Matching Items (411)
ContributorsWard, Geoffrey Harris (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2018-03-18
Description
ABSTRACT Caregiving studies generally do not focus on the post-caregiving phase of care, or African Americans post-caregivers (AAPCGs). This mixed-methods study guided by the Transitions Theory, explored the experiences of 40 AAPCGs residing in Los Angeles, California and Phoenix, Arizona, whose loved ones died within the last 10 years. Data collection tools included individual interviews, demographic questionnaire, CES-D, Brief Cope, and Social Support. Findings present the specific aims of the study. Aim 1 dealt with the types, patterns and properties of post-caregiving transitions (PCT). Many AAPCGs experienced multiple, simultaneous transitions that continued to impact their lives many years after caregiving ends. Aim 2 dealt with factors that facilitate or inhibit healthy PCT. Facilitators include: Being satisfied with care provided; fulfilling death-bed promises; living out the legacy of the deceased; deep spiritual beliefs in God and support of family, friends and church. Inhibitors include: Experiencing a deep sense of loss, confusion, depression, loneliness, and guilt; physical challenges such as fatigue and exhaustion, breathing problems, dizziness, fainting, cognitive difficulties, pain, headaches, hypertension and insomnia; family conflicts, job or home loss that linger long after PCT. Aim 3 involves process indicators including: connectedness with family, friends, co-workers, church and God; returning to work or school. Coping strategies that helped AAPCGs include: productive ventures, family mementoes, reminiscing, new baby, or visiting cemetery. Appropriate coping led to outcome indicators of mastery such as new environment; making decisions; taking actions; readying oneself for another caregiving role; preparing for one's own life and death; or caring for self. Fluid integrative identities include: Sense of balance, peacefulness and joy, fulfillment, compassion; remembering without pain; or new identity. Implications for practice, policy, education and research include: Care providers and policy makers must ensure that AA caregivers receive adequate EOL and hospice information and support for adequate preparation of loved one's death. Geriatric educators must design and implement curricular programming that includes the post-caregiving phase as a very important phase of caregiving. Researchers should design culturally-congruent assessment tools or improve the checklist developed in this study to appropriately measure PCT; and also develop culturally-relevant interventions to facilitate healthy PCT.
ContributorsUme, Ebere Peace (Author) / Evans, Bronwynne C. (Thesis advisor) / Coon, David W. (Thesis advisor) / Keller, Colleen S (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Purpose: This study examines the role of social support on adjustment to widowhood. Past research has indicated that the role of social support on adjustment to widowhood remains inconclusive, and needs further examination. This study examines the varying coping trajectories of middle-aged and retired bereaved spouses. Additionally, this study examines how bereavement stage may also influence one's adaptation to widowhood. Methods: This study used in-depth and semi-structured interviews as a means of understanding the role of social support on adjustment to widowhood. Participants were recruited through two hospice services available in a major metropolitan area in the United States. Convenient and purposive samplings are used in this study; this study will execute a grounded theory approach in order to determine the inconclusive role of social support on adjustment to widowhood. This study is contrasting between two stages- life course stages (middle aged versus retirement aged people) and bereavement stages (a year or less time following the death of a spouse versus three or more years following the death of a spouse). As a means of reducing bias and subjectivity, all data collected during the interview will be transcribed immediately. Results: Middle-aged bereaved spouses reported higher levels of motivation for adjusting positively and quickly towards widowhood due to their concern for protecting the well-being of their surviving young children compared to retired bereaved spouses. Differences between middle-aged widows and widowers have been found in this study; middle-aged widowers have a higher linkage to negative health behaviors. Retired bereaved spouses may fare better depending upon their housing location. Living in a retirement center may lower negative effects of bereavement on retired spouses' health. Conclusions: Types of social support received and expected varied between middle-aged widows and widowers. Gender norms may influence the type of social support widows and widowers receive. Middle-aged widowers are less likely to receive emotional support which may explain their higher linkage to negative health behaviors. Bereavement stage and housing location may be the key factors that influence widowhood trajectories of retired bereaved spouses. Living in a retirement center may lower the negative effects of bereavement on overall health.
ContributorsRafieei, Noshin (Author) / Kronenfeld, Jennie (Thesis advisor) / Haas, Steven (Committee member) / Damgaard, Anni (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Using an integrated perspective of the Grief Work Hypothesis and Posttraumatic Growth Theory, this study was designed to contribute to the sparse existing cross-cultural research by examining and comparing individuals' emotional adjustment and posttraumatic growth in the United States (US) and China. Another main goal was to unfold the predictive effects of different dimensions of locus of control, coping strategies and social support on the outcomes and further, to explore cultural differences in the underlying mechanisms. Web-based survey was disseminated and administered in the US and China. One thousand and seventy-eight participants completed the survey and met the criteria such that they were eighteen years old or older and experienced death of a loved one six to thirty-six months ago. As expected, US participants experienced higher levels of subjective well-being, lower levels of complicated grief and posttraumatic growth than Chinese participants. They also reported higher external yet lower internal locus of control, less frequent use of active and avoidance coping, and less informational support and negative social interactions than their Chinese counterparts. No difference in emotional support was evidenced between the two cultures. After controlling for demographic, loss-related information and the impact of post-bereavement life events, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that culture, external locus of control, avoidance coping and negative social interactions were unique predictors of complicated grief. Furthermore, the relation between external locus of control and complicated grief was weaker for US participants compared to that for Chinese participants. Culture, external and internal locus of control, active and avoidance coping, and negative social interactions significantly predicted individuals' subjective well-being after the loss. Additionally, culture, internal locus of control, active and avoidance coping, informational support, and negative social interactions were identified as unique predictors of posttraumatic growth. Specifically, an interaction effect of avoidance coping x culture emerged such that avoidance coping significantly predicted posttraumatic growth only for US participants. This study extracted the underlying mechanisms of predicting individuals' emotional adjustment and personal growth following bereavement. The influence of culture was also highlighted. Application of existing theories to the Chinese culture and clinical implications of the current study were discussed.
