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Biomedical subjects

S H Zarit

Publications and source records attributed to S H Zarit.

66 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
PubMed1984

The structure of post-retirement adaptation for recent and longer-term women retirees.

A review of the literature on adjustment to retirement reveals that many investigators have studied retirees together as a group, regardless of the amount of time they have been retired. The present study questions the validity of that approach. The post-retirement adaptation of a group of 59 relatively recent (3-6 years) and 122 longer-term (7 + years) retirees was compared via canonical correlation analyses. The results showed that the structure of post-retirement adaptation differed for the two groups. The relatively recent retirees' adaptational variate emphasized satisfaction with retirement (.990) and showed weaker loadings on self-esteem (.475) and happiness (.374). Corresponding factor loadings for the longer-term retirees were -.340, .827 and .494, respectively. Thus, retirement satisfaction (or job deprivation) was a more salient aspect of the recent retirees' adaptation while longer-term adaptation was a more general phenomenon. These results suggest that the inclusion of longer-term retirees in retirement research may obscure the important correlates of adaptation to this life change.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1984

Psychological deficits in depressed medical patients.

A frequent clinical problem observed in the medical setting is depression secondary to the impact of physical illness and hospitalization. Typically, approaches developed on physically healthy samples are applied to these patients without many specific data on this particular subtype of depression. Both cognitive abilities and behavioral functions were assessed in a sample of medically ill depressed patients, who were compared to medically ill nondepressed patients and community-dwelling healthy controls. Illness and attendant hospitalization were associated with deficits in psychomotor speed, recognition memory, and abstract abilities, but depression was not associated with further disruptions. On behavioral indices, depression, but not hospitalization and illness, was associated with deficits in the interpersonal realm of functioning. These findings suggest that deficits on performance of psychological tasks in depressed ill patients can be explained by illness and hospitalization. The behavioral data further characterize the depressive as having difficulty in social relations, which suggests that interventions like social skills training and mobilization of social networks may be an effective addition in the treatment of the depressed medical patient.

Aged↗
PubMed1979

Helping an aging patient to cope with memory problems.

Memory loss is often a subjective symptom rather than an objective one. Complaints of poor memory appear to be related to stereotypes of aging and to the presence of depression, rather than to chronic brain disease. Reassuring an elderly person that occasional forgetfulness does not indicate senility, and improving morale in those who are depressed, effectively reduce exaggerated memory concerns.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1978

Brain function, intellectual impairment and education in the aged.

In assessing behavioral problems of the elderly there is a need for procedures which reliably indicate the presence and extent of impaired brain function. In this study, the relation of two mental status measures [the Mental Status Questionnaire (MSQ) and the Face-Hand test] to intellectual performance and education was evaluated. The sample consisted of 153 consecutive inpatients and outpatients referred to a gerontology clinic. Intellectual performance was assessed with 8 tests of learning and memory, such as Paired Associates and Babcock Story Recall. The findings indicate that positive ratings for impaired brain function on either mental status test were related to lower intellectual performance at each of three levels of education - grade school, high school, and college. Subjects with more education and mental status scores indicating mild impairment performed better on intellectual tests than did less educated persons with no brain dysfunction, but they showed significant deficits compared to other subjects with similar education and intact brain function. Larger intellectual deficits were found when the patient made more test errors and when both tests gave positive ratings. These results confirm the importance of the MSQ and Face-Hand tests as screening devices for the intellectual deficits associated with impaired brain function in a clinically heterogeneous population.

Aged↗
PubMed1975

Memory complaint and impairment in the aged. The effect of depression and altered brain function.

To clarify the role of memory impairment in the aged as a normal or psychopathological phenomenon, 153 persons 50-years-old and over with varying degrees of depression and altered brain function were compared for their complaints about memory and actual performance on a series of memory tests. It was found that while performance varied with altered brain function, complaint was related to level of depression, regardless of performance. Exaggerated memory complaint was considered one manifestation of a general pattern of discrpant reporting of symptoms by depressed persons, and apparently related to an underlying personality factor. The complaint of superiority of remote over recent memory was not substantiated empirically, but was considered part of the pattern of stereotyped language and attitudes characteristic of depressed persons.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1975

Aging and adaptation to illness.

The relation of age, adaptation to illness, and the severity of cerebral dysfunction was evaluated for persons having suffered cerebrovascular accidents (CVA). All (89) subjects (age range 38 to 84 years, mean 62) were interviewed at least 1 mo. following onset of illness. It was found that older persons were more likely to manifest mental impairment following a DVA but that measures of sensory and motor functions were not similarly affected. The association of age and psychological adaptation varied, depending on the severity of brain dysfunction. Among a minimally impaired group, older persons tended to be more depressed and to use less denial than younger subjects. While denial was increasingly manifested by all persons with severe degrees of cerebral dysfunction, this change was shown to a greater extent by older subjects. The findings suggest that the severity of cerebral dysfunction may be a more critical factor in determining adaptation to illness than chronological age.

Adaptation, Psychological↗