Professional shortages of geriatrically trained social workers pose a barrier to mental health care for older adults. Integrating graduate social work interns into primary care settings may increase the availability of trained social workers. However, few studies provide guidance on how to develop an interprofessional healthcare placement focused…

Social support has been shown to buffer the relationship between life stress and psychological distress in late life. However, little attention has been paid to personality variables that are associated with the capacity to effectively utilize social support. Although the buffering effects of social support were replicated in our sample of 134…

Administered the brief Symptom Inventory, an abbreviated form of the Symptom Check List-90, to 364 female and 201 male older adults, and compared the scores to a normative sample of younger adults. Results indicated that the elderly report higher levels of distress on most symptom dimensions. (Author/LLL)

Although depression is considered to be common in the elderly, reliable rates of prevalence are lacking. Studies have shown that age differences on measures of depressive symptomatology can be attributed to higher levels of somatic complaints. In order to examine whether the association between somatic and depressive symptoms varies as a function…

A cross sectional study involving 998 independently living elderly African Americans used the Brief Symptom Inventory to measure paranoid ideation and 14 independent variables including demographic characteristics, cognitive deficit, and depression. Paranoid ideation was found in 10% of the sample. Regression analysis revealed 6 of 14 independent…