Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item THE PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH EFFECTS OF ADULT CHILDREN ON FATHERS: A LONGITUDINAL STRUCTURAL EQUATION ANALYSIS(2019) Blick, Ryan; Anderson, Elaine; Roy, Kevin; Family Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Men are entering the later stages of life at an unprecedented rate. As fathers and their children age, a gradual transition in the hierarchy of their relationship occurs, eventually resulting in fathers being recipients, rather than providers, of care. Unfortunately, little is known about the effect that adult children (children ages 19 years old and above) have on fathers’ physical and mental health in the middle-to-late stages of life. Using a sample of 588 fathers who were between the ages of 50- and 80-years-old and who had at least one adult child, a series of structural equation models using a cross-lagged panel design were conducted to increase our understanding of 1) the nature of the associations among fathers’ physical health, mental health, relationship quality with their spouse, and relationship quality with their adult children over time in middle-to-late adulthood, and 2) how these associations change as fathers age in middle-to-late adulthood. The findings indicate that fathers’ mental health is strongly correlated with their physical health, marital relationship quality, and relationship quality with their focal child across all age groups of fathers between 57- and 80-years-old. However, a transition seems to occur for fathers between 63- and 68-years-old that increases the within-time salience of fathers’ relationship quality with their focal child. In spite of the strong bivariate correlations, the structural equation models revealed high levels of within-trait stability and a lack of cross-trait predictive power among each of these aspects of fathers’ lives across age groups. The lone exception to this was in the emergence of a significant effect from father’s mental health between the ages of 69- and 74-years-old to their father-child relationship quality six years later, suggesting the possibility of a final transition in father-child relationship dynamics late in fathers’ lives.Item PHYSICAL HEALTH IN PSYCHOTHERAPY: AN EXAMINATION OF DISCUSSION AND RESPONSE FROM THERAPIST AND CLIENT PERSPECTIVES(2017) Fuhrmann, Amy Carr; Hoffman, Mary Ann; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study investigated if and how physical health is discussed in open-ended psychotherapy in a naturalistic setting, including identifying frequency and content of reported physical health issues, in-session responses to these reports, decisions not to report a physical health issue, and relationships with other session variables. Participants were 54 clients and 11 doctoral therapists-in-training engaged in open-ended treatment at a low-fee, community psychotherapy clinic. Data about physical health was collected for each client at intake, and data on report of a physical health issue, characteristics of the report, therapists’ response during the session, decision not to report, working alliance, real relationship, and session evaluation were collected after each session. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, mean comparison, and linear regression. Results indicate that while talking about a physical health issue was relatively infrequent, clients had physical health issues that they found distressing. The most common physical health issues discussed were sleep, weight, and pain. Clients were more likely to share issues in session that they rate as more distressing and related to their mental health than those they chose not to share. Clients were three times more likely than therapists to initiate discussion about physical health in session, and issues that were discussed usually came up in the early phase of long-term, open-ended treatment, and were discussed in more than one session. In sessions when a physical health issue was discussed, depth of the discussion varied greatly, but when clients’ understanding of their physical health issue was evolving or unclear, they more consistently talked about the issue in depth. When talking about physical health, therapists reported helping clients draw connections with their mental health through insight, while clients felt therapists focused more on exploration of the issue. Qualities of the discussion about physical health in session related to client-rated working alliance, real relationship, and session evaluation. Implications for training, research and practice are discussed.