay on hands, after all it has been their traditional job for centuries.

 

[ponderingturtle]

It is only after ordination that a clergyman can apply to become a chaplain, and after that, another 12 week course of military stuff is added so they tune their skill set to soldiers, sailors, etc.

And what are the standards for ordination carried across all the various religions that can apply to be chaplains? Depending on the quality of an unknown ammount of varied training, that is what you are advocating?

 

[ponderingturtle]

If the prospective chaplain had to show that he studied from the same texts and interned in the same programs (supervised by the same qualified professionals) as a licensed MSW -- or perhaps if he needed a license himself -- would that satisfy? What about a crisis counselling certification or something -- whatever would be the mental health equivalent of EMT certification?

That was mostly what I was argueing for. There is so little regulation in the mental health industry that such things are rather vague though.

 

[ponderingturtle]

ID, to get the meaning of "a few bad apples," do a small amount of DoD manpower research, and find out how many AF, Army, and Navy chaplains, in all services (Navy provides for Marines, as they do doctors and corpsmen) and see how many are in the force.

The problem here is that it can not be determined how unusual the behavior reported in the articles is. Yes the number of individuals reported is small, but how representitive it is of their behavior is left to the assumptions of the individual.

Just like not all cases where someone was hurt in an unwarrented fashion get reported by the media.

 

[ponderingturtle]

ID, how much time did you spend in uniform? I ask this for clarification, as I have met a number of servicemen who had no use, at all, for chaplains. (There were days where I hoped the sky pilots would piss off, I confess.)

There are two things a chaplain can do, as a lawyer and a doctor can also do, that a commissioned officer or NCO can't do.

One is provide an ear that is not in the chain of command, and

Two, is provide a sounding board, and a kind ear and word, with the legally protected confidentiality on extremely personal matters.

When a soldier is troubled, sometimes he can talk to his chain of command, and sometimes he can't, or feels he (or she) can't. The Chaplain is required by regulation to be available to all sailors/soldiers, regardless of denomination, for such protected discussion, and for venting. He's a free port in the storm. Given the occasionally BS atmosphere that arises from time to time in military units, that haven is like gold for morale.

DR

And the theological education for this work is need because of what?

 

[ponderingturtle]

No. The vast majority of rabbis would rightly reject that label, even if the word itself were not used. So would most priests.

And a great many christians feel that compareing angels to fairies is derrogitory as well. So what invisible entities must you respect the existance of and which ones is it ok to say don't exist?

Does the Army respect the belief in Santa Claus?

 

[joobz]

Combining these two quotes.

And what are the standards for ordination carried across all the various religions that can apply to be chaplains? Depending on the quality of an unknown ammount of varied training, that is what you are advocating?

That was mostly what I was argueing for. There is so little regulation in the mental health industry that such things are rather vague though.

what is it that you are most concerned about? I would have to assume that for a military chaplain, there are performance reviews they must pass in order to function in this capacity, which would address your second post.

I agree that if they have no validation of skills then they might not be very beneficial. But would you prefer hiring life coaches instead? A profession that doesn't requite ANY education or ceritification what so ever?

 

[ponderingturtle]

I agree with your post, small point of order, that should read trained psychologists.

many ministers like police officers have life skills training already.

Is the skill set to talk someone down the same skill set that a counselor needs? The one is when someone is engaging in potentialy unwanted behavior the other is more concerned about emotional status and the like.

 

[ceo_esq]

Two, is provide a sounding board, and a kind ear and word, with the legally protected confidentiality on extremely personal matters.

DR, that's a good point. As a general matter, the so-called "priest-penitent" testimonial privilege is more robust and subject to fewer exceptions than the privilege that attaches to the psychotherapist-patient relationship. In fact, in that respect you're better off confiding in a spiritual advisor than in a lawyer or physician, too.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Combining these two quotes.

what is it that you are most concerned about? I would have to assume that for a military chaplain, there are performance reviews they must pass in order to function in this capacity, which would address your second post.

I agree that if they have no validation of skills then they might not be very beneficial. But would you prefer hiring life coaches instead? A profession that doesn't requite ANY education or ceritification what so ever?

No I would prefer hireing people with credentials and creating certification for the job, not trying to match a modern methodology onto an archaic position.

 

[ceo_esq]

No I would prefer hireing people with credentials and creating certification for the job, not trying to match a modern methodology onto an archaic position.

I realize that military chaplains have been around as long as the armed forces. But why do you think the chaplaincy is especially archaic? The military seems to think the chaplaincy is highly relevant to the modern armed forces. As for matching modern methodologies to old positions (whether the chaplain or the cavalry unit), don't armies do this as a matter of course?