Interventions for Students With Emotional Disturbance in Middle School

Introduction: The Scope of Emotional Disturbance in Adolescents

There are over 470,000 adolescents in the United States who are receiving special education and related services under the category of emotional disturbance (ED), and the number grows each year. Figures from 2003 represent a 2% increase from the previous year and a 20% increase from 1993 (Nelson 2003). Several million school-age children and adolescents with emotional disturbance have been served since the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1975 (Nelson 2003). The status and trends in academic intervention research with students with emotional disturbance must be examined to provide teachers, parents, and school administrators the opportunity to make sound, objective instructional decisions (Nelson 2003).

Approximately 65% of the roughly 475,000 U.S. students identified and provided special education under the category of ED are 12 years of age and older, with the most numerous age group being 15-year-olds (Sabornie 2004). Adolescents with ED generally do poorly in school and thereafter. More than half of 12- to 17-year-old students with ED receive most of their education apart from peers without disabilities — meaning not in regular public schools, or in regular schools but outside of general education classes more than 60% of the day (Sabornie 2004). By comparison, this is true for only one-sixth of adolescent students with learning disabilities (Sabornie 2004).

As a whole, graduation rates for students with educational disabilities have improved over the last ten years, yet not for teens with emotional disturbance. Students with ED have the highest dropout rate — 51% — of any category of students with disabilities, with only 42% graduating from high school with a standard diploma (Sabornie 2004). Despite such large numbers, researchers know little about adolescent students with emotional disturbance, especially the details of their problems and interventions for them, since most professional attention has focused primarily on elementary students rather than middle or high school students (Sabornie 2004).

Characteristics and Eligibility Criteria for Emotional Disturbance

The five eligibility characteristics of the federal education disability category of emotional disturbance are: the inability to learn, relationship problems, inappropriate behavior, unhappiness or depression, and physical symptoms or fears (Sabornie 2004).

While ED is a single federal category of education disability, students with emotional disturbance may demonstrate various problems, especially related to social, personal, and educational issues (Sabornie 2004). This is not unusual, as IDEA's definition of ED explicitly encompasses diverse behavioral, emotional, and cognitive problems. Although this definition has been criticized as being ambiguous and unscientific, the vast majority of criticisms have been presented and debated on logical rather than empirical grounds (Sabornie 2004).

There are few studies that have measured the definition's key constructs or evaluated how the definition influences the identification of students, educational interventions, or other effects of its use (Sabornie 2004). As Edward Sabornie explains, "our knowledge is limited as to how well the definition captures important characteristics of adolescent students with ED because so little research has been conducted on its eligibility characteristics among such students" (Sabornie 2004). According to Sabornie's study, students of middle and high school age with ED exhibit these characteristics to an elevated extent. His research examined variables that appear to correspond to the eligibility characteristics: inability to learn, relationship problems, inappropriate behavior, unhappiness or depression, and physical symptoms or fears (Sabornie 2004).

Sabornie also notes that there have been no studies conducted that compare students with emotional disturbance and those without ED on all five characteristics in the federal definition simultaneously, and few studies that have addressed more than one characteristic at a time (Sabornie 2004). Moreover, there have been few studies conducted on how the characteristics of emotional disturbance might vary by student gender, and none that vary according to race and/or ethnicity (Sabornie 2004).

Academic, Social, and Behavioral Outcomes for Students with ED

After reviewing fifteen studies of learning problems and academic status among teens with emotional disturbance, researchers concluded that students with ED had more problems with mathematics and reading than did students without disabilities, and that academic success was not commensurate with their chronological ages (Sabornie 2004). Students with ED were more likely to fail courses than either students without disabilities or students with learning disabilities. Studies of 9- to 17-year-old students with emotional disturbance revealed that 58% performed below grade level in reading and 93% below grade level in math (Sabornie 2004).

When researchers examined the regular classroom social status of adolescents with ED, they discovered that teens with emotional disturbance were more likely to be rejected and less likely to be accepted than either students without disabilities or students with learning disabilities (Sabornie 2004). Students with ED were judged by middle school general and special education teachers to exhibit less peer-preferred social behavior than students without disabilities. Studies have found that relationship problems are common in teens with ED in work environments and community living settings. Furthermore, researchers found that adolescent males with emotional disturbance had less empathy, less frequent contact with friends, and lower quality of peer relationships than comparable peers without disabilities (Sabornie 2004).