ContributorsTao, Chun, M.S (Author) / Miller, Paul A. (Thesis advisor) / Vargas, Perla A (Committee member) / Hall, Deborah L. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The effects of preventive interventions are found to be related to participants' responsiveness to the program, or the degree to which participants attend sessions, engage in the material, and use the program skills. The current study proposes a multi-dimensional method for measuring responsiveness to the Family Bereavement Program (FBP), a parenting-focused program to prevent mental health problems for children who experienced the death of a parent. It examines the relations between individual-level risk-factors and responsiveness to the program, as well as the relations between responsiveness and program outcomes. The sample consists of 90 caregivers and 135 children assigned to the intervention condition of an efficacy trial of the FBP. Caregivers' responsiveness to the 12-week program was measured using a number of indicators, including attendance, completion of weekly "homework" assignments, overall program skill use, perceived helpfulness of the program and program skills, and perceived group environment. Three underlying dimensions of responsiveness were identified: Skill Use, Program Liking, and Perceived Group Environment. Positive parenting and child externalizing problems at baseline were found to predict caregiver Skill Use. Skill Use and Perceived Group Environment predicted changes in caregiver grief and reports of child behavior problems at posttest and 11-month follow-up. Caregivers with better Skill Use had better positive parenting outcomes. Skill use mediated the relation between baseline positive parenting and improvements in positive parenting at 11-month follow-up.
ContributorsSchoenfelder, Erin (Author) / Sandler, Irwin N. (Thesis advisor) / Wolchik, Sharlene (Committee member) / Millsap, Roger (Committee member) / Barrera, Manuel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The current study was a benefit cost analysis that examined mental and behavioral health and prescription drug service use data of 347 participants (212 youth and 135 caregivers) from a bereavement intervention, the Family Bereavement Program (FBP).The preliminary goals of the current study were to compare the FBP intervention and the Literature Control (LC) groups at the six year follow-up on: (a) number of participants using mental/behavioral health services and prescription drugs, (b) the frequency of use of mental/behavioral health services and prescription drugs, and (c) the costs of mental/behavioral health services and prescription drugs. The final, and primary goal, was to (d) calculate the benefits of the FBP by analyzing the monetary difference between the LC and FBP groups in terms of cost of services used and then by applying those benefits to the cost of the intervention. Data representing participating youths' and caregivers' mental health service use and prescription drug use at the sixth year post-intervention were collected, as were the costs of those services. Results indicated that fewer FBP participants used services and prescription drugs than the Literature Control (LC) participants, but FBP participants, particularly the youth, used some low intensity services more frequently whereas the LC youth used more intensive and costly services more frequently. Consequently, service costs were greater for participants in the LC group than for participants in the FBP group. The benefit cost ratio revealed that the FBP, as delivered, saved society between $.15 and $.27 in mental and behavioral health costs for every dollar spent on the intervention. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.
ContributorsPorter, Michèle M (Author) / Hanish, Laura D. (Thesis advisor) / Sandler, Irwin N. (Committee member) / Wolchik, Sharlene A (Committee member) / Johnson, William G. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Here I explore three varieties of theatrical responses to the cultural amnesia brought about by what scholars have termed “post-AIDS” rhetoric. Specifically, I examine how AIDS history plays, AIDS comedies, and solo plays provide opportunities for theatregoers to participate in, or reflect on the absence of, what I call “AIDS mourning publics.” I understand these publics to be both the groupings of people that gather around a text, film screening, play performance, or event that was created in response to loss due to AIDS, and the text, screenplay, or play text itself when circulated. In these publics participants work through their grief, make political interventions, and negotiate the meanings of AIDS history for gay men whose sexual awakening occurred before and after the development of protease inhibitors. I join theories of grieving, affect in performance, and the public sphere to study these communal events. I use films, plays, and critical reviews to identify how mourning through performance can be therapeutic for cultural and social actors despite activists' and scholars' sole attention to the counterpublicity of these events. Still, counterpublicity remains an important concern because many in the dominant US public sphere consider AIDS to be a benign “manageable condition” in affluent countries like the US. As such, I also present a dramaturgy of mourning and counterpublicity in twenty-first century US AIDS drama and solo performance with attention focused upon how dramatists and solo performers are inviting spectators to engage with, and find new meaning within, this epidemic. For example, I investigate how pairing mourning with genres like comedy produces political interventions within the space between laughing and astonishment. My dramaturgy of mourning also examines recurring themes such as ghosts, the past, intergenerationalism, and AIDS amnesia to interpret how performers have framed individual and collective loss to challenge spectators' understanding of AIDS history. To support my claims I use sources from the New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division, gay and lesbian community newspapers, personal interviews, and my own experiences as a spectator viewing productions of The Normal Heart, thirtynothing, and The VOID.
ContributorsMorrison, Jayson Abraham (Author) / Underiner, Tamara L. (Thesis advisor) / Brouwer, Daniel C (Committee member) / McMahon, Jeff D (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
ContributorsBolari, John (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2018-10-04
ContributorsOftedahl, Paul (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2018-09-29
ContributorsMarshall, Kimberly (Performer) / Meszler, Alexander (Performer) / Yatso, Toby (Narrator) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2018-09-16