UCCS

Older Adults and Perceptions of Burden to Others

Meghan A. Marty, M.A., Ed.M., Christopher Sheppard, B.A., & Daniel L. Segal, Ph.D.

The annual convention of the American Psychological Association took place in Washington D.C. last week-end. Unfortunatley, I wasn't able to attend the conference, but I was able to contribute to a poster presentation with others from my research lab.

I participated in my first conference symposium this afternoon! The topic was late life suicide. Four students from West Virginia University and I presented research in this area. Marnin Heisel, PhD, an assistant professor at The University of Western Ontario, was the discussant and did an excellent job of integrating our research findings and linking them to previous late life suicide research.

For my GSA poster this year, we analyzed the psychometric properties of the COPE scale in older adults. The scale, developed by Carver, Scheier, and Weintraub (1989), measures dispositional coping strategies. We used the COPE in my thesis project and wanted to find out more about how the scale performs in community-dwelling older adults. We found strong evidence for internal reliability and modest evidence for validity in this population (see attachments for further information). 

I just found out today that my first manuscript in a professional journal was published this month! I wrote the article on my thesis with two of my committee members, Dan Segal and Fred Coolidge. Here's the full reference:

Marty, M. A., Segal, D. L., & Coolidge, F. L. (2010). Relationships among dispositional coping strategies, suicidal ideation, and protective factors against suicide in older adults. Aging & Mental Health, 14(8), 1015 - 1023.

Dan Segal, PhD, our Director of Clinical Training, recently sent out a document that does a nice job of describing our program, including a list of faculty research interests. Every once-in-a-while I get questions through this blog about our program, so I thought I'd post the document here for anyone who might be applying to our department sometime soon.

One of our professors, Fred Coolidge, was recently featured on a Radiolab podcast about falling. Fred describes the origins of the "hypnic jerk." Click here to listen to the interview.

This afternoon, I presented my thesis project for the first Gerontology Center Colloquium of this fall semester. Each PhD student in our department has the opportunity to present a research project for the series. The talk generated lots of good discussion and interesting ideas for future research.

This month I successfully proposed my dissertation project to my committee (now the real work begins!). As suggested by the title, my project will investigate the way in which low feelings of belongingness and high feelings of burdensomeness interact to increase suicide ideation among older adults. The study is based on a theory developed by Thomas Joiner, PhD and his students at Florida State University.

Today was my last first day of school, as a student anyway. Here's to 22nd grade!