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 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.Item Investigation of Bilingual Disadvantage in Verb and Noun Retrieval in Mandarin-English Bilinguals(2017) Li, Ran; Faroqi-Shah, Yasmeen; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The bilingual literature has shown a bilingual disadvantage in spoken language compared to monolinguals. This study first investigated how highly proficient Mandarin-English bilinguals retrieved verbs and nouns compared to monolingual English speakers in a picture-naming task. In order to explain why bilinguals are disadvantaged than monolinguals in language processing, this study examined if it was due to the frequency effect, which was predicted by the “weaker-links”, or if it was due to the translatability effect, as predicted by the cross language interference. Results captured a bilingual effect, a word category effect, and a smaller bilingual disadvantage for verbs than for nouns in lexical retrieval. The bilingual disadvantage could be explained by the “weaker-links” hypothesis, rather than the cross language interference. But the smaller bilingual verb disadvantage could be partially explained by the cross language interference hypothesis. Clinical implications and future research directions were discussed.Item Communication Patterns of Undergraduate Students and their Parents(2007-05-29) Yip, Christine; Guenzler-Stevens, Marsha A.; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this thesis was to examine the student-parent relationship by understanding communication patterns of undergraduate students and their parents. Topics discussed, frequency, initiation, methods of communication, and student satisfaction were investigated and analyzed across race, gender, and age. There were 539 usable respondents (females n = 331, males n = 182) between the ages of 18 and 24 from a Mid-Atlantic university. Students most frequently discussed physical health issues, career planning, living situations, friends, and current financial situations with their parents. More than two-thirds of respondents did not discuss the topics of alcohol and sex. Students and parents both initiated communication an average of five times a week, and cell phone was the most common method of communication. Regarding satisfaction, more than two-thirds of respondents were "satisfied" or "strongly satisfied" with the frequency, methods used by parents, frequency of parent-initiated communication, quality of advice, and level of sharing.