Geropsychology Research Program
VA Boston Healthcare System, Brockton Division
Jennifer Moye, Ph.D., Michele Karel, Ph.D.
The major theme of our research program is psychosocial concerns in medically ill geriatric patients. The program has two foci: 1) medical decision making including competency determination, values in advance care planning, and patient-family and patient-physician communication; 2) mental health treatment in both outpatient and long term care settings including models of outreach screening, service delivery, and the phenomenology of various conditions (e.g., depression, late life PTSD) in this population. The research program is sited at an outpatient geriatric mental health clinic, and is patient focused and service oriented. Studies have described the neuropsychological correlates of legal indices of competency, values influencing decisions in memory impaired patients, patterns of mental health symptomatology in medically ill patients, mental health treatment outcome in long term care. In addition, our clinic was one of nine sites in the UPBEAT (Unified Psychogeriatric Biopsychosocial Evaluation and Treatment) national demonstration project examining clinical and cost effectiveness of mental health care management for older patients with mental health and medical comorbidities. Ongoing projects are examining: 1) reliability and validity of standardized competency evaluation; 2) methods for enhancing patient-family communication about advance care planning. In addition, we are active in education and training concerning geriatric mental health, ethical issues in long term care, guardianship and conservatorship.
Key Words: Competency, Advance directives, Biomedical ethics, Geriatric psychiatry.
Grant Support: Support for this work comes from the National Institute of Mental Health: NIMH R29 MH57104 (JM). The UPBEAT project was funded through the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Project Site: Geriatric Mental Health Clinic, VA Boston Healthcare System, Brockton Division.
Project Directors: Jennifer Moye, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston VA Healthcare System, Brockton Division. E-mail: jennifer.moye@med.va.gov; Michele Karel, Ph.D., Instructor in Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston VA Healthcare System, Brockton Division. E-mail: michele.karel@med.va.gov . Mail address: 940 Belmont Street, Brockton, MA 02301
Contact Person: Jennifer Moye, Ph.D. Tel No. (508) 583-4500, X3721, FAX (508) 895-0166. E-mail: jennifer.moye@med.va.gov .
Training opportunities: Currently we have two post-doctoral fellows and two pre-doctoral interns focusing on clinical training who may elect to participate in research. We have collaborated with psychology graduate and undergraduate students looking for research experience.
Representative Publications:
Moye J, Karel MJ. Evaluating decisional capacities in older adults: Results of two clinical Studies. Advances in Medical Psychotherapy. 1999; 10:71-84.
Moye J. Assessment of competency and decision making capacity. In P Lichtenberg (Ed.) Handbook of Geriatric Assessment. New York: Wiley. 1999:488-528.
Karel MJ, Lynch B, Moye J. Patterns of lifetime alcohol abuse in a clinical sample of older male veterans. Clinical Gerontologist. 2000; 22:55-71.
Karel MJ, Moye J. Assessing depression in medically ill elderly male veterans: Item-scale properties across and within racial groups. Journal of Mental Health and Aging. 2001; in press.
Moye J, Rosansky J, Llorente M, Jarvik L, and the UPBEAT Collaborative group. Engaging patients in treatment: Lessons learned from the UPBEAT Program. Annals of Long Term Care. 2001; 9:61-67.
Karel MJ. The assessment of values in medical decision making. Journal of Aging Studies. 2000;14:403-422.