Leonard Jason, Ph.D.  Professor of Psychology  DePaul University  http://condor.depaul.edu/~ljason/

Leonard A. Jason, Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychology at DePaul University, and Director of the Center for Community Research. He received his Ph.D. in clinical and community psychology from the University of Rochester. Jason is a former president of the Division of Community Psychology of the American Psychological Association (APA) and a past editor of The Community Psychologist. He received the 1997 Distinguished Contributions to Theory and Research Award from the Society for Community Research and Action (Division 27 of the APA). Jason has published more than 350 articles and chapters on chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS); preventive school-based interventions; the prevention of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug abuse; media interventions; and program evaluation. He has served on the editorial boards of ten psychological journals and has edited or written eleven books. Jason has served on review committees of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the National Institute of Mental Health and has received more than $10,000,000 in federal research grants. He has received three media awards from the APA, and is frequently asked to comment on policy issues for numerous media outlets. In 1995, Jason was awarded a grant from NIH to study the epidemiology of CFS. Finally, he was presented the 1997 CSN ACTION Champion Award by the Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome Association of America in appreciation of research and educational efforts in behalf of persons with CFS.

    Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) emerged as a diagnostic category during the last decade. Initial research suggested that CFS was a relatively rare disorder with a high level of psychiatric comorbidity. Many physicians minimized the seriousness of this disorder and also interpreted the syndrome as being equivalent to a psychiatric disorder. These attitudes had negative consequences for the treatment of CFS. Both the CFS case definition criteria and biases in the scoring and selection of psychiatric tests contributed to eliciting high rates of psychiatric comorbidity as well as the possibility of misdiagnosing purely psychiatric cases as CFS cases. In addition, early CFS epidemiological studies, which were based on physician referrals for case ascertainment, underestimated the prevalence of this illness. By the mid 1990's, findings from more representative epidemiologic studies indicated considerably higher CFS prevalence rates. However, the use of the revised CFS case definition might have produced heterogeneous patient groups, possibly including some patients with pure psychiatric disorders. This development complicated the interpretation of epidemiologic data and treatment outcome studies, which currently recommend fundamentally distinct and conflicting rehabilitation programs. Social scientists have the expertise to more precisely define this syndrome and to develop appropriate and sensitive research strategies for understanding this disease.

* Friedberg, F., & Jason, L.A. (1998). Understanding chronic fatigue syndrome: An empirical guide to assessment and treatment. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. [Chapts. 1-4]

    Kids deserve and need more than endless hours of staring at a flat screen to fully experience the joys and growth essential to childhood. This talk will review Jason’s 19 years of research on the use of behavior modification techniques for children who view television excessively. Working with families in which children literally had run of the household television set, viewing between 4 to 8 hours of television daily, Jason devised a system of rewarding kids for positive, non-television related activities like playing with friends or reading a book. He discovered that even for the most die-hard young viewers, these replacement activities eventually became rewarding in themselves, and the need for constant television gradually faded. With guidance and support from parents, children who watch an excessive amount of TV can learn to reduce TV viewing.

This talk will aid families seeking to balance television and other electronic media activities with more positive, active uses of time. This is not always an easy gamble. The first half of talk gives an overview of television in the lives of children including television’s content (from violence, sex, and stereotyping to Big Bird’s educational agenda); the manner in which children process television and the extent to which they comprehend all that they see; and the social, emotional, physical, and academic consequences of heavy viewing. The second half will be more active in nature, giving families a chance to assess their television habits and to choose a path of action ranging from simple rules to advanced electronic equipment to curb their kids’ habits.

http://condor.depaul.edu/~ljason/TVPresen/

* Jason, L.A., & Hanaway, E.K. (1997). Remote control: A sensible approach to kids, TV, and the new electronic media. Sarasota, Fl.: Professional Resource Press. [Chapts. 1, 5 & 6] In this presentation, we will look at why kids watch TV and use other electronic media, and what parents can do when their children spend too much time on these types of activities.

Kids: Television and Electronic Media

    Social action: a fundamental value for community psychologists. Studies indicate community psychologists can actually be involved in bringing about higher-order changes involving regulatory and legislative processes. The studies suggest there are numerous other collaborative roles that we can assume when attempting to bring about change. Studies conducted on attempting to reduce youth access to tobacco will be discussed.

Youth Access to Tobacco

    Media-based health promotion interventions can reach large segments of the population and lower barriers to participation in programs. By collaborating with media specialists, we can develop interventions that might be broader, more publicized, and ultimately more likely to change behaviors and attitudes within the community. This talk describes a series of media interventions involving smoking cessation, drug abuse prevention, stress reduction, weight control, and HIV/AIDS prevention. The process by which Dr. Jason became involved in these interventions is discussed, and the implications of developing these types of large scale behavioral interventions will be discussed.

*Jason, L.A. (1997). Community building: Values for a sustainable future. Westport, CT: Praeger. [Chapt. 6]

• Media and Health Promotion

    Dr. Jason will describe a series of vulnerabilities (e.g., including a fading of religion as a moral guide, and the wish to manipulate the external world for one’s own personal ends) that help account for many of the serious problems facing contemporary society in industrialized countries, including high rates of crime, homelessness, and alcohol, tobacco, and other drug addiction. The result has been a loss of hope, an absence of community, and the loss of tradition and shared meaning. Several wisdom traditions will be presented as illustrations of alternative conceptualizations for defining mental health, along with discussion of the implications of borrowing from these models to set new directions for the helping fields.

*Jason, L.A. (1997). Community building: Values for a sustainable future. Westport, CT: Praeger. [Chapts. 1-3 & 5]

• Community Building
• Oxford House