Studies conducted in the mid-1980s found that teens with emotional disturbance "exceeded peers without disabilities on conduct disorder, a multivariate factor of teacher-rated behavior problems reflecting aggression, defiance, and destructiveness" (Sabornie 2004). When specific teacher-rated emotional and behavioral problems among teens with and without ED were subdivided by gender and school level, researchers found that for both genders and both levels (middle and high school), students with emotional disturbance showed greater inappropriate behavior — such as disruptiveness, fighting, disobedience, and destructiveness — than students without ED, although there were a few exceptions among high school girls (Sabornie 2004). A 1999 study found that middle school students with emotional disturbance were significantly more frequently referred for violence and other discipline problems than peers without disabilities (Sabornie 2004).

According to researchers, adolescent students with emotional disturbance were more depressed than students without disabilities, and reported more suicidal ideation and suicidal attempts than those without disabilities (Sabornie 2004). Girls with ED reported more suicidal ideation and attempts than did boys with ED, and approximately 21% of middle school and high school students with ED reported severe depression, with middle school students more depressed than senior high school students (Sabornie 2004). Both teacher and self-reported data indicated that students with emotional disturbance were more anxious than students without disabilities (Sabornie 2004).

Studies have found that for each of the five characteristics of emotional disturbance defined in the federal guidelines, adolescent students with emotional disturbance show significantly greater problems than students without ED (Sabornie 2004). However, Sabornie notes that additional research is needed, because only a few of the existing comparisons of adolescent students with and without emotional disturbance examined possible variations by age, and it is possible that middle and senior high school students differ in the extent to which they tend to show one or more characteristics.

Sabornie's study examined adolescents on all five characteristics within the same study, and he found that students with emotional disturbance exhibited more maladaptive functioning than students without ED. These results indicate that adolescent students with emotional disturbance show high levels of various emotional and behavioral problems of the types defined by IDEA's definition of ED, and support existing literature suggesting that students with emotional disturbance exhibit the five characteristics to an elevated extent (Sabornie 2004).

Sabornie's research also found that students with ED showed more problems than those without ED on the Socially Maladjusted and Overall Competence variables. The Socially Maladjusted findings are compatible with studies suggesting that adolescent students with emotional disturbance are very likely to exhibit antisocial behaviors outside of school, and that detained juvenile delinquents exhibit especially high proportions of various mental disorders (Sabornie 2004). Sabornie's finding of low Overall Competence scores among ED adolescents is compatible with other literature suggesting that "adolescent students with emotional disturbance exhibit few personal strengths and social resources that might mitigate some debilitating consequences of their maladaptive behaviors and emotions" (Sabornie 2004).

Conclusion

The number of middle school students with emotional disturbance continues to climb each year. To help ensure that these children achieve and maintain grade-level skills, and overcome behavior that may hinder their emotional and social growth, it is important to seek some type of professional intervention.

Works Cited

Harris, Karen M. (2002, June 22). A school, family, and community collaborative program for children who have emotional disturbances. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. Retrieved November 11, 2006 from HighBeam Research Library.

Nelson, Ron J. (2003, September 01). Status of and trends in academic intervention research for students with emotional disturbance. Remedial and Special Education. Retrieved November 11, 2006 from HighBeam Research Library.

Sabornie, Edward J. (2004, September 22). Characteristics of emotional disturbance in middle and high school students. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. Retrieved November 11, 2006 from HighBeam Research Library.

Sugai, George. (2000, September 22). A self-management functional assessment-based behavior support plan for a middle school student with EBD. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions. Retrieved November 11, 2006 from HighBeam Research Library.

Wong, Eugene H. (2004, September 22). A model for school psychology practice: addressing the needs of students with emotional and behavioral challenges through the use of an in-school support room and reality therapy. Adolescence. Retrieved November 11, 2006 from HighBeam Research Library.