It's never too late to change: A group psychotherapy experience for older women

Group psychotherapy in a mixed gender group is seen as useful for treatment of the unique existential and emotional problems of the older woman. This article describes the first year of a psychotherapy group for older adults, four women and three men in their early fifties to late sixties. Some issues discussed unique to this age group were loss, isolation, changing body image, and changed political views. There were differences in reactions between the men and women. The major value of group psychotherapy for older women is seen as providing a safe arena for exploring current issues, integrating a sense of self, enhancing self-worth, and overcoming isolation and despair.     

An exploratory study of videotapes of long-term group psychotherapy of outpatients with major and chronic mental illness

This study explored patterns emerging in videotaped sessions of group psychotherapy with seven outpatients of a large mental health facility. The 22 sessions spanned the 12th to 27th months of the group's existence. Group members had long histories (25–50 years) of symptoms characteristic of schizophrenia. Each session was rated on the Group Environment Scale. One session from a group in its earlier stages was also rated on the same instrument to give some indication of baseline patterns. Analyses of changes across the 15 months were not statistically significant. However, some GES subscales, including Cohesion, Independence, and Self-Discovery, showed relatively high mean levels across the 15-month period. These elevations are discussed as suggesting the codevelopment of orientations that have sometimes been viewed as incompatible and unattainable for schizophrenics. Interpreted clinically, the GES patterns help to elaborate recent findings about the relatively good success of long-term group therapy with such populations. The study, although merely suggestive, illustrates the potential for gleaning solid and clinically useful data from group psychotherapy research.The authors would like to thank Drs. Jill Rierdan, Nina Fieldsteel, Joseph Christy, and an anonymous reviewer for their suggestions, Kendra Bryant for serving as the reliability rater, and Janet Eltinge for her skilled videotaping.     

Environmental factors in suicide in long-term care facilities.

One major purpose of this study was to identify environmental factors related to suicide in long-term care facilities. Questionnaires were mailed to a random sample of administrators at 1,080 facilities. Information was collected on facility characteristics, overt suicide, and intentional life-threatening behavior. Chi-square analyses revealed 4 environmental characteristics related to suicidal behavior and deaths from suicide: staff turnover, size, auspices, and per diem cost. More suicides occurred in larger facilities and facilities with higher staff turnover. Religious or "other" facilities experienced more suicidal deaths than public or private facilities; facilities charging less experienced more deaths.     

The effect of gender and time-of-day on time perception and mental workload

Two experiments are reported which investigated how subject gender and time-of-day influenced the estimation of duration and the perception of task-related mental workload. In the first experiment, 24 subjects performed a filled time-estimation task in a constant blacked-out, noise-reduced environment at 0800h, 1200h, 1600h, and 2000h, respectively. In the second experiment, 12 different subjects performed an unfilled time estimation task in similar conditions at 0900h, 1400h, and 1900h. At the termination of all experimental sessions, participants completed the NASA Task Load Index workload assessment questionnaire as a measure of perceived mental workload. Results indicated that physiological response, reflected in body temperature change, followed an expected pattern of sequential increase with time-of-day. However, estimates of duration and the perception of mental workload showed no significant effects for time-of-day. In each of the experiments there were significant differences in time estimation and mental workload response contingent on the gender of the participant. These results are interpreted in light of the previous positive findings for circadian fluctuation in performance efficiency and the equivocal findings of a gender difference in time estimation. A unifying account of these collective results is given based on gender by time-of-day interactional effects. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Human Factors Society, Anaheim, CA, October, 1988.     

The psychological present

The present paper compares behavior-analytic and cognitive treatments of the concept of psychological history with regard to its role in current action. Both treatments take the position that the past bears some responsibility for the present, and are thereby obligated to find a means of actualizing the past in the present. Both do so by arguing that the past is brought to bear in the present via the organism. Although the arguments of the two positions differ on this issue, neither provides a complete account. An unconventional treatment of psychological history is proposed, the logic of which is exemplified in anthropological, biological, and psychological perspectives. The unconventional treatment in psychological perspective holds that (a) the organism's interaction with its environment, not the organism itself, changes with experience; and (b) the past interactions of an organism exist as, and only as, the present interactions of that organism. This solution to the problem of psychological history provides obligations and opportunities for analysis that are not available when the more conventional positions of cognitivism and behavior analysis are adopted.     

Adult age differences in memory for routes: effects of instruction and spatial diagram.

Free-recall and multiple-choice measures of memory for landmarks, sequential order, turns, and route configurations were obtained from younger and older adults after they viewed slides of 2 overlapping routes. Instructions focused attention on either the contents of the slides or on the course of the path; a control condition provided no orientational instructions. Half the subjects viewed maplike diagrams of the joint spatial configuration. Age interacted with instruction only for multiple-choice tests of landmark memory. Age interacted with diagram for each of the other 3 route memory components, although the generality of this interaction across instruction condition depended on whether free-recall or multiple-choice tests were used. The results suggest that route memory may involve both scene and layout representation, which may be differentially sensitive to age and presentational variables.