PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

S Himmelfarb

Publications and source records attributed to S Himmelfarb.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1989

Effects of attachment bereavement and pre-event conditions on subsequent depressive symptoms in older adults.

A sample of 1,411 older adults (age 55+) who had been interviewed both prior to and after bereavement were studied, allowing for pre-event controls. Those who had lost a parent, spouse, or child had the strongest depressive reactions, as predicted by an attachment-bonding hypothesis; however, material losses were also related to depression. Although bereavement/loss events were clearly related to subsequent depression even after pre-event depression, resources, and events were controlled, certain pre-event characteristics were predictive of the bereavement/loss events, including prior undesirable events, age, and urban/rural residency. A further analysis of 1,007 persons with two post-event interviews (at 6-month to 1-year follow-up) revealed an initial depressive reaction to a bereavement/loss event, which then dissipated completely within 1 year's time. Generally, bereavement appeared to have limited etiologic importance.

Adjustment Disorders↗
PubMed1988

Effects of bereavement/loss and pre-event status on subsequent physical health in older adults.

Males and females aged fifty-five and older were interviewed before and after three types of bereavement/loss: attachment bereavement (child, spouse, parent), nonattachment bereavement (sibling, grandchild, close friend), and other losses (nonbereavements). Five measures of health were used. Before pre-event health was accounted for on self-report measures of health status and medical conditions, pre-event measures of environmental factors and impact measures of bereavement/loss events had significant but modest effects on post-event health. However, after pre-event health was taken into account, the effects of bereavement and other losses were pale in comparison. Bereavement/loss events were not related to subsequent deaths, health events, or the use of medical services. Environmental factors were modestly predictive of nonattachment bereavements and other losses. An unexpected finding was that other losses had stronger effects on health than bereavements. Trend analysis over eighteen months showed a modest decline in health status immediately after a loss event, followed by an improvement in health. In general, this older adult sample handled bereavements and other losses with minimal morbidity and mortality.

Aged↗
PubMed1985

Infant temperament and noncompliant behavior at four years: a longitudinal study.

Noncompliant behavior in early childhood (i.e., exaggerated, but age-appropriate negativism) has been inadequately studied. This longitudinal study explores preschool temperament and maternal behavior as current correlates of negativistic behavior at age 4, and early maternal characteristics and infant temperament as etiological variables in the production of negativism. Longitudinal evidence was collected from 62 mother-child dyads, representative of all social classes. This evidence included home observations of maternal and child behavior at 4 years, a temperament questionnaire at 4 years, a questionnaire about infant temperament, and observational and interview measures at various stages from birth to 3 years, of infant behavior and maternal characteristics. The findings suggest that infant and childhood temperament (especially the degree of infant fussiness) are highly predictive of physical noncompliance, and that physical noncompliance is unrelated to maternal or demographic variables. A combination of maternal variables including warmth, closeness, and verbal directiveness, both positive and negative, as well as child variables, predict verbal noncompliance. Demographic variables, temperament, and maternal attitudes predict passive noncompliance. Noncompliance is viewed as a complex phenomenon in which constitutional and environmental variables interact.

Child Behavior Disorders↗
PubMed1984

The prevalence and correlates of anxiety symptoms in older adults.

An anxiety symptom scale was administered to a community sample of 713 males and 1338 females representative of persons aged 55 and older in Kentucky and quite similar to that of the US population in that age range. On the basis of a cutting point established previously, 17.1% of the males and 21.5% of the females were estimated to experience sufficient anxiety symptoms to place them at risk so as to require some form of intervention. In addition to gender and marital status differences, the study found a systematic but complex relationship between anxiety and age within this age range. Anxiety was inversely associated with socioeconomic status, education, and urban dwelling. Anxiety was inversely and highly correlated with physical health, and related to the presence of nine specific medical conditions and the need for and use of a number of medical services. The implications of the findings regarding the use of medical services for early diagnosis and treatment for mental health needs are discussed.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1984

Fatherless adolescents' feelings about their mothers--a pilot study.

