Until relatively recently, most psychologists have had limited professional involvement with older adults. With the baby boomers starting to turn 65 years old in 2011, sheer numbers of older adults will continue to increase. About 1 in 5 older adults has a mental disorder, such as dementia. Their needs for mental and behavioral health services are…

Purpose: This study provides preliminary evidence for the acceptability, reliability, and validity of the new Alzheimer's Disease Knowledge Scale (ADKS), a content and psychometric update to the Alzheimer's Disease Knowledge Test. Design and Methods: Traditional scale development methods were used to generate items and evaluate their psychometric…

Examined effects of 12-week aerobic exercise program on psychological well-being and cognitive functioning in 48 urban older adults. Subjects were randomly assigned to aerobic group, social activity group, or waiting list group. Results indicated little change in psychological well-being and provided limited support for association of…

While it is clear that health status is important in determining morale, and that social contact also contributes to morale, the interaction of health status and social contact on morale is not well understood. Elderly frail community residents (N=40) were interviewed twice in a 1-year period about their contact with friends, grandchildren,…

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…

Previous research has shown that heightened fear of crime in the elderly does not reflect actual crime rates as much as a perceived vulnerability due to diminished physical and economic resources. As part of a larger Los Angeles study on personal emergency response systems, this study examined the relationships among fear of crime, crime rates,…

Examined age differences and attributions of age differences in locus of control orientation for 60 college students and 97 older adults. Findings showed that both age groups misattributed levels of control orientation to the other group when compared to that group's self-ratings. Older adults endorsed more internal beliefs than did college…

Assigned nursing home residents (N=59) to one of three conditions: task-oriented peer counseling group, insight-oriented peer counseling group, or control. Task group increased in internal locus of control and life satisfaction; insight group increased in internal locus of control and trust; controls decreased in trust. (Author/ABL)

In developing training models in mental health and aging, it is necessary to synthesize existing expertise in areas such as life span development, clinical psychology, and community psychology in order to create a conceptual foundation and a set of intervention approaches for these training programs. (Author/WI)

Although caregiving has become a major gerontological focus, less attention has been paid to differences in family responses to the elder's impairment depending on whether the disability is physical or mental and to the effects on family members beyond the primary caregiver. Data for this study were taken from in-person interviews with a subsample…

Examined perceptions of personal control in 1,267 individuals in 4 generations of families participating in multiple cohort, longitudinal study spanning 1971-91. Over 20 years, mean levels of personal control became more internal among 560 individuals who participated in all measurements, probably reflecting environmental factors. Found…

This study of life satisfaction and competence was part of the Individual and Community Competence Project (Gatz and others, 1976). It included two groups of people, community workers (N=21) and non-workers (N=22), from each of two settings, Model Neighborhoods Areas (MNA) and Central Area (CNA). The MNA is a black area, while the CNA is a white…

This report describes the University of Southern California's (USC) gerontology career preparation project, which was funded for the following training activities in mental health and aging: (1) traineeships for graduate students in USC's doctoral track in clinical psychology and aging and in the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology master's track…

The 1980's may be remembered as the decade of the older woman, due in part to demographics and also to public awareness heightened by the women's movement. If psychology is to exert a constructive force towards the optimization of mental health of older women, it is essential for psychologists to be aware of the limits of current knowledge and the…