Loyalist College

This special issue of the International Journal of Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork focuses on the intersection of massage therapy and mental health, highlighting the growing body of research exploring its role in psychological well-being. With contributions from leading researchers and practitioners, this issue examines the mechanisms, applications, and outcomes of massage therapy in supporting mental health across diverse populations. Through the collaborative efforts of authors, reviewers, and guest editors Dr. Cynthia Price and Dr. Sarah Fogarty, this collection of work aims to deepen our understanding of how massage therapy can be integrated into mental health care and broader health-care systems.

The recent emergence of institutional survivors’ accounts of mistreatment and abuse in Ontario’s institutions for the “feebleminded” offers a window into Canada’s long history of segregation, mistreatment, and neglect of people labelled intellectually disabled. The breaking of this silence has also allowed the stories of others who were deeply affected by institutionalization to come forward. Narratives from siblings of institutionalized individuals, although not first-hand accounts of the life inside institutional walls, offer much needed perspective on the extensive and ongoing effect of institutionalization in the lives of thousands of families, and offer additional insight from another marginalized group that until now has not held a place in Canada’s visible and spoken history. This paper is a weaving together of three sibling narratives that were part of a panel at the Canadian Disability Studies Association (CDSA) conference in Ottawa, Ontario in June 2015. All sisters of institutionalized persons, the three contributors remark in particular on their profound experiences of loss after their brother or sister was sent away from the family home. The contributors believe that it is through the sharing of such experiences that society can better come to understand the devastation wreaked upon both individuals and families through misinformed and prejudicial policies over a period of more than 150 years.

Campus Clinical is a simulation-based curriculum designed to meet the challenge of decreasing clinical spaces in maternal-child units. The curriculum framework is situated in a constructivist, experiential learning context, integrating Chickering and Gamson's principles for good practice in education. This innovative approach to meeting clinical course learning outcomes is transferable to a variety of settings.

Virtual worlds hold enormous promise for corporate education and training. From distributed collaboration that facilitates participation at a distance, to allowing trainees to experience dangerous situations first-hand without threat to personal safety, virtual worlds are a solution that offers benefits for a multitude of applications. While related to videogames, virtual worlds have different parameters of interaction that make them useful for specific location or open-ended instructional exchanges. Research suggests that participants identify quickly with roles and situations they encounter in virtual environments, that they experience virtual interactions as real events, and that those experiences carry over into real life. This paper will evaluate the attributes of a successful applied training project, the Canadian border simulation at Loyalist College, conducted in the virtual world Second Life. This simulated border crossing is used to teach port of entry interview skills to students at the college, whose test scores, engagement level, and motivation have increased substantially by utilizing this training environment. The positive results of this training experience led the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) to pilot the border environment for agency recruits, with comparable results. By analyzing the various elements of this simulation, and examining the process with which it was used in the classroom, a set of best practices emerge that have wide applicability to corporate training.

Standards of practice for postsecondary special needs programmes are an important element to determining programme effectiveness and programme successes. A number of groups have now suggested practice standards for postsecondary special needs programmes. We amalgamated these suggested practices and queried Ontario students and administrators regarding their opinion of these practice standards. Overall, strong support for most suggested practices was found among students and administrators. However, administrators less strongly supported practices that required enhanced funding, staffing and resources. In addition, students less strongly supported practices that could reduce individualized programming and increase time commitments. Administrators pointed out barriers to achieving practice standards. Time commitments, workload, funding, unclear working definitions (i.e., standards for transition, disabilities) and institutional policy constraints were barriers to achieving suggested practice standards.

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