Data from a study on feelings of Jerusalem high school students about their parents were used to explore fatherless adolescents' feelings about their mothers. Only eighteen such cases were found in this population and they were divided into two groups: twelve girls and six boys. The boys and the girls from two-parent families served as control groups. Statistical evaluation showed that fatherless adolescent girls perceived their mothers as significantly less benevolent (p less than 0.01) than girls from two-parent families of similar sociodemographic background. In the smaller group of boys no differences were found.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

Stability and melting kinetics of structural domains in the myosin rod.

The thermal stability and melting kinetics of the alpha-helical conformation within several regions of the rabbit myosin rod have been investigated. Cyanogen bromide cleavage of long myosin subfragment-2 produced one coiled-coil alpha-helical fragment corresponding to short subfragment-2 with molecular weight 90,000 (Mr = 45,000) and two fragments from the hinge region with molecular weights of 32,000 to 34,000 (Mr = 16,000 to 17,000) and 24,000 to 26,000 (Mr = 12,000 to 13,000). Optical rotation melting experiments and temperature-jump kinetic studies of long subfragment-2 and its cyanogen bromide fragments show that the hinge and the short subfragment-2 domains melt as quasi-independent co-operative units. The alpha-helical structure within the hinge has an appreciably lower thermal stability than the flanking short subfragment-2 and light meromyosin regions of the myosin rod. Two relaxation processes for helix-melting, one in the submillisecond range (tau f) and the other in the millisecond range (tau s), are observed in the light meromyosin and short subfragment-2 regions of the rod, but melting in the hinge domain is dominated by the fast (tau f) process. Results suggest that the hinge domain of the subfragment-2 link may be the locus of force generation in a cycling cross-bridge.

Amino Acids↗
PubMed1983

Reliability and validity of five mental health scales in older persons.

Five scales were assessed as mental health measures for older persons: Affect Balance, The Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, General Well-Being, LSI-Z Life Satisfaction, and Trait-Anxiety Inventory. These scales were administered to a community sample of 279 older persons and a clinical sample of 109 older persons who were in psychiatric inpatient units. In both samples, the internal consistency reliabilities for the anxiety, depression, and well-being scales were moderately high to high, for the life satisfaction scale they were acceptable, but the reliabilities for the affect balance scale suggest some caution in its use. For validity, multivariate analyses of variance found that all scales significantly discriminated between the two samples. The well-being and then depression scales were the strongest discriminators while the life satisfaction scale had the weakest validity. Cutting points for the well-being and depression scales are suggested for estimating the proportions of older persons who would be probable at-risk for disorder that requires intervention.

Aged↗
PubMed1983

Prevalence of depression and its correlates in older adults.

Depression was studied in a community sample of 962 males and 1555 females aged 55 years and over living in Kentucky in 1981. The sample was representative of the population in Kentucky in that age group and quite similar to that US population. The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale was used as a measure of depression, and 13.7% of the males and 18.2% of the females were at or above a previously established cutpoint of 20 for adults over age 55 years. Significant relationships to depression were found in both sexes for age, education, income, housing quality, marital status, and health. For females, the age-depression relationship was not linear. By far the strongest relationship was with self-reported physical health. Significant proportions of those with self-reported kidney or bladder disease, heart trouble, lung trouble, hardening of the arteries, and stroke were above the depression cutpoint. For those conditions, physicians could expect high levels of concomitant depression in about one fourth of males and at least one third of females. These levels of depression were not found for those with high blood pressure, stomach ulcers, cancer, or diabetes. Over half of the sample reported taking prescribed medication and over half had needed a physician's care in the previous six months. Only 3.9% of the males and 3.2% of the females admitted to needing help for mental health problems. Thus, older adults with depression would probably be more likely to seek help from physicians than from services or professionals with explicit mental health labels.

Aged↗