Medication Saving Behaviors of Older Adults: Scale Developed to Assess Family Caregiver Perspectives.

Objectives: This study developed and explored the preliminary reliability and validity of a 6-item Medication Saving Behaviors (MSB) scale when completed by family care partners of older adults.

Methods: Women (N = 119) helping an aging relative with healthcare appointments and medication management completed an online survey including items related to generalized hoarding and medication saving behaviors.

Results: The MSB was psychometrically sound and correlated significantly with hoarding scales and reported number of expired and leftover medications.

Working alliance for clients with social anxiety disorder: relationship with session helpfulness and within-session habituation.

It has been suggested that a strong working alliance encourages clients to take risks during therapy (Raue, Castonguay, & Goldfried, 1993). This encouragement may be important for clients who fear negative evaluations as they engage in risk-taking elements of therapy. This study examined the relationship between working alliance, session helpfulness and measures of emotional processing in 18 clients undergoing cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for social anxiety disorder.

Discriminating between cognitive and supportive group therapies for chronic mental illness.

This descriptive and comparative study employed a Q-sort process to describe common factors of therapy in two group therapies for inpatients with chronic mental illness. While pharmacological treatments for chronic mental illness are prominent, there is growing evidence that cognitive therapy is also efficacious. Groups examined were part of a larger study comparing the added benefits of cognitive versus supportive group therapy to the treatment milieu.

Analyzing reliability of change in depression among persons with rheumatoid arthritis.

Objective: To examine several methods of determining reliability of change constructs in depressive symptoms in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and to demonstrate the strengths, weaknesses, and uses of each method.

Methods: Data were analyzed from a cohort of 54 persons with RA who participated in a combined behavioral/pharmacologic intervention of 15 months duration. These longitudinal data were used to examine 3 methodologies for assessing the reliability of change for various measures of depression.

Anxiety in rheumatoid arthritis.

Objective: To examine the level of anxiety experienced by individuals with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Methods: Data from 2 previous studies were used to compare the level of anxiety (measured by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory) in the following 4 subgroups: a general RA sample, a general osteoarthritis sample, a sample with both RA and major depression, and a normative sample of age-equivalent, working adults. Canonical correlations were used to examine associations between measures of anxiety and measures of both stress and depression.