Moving Forward in Mental Health Care for Refugee, Asylum-Seeking, and Undocumented Children: Social Determinants, Phased Approach to Care, and Advocacy.

Given the current political and climate crisis, the number of forcedly displaced individuals continues to rise, posing new challenges to host societies aiming to support and respond to the needs of those fleeing war or persecution. In this article, we turn our attention to current and historical sociopolitical contexts influencing the mental health of forcedly displaced children (ie, refugee, asylum-seeking, and undocumented) during their resettlement in high-income countries, proposing timely ways to respond to evolving needs and recommendations to redress ubiquitous structural inequities that act as barriers to education and care for the children, youth, and families seeking sanctuary.

The Need for Sensory-Friendly "Zones": Learning From Youth on the Autism Spectrum, Their Families, and Autistic Mentors Using a Participatory Approach.

Introduction: Differences in sensory processing were linked to a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) before its inclusion as a core characteristic in the revised DSM-V. Yet, research focused on sensory processing and meaningful participation of children and youth with ASD remains relatively scarce. Although refinement of the International Classification of Functioning and Disability (ICF) relies on first-person accounts, longitudinal studies that foreground sensory experiences and its impact on involvement in a life situation from first-person perspectives are largely missing from this body of research. Objectives: In this sub-study, we drew from a longitudinal participatory research project consisting of two separately funded studies with children and youth with ASD and their families between 2014 and 2021. The participatory project used photovoice (PV) methods to identify the primary concerns related to socio-spatial exclusion (PV-1) and the action steps needed to redress them (PV-2). The objective of this sub-study was to understand what really mattered to children with autism, their parents, autistic youth and an adult mentor to consider how their experiential knowledge could deepen understanding of meaningful participation. Materials and Methods: We used an overarching narrative phenomenological and aesthetic theoretical framework to focus data analysis on the bodily sensing experiences related to significant moments or events, followed by an inductive thematic analysis of what mattered about those moments. Results: The topical areas of concern that emerged from analyses were: (1) the relationship between sensory experiences and mental health (motion madness); (2) the indivisibility or layering of sensory and social experiences (squishing and squeezing); (3) the impact when "tricks" to stay involved are categorically misunderstood (When you don't respond in the correct way), and (4) how care and consideration of others can lead to innovative solutions for inclusion (I can't be the only one). Listening to the bodily-sensing experiences of children with ASD, autistic youth and adults, and their families in their own terms has implications for remapping the ICF and envisioning sensory curb-cuts to access, initiate and sustain occupational participation for all.

Keeping care fully alive - An ethnography of Moving-with carers and persons living with dementia.

Metaphors of persons living with dementia as living dead or zombies create images of soulless bodies, consuming the lives of those around them. Such metaphors also accentuate the public fear of dementia as one of the most threatening conditions that can befall persons or their loved ones. Drawing from an ethnography on the experience of carers and persons living with dementia, the sub-study described in this article focused on specific events within Moving-with-an eight sessions movement group designed to cultivate new experiences of self with others. At the end of the last session, a carer referred to her experience of Moving-with as "some good times." Her statement raised questions about what constituted those "good times" for that particular carer and how they came to be. Using a narrative-phenomenological approach that foregrounds the particularities of human interactions, we traced the course of a "good time," from its creation by all the participants in a Moving-with session to how it entered into the couple's everyday life outside the sessions. A microanalysis of those significant experiences illuminates how the improvisational actions of those involved made space for others to respond in ways not solely defined by their caregiving relationship. Dewey's philosophy on aesthetics further highlights the fully alive nature of such moments and underscores how the embodied and ethical nature of care arises in the tension between past and present. Care as an experience is, thus, never fixed. Attention to those moments contributes to the ways in which we can (re)define and enact care. In other words, tracing the creation of fully alive moments and their portrayal can contribute to keeping care, itself, fully alive.

Wearable Technology for Detecting Significant Moments in Individuals with Dementia.

The detection of significant moments can support the care of individuals with dementia by making visible what is most meaningful to them and maintaining a sense of interpersonal connection. We present a novel intelligent assistive technology (IAT) for the detection of significant moments based on patterns of physiological signal changes in individuals with dementia and their caregivers. The parameters of the IAT are tailored to each individual's idiosyncratic physiological response patterns through an iterative process of incorporating subjective feedback on videos extracted from candidate significant moments identified through the IAT algorithm. The IAT was tested on three dyads (individual with dementia and their primary caregiver) during an eight-week movement program. Upon completion of the program, the IAT identified distinct, personal characteristics of physiological responsiveness in each participant. Tailored algorithms could detect moments of significance experienced by either member of the dyad with an agreement with subjective reports of 70%. These moments were constituted by both physical and emotional significances (e.g., experiences of pain or anxiety) and interpersonal significance (e.g., moments of heighted connection). We provide a freely available MATLAB toolbox with the IAT software in hopes that the assistive technology community can benefit from and contribute to these tools for understanding the subjective experiences of individuals with dementia.