Biomedical subjects

Tamar Mendelson

Publications and source records attributed to Tamar Mendelson.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Toward evidence-based interventions for diverse populations: The San Francisco General Hospital prevention and treatment manuals.

Clinical trials have seldom included adequate samples of people of color. Therefore, practitioners serving ethnic minorities often do not have access to readily available evidence-based interventions. This article summarizes the development and empirical evaluation of prevention and treatment manuals designed for low-income ethnic minority populations at San Francisco General Hospital. The manuals were often designed by people of color familiar with the communities for which they were developed. Independent research teams in multi-site national and international clinical trials have evaluated many of these manuals with encouraging results.

Attitude to Health↗

PubMed2003

Childhood emotional invalidation and adult psychological distress: the mediating role of emotional inhibition.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate a model in which chronic emotional inhibition mediates the relationship between a history of childhood emotional invalidation or abuse and adult psychological distress. METHOD: One hundred and twenty-seven participants completed a series of self-report questionnaires, and a subset of this group (n=88) completed an additional measure of current avoidant coping in response to a laboratory stressor. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate and compare a full and partial mediational model. RESULTS: Findings strongly supported a model in which a history of childhood emotional invalidation (i.e., psychological abuse and parental punishment, minimization, and distress in response to negative emotion) was associated with chronic emotional inhibition in adulthood (i.e., ambivalence over emotional expression, thought suppression, and avoidant stress responses). In turn, emotional inhibition significantly predicted psychological distress, including depression and anxiety symptoms. CONCLUSION: This study found support for a model in which the relation between recollected negative emotion socialization in childhood and adult psychological distress was fully mediated by a style of inhibiting emotional experience and expression. Although it is likely that childhood emotional inhibition is functional (e.g., reduces parental distress and rejection), results suggest that chronic emotional inhibition may have long-term negative consequences for the inhibitor.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Dialectical behavior therapy for depressed older adults: a randomized pilot study.

OBJECTIVE: Although there is evidence for the efficacy of antidepressants and for some individual and group psychotherapy interventions for depressed older adults, a significant number of these do not respond to treatment. Authors assessed the benefits of augmenting medication with group psychotherapy. METHODS: They randomly assigned 34 (largely chronically) depressed individuals age 60 and older to receive 28 weeks of antidepressant medication plus clinical management, either alone (MED) or with the addition of dialectical behavior therapy skills-training and scheduled telephone coaching sessions (MED+DBT). RESULTS: Only MED+DBT showed significant decreases on mean self-rated depression scores, and both treatment groups demonstrated significant and roughly equivalent decreases on interviewer-rated depression scores. However, on interviewer-rated depression, 71% of MED+DBT patients were in remission at post-treatment, in contrast to 47% of MED patients. At a 6-month follow-up, 75% of MED+DBT patients were in remission, compared with only 31% of MED patients, a significant difference. Only patients receiving MED+DBT showed significant improvements from pre- to post-treatment on dependency and adaptive coping that are proposed to create vulnerability to depression. CONCLUSION: Results from this pilot study suggest that DBT skills training and telephone coaching may offer promise to effectively augment the effects of antidepressant medication in depressed older adults.

Adaptation, Psychological↗