Concurrent and predictive validity of the suicide intervention response inventory.
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Adult↗
Biomedical subjects
R A Neimeyer
Publications and source records attributed to R A Neimeyer.
A personal construct approach to perception of disclosure targets.
Investigating the perception of targets for self-disclosure from the perspective of the psychology of personal constructs, it was predicted that respondents from a mixed-nationality group would (a) characterize friends more than acquaintances in terms of 'superordinate' personality-descriptive dimensions, (b) 'differentiate' friends more than acquaintances by extensive application of constructs to them, and (c) 'polarize' targets for high disclosure by construing them sharply and meaningfully in terms of personally significant dimensions of meaning. All predictions received significant support for 34 college students (Mdnage 22 yr.) who responded in writing to a questionnaire. The results suggest the fruitfulness of further examining self-disclosure and friendship formation from a vantage point which emphasizes the perceptual and interpretive framework of an adult person.
Adolescent↗
Grief therapy and research as essential tensions: prescriptions for a progressive partnership.
Although the articles in this Special Series take an important step toward fostering mutually respectful dialogue between thanatological research and practice, many impediments still stand in the way of the continuation of the conversation. This closing coda therefore offers several prescriptions for sustaining a constructive exchange between the two domains, in the hope that a more artful and empirically informed grief therapy might yet take shape that embodies the unique strengths of each perspective.
Grief↗
Reactions of beginning counselors to situations involving death and dying.
It has commonly been assumed by thanatologists that client problems centering on death and dying are particularly demanding and difficult for the mental health professional. The present study tested this assumption by asking 81 beginning counselors to rate their degree of comfort with 15 counseling scenarios, 5 of which involved death or loss (e.g., terminal illness, suicide, AIDS, grief) and 10 of which concerned other focal issues (e.g., rape, marital problems). As predicted, counselors rated situations involving death and dying as substantially more uncomfortable than other presenting problems. However, counselors' levels of experience and personal death threat were unrelated to their response to death situations, leaving the cause of their discomfort with such situations unexplained.
Adult↗
Death concern and attitudes toward the elderly in nursing home personnel.
The present project investigated the relationship between death fear and threat, attitudes toward the elderly, and personal anxiety toward one's own aging in a group of 145 nursing home employees and a matched comparison group of 130 individuals who worked in non-death related occupations. Contrary to predictions, nursing home personnel did not have higher levels of death threat when compared to controls; in fact, control group subjects had higher levels of death concern on two dimensions of death fear (fear of the dead and fear of significant others dying). However, the results also indicated that increasing levels of death concern were associated with greater anxiety toward aging, especially in the nursing home sample, and nursing personnel displayed significantly fewer positive attitudes toward the elderly than did controls.
Adult↗
Cognitive predictors of suicide risk among hospitalized psychiatric patients: a prospective study.
This prospective study examined the utility of several cognitive variables as predictors of suicide risk among 79 hospitalized psychiatric patients. These variables included pessimism (measured by the Hopelessness Scale), perceived and actual problem-solving ability (indexed by the Problem-Solving Inventory and Means-End Problem-Solving test, respectively), and polarized thinking, self-negativity, and construct system constriction and differentiation (derived from a repertory grid). Suicide risk was operationalized in terms of subsequent self-report of suicide ideation and staff records of time spent on suicide precautions. Results indicated that hopelessness, self-negativity, and poor problem-solving performance functioned as reliable predictors of suicide risk, whereas self-evaluated problem-solving ability did not. Interestingly, constriction emerged as a significant inverse predictor across.
Adult↗
Evaluation of suicide intervention effectiveness.
Considering the prevalence of suicide and other forms of self-injurious behavior, it is ironic that relatively little attention has been paid to the training of mental health workers in suicide intervention. Still less effort has been spent in evaluating the effectiveness of such workers or the agencies in which they serve. We review the evaluation strategies that have been used to assess the process and outcome of suicide intervention, ranging from macroanalyses of the impact of crisis services on suicide rates in the community to microanalyses of the competence of individual suicide interventionists. Particular attention is paid to the Suicide Intervention Response Inventory, a self-administered test of suicide counseling skills whose validity, reliability, and practical utility suggest the benefit of its use in a broader range of research and applied settings. The advantages and disadvantages of each evaluation strategy are discussed, and guidelines are offered for the sophistication of future research and program evaluation efforts.
Community Mental Health Services↗
The Suicide Intervention Response Inventory: a revision and validation.
The Suicide Intervention Response Inventory (SIRI) was developed by Neimeyer and MacInnes (1981) to assess the ability of paraprofessional counselors to recognize appropriate responses to suicidal clients. Although several studies have supported the validity of the scale, concerns have been raised about its ceiling effect when administered to more highly trained counselors. Psychometric improvements were therefore attempted, and the original dichotomous scoring system was replaced with a Likert scale format, in the SIRI-2. Because respondents were required to make more subtle judgments concerning the appropriateness of each response as defined by a criterion group of highly expert suicidologists, the ceiling effect that limited the use of the original measure was eliminated. Construct and discriminant validity were demonstrated in both versions of the instrument. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability showed improvement with the SIRI-2. Overall, the SIRI-2 shows promise as an index of suicide counseling effectiveness, especially among more skilled counselors.
Adult↗
Death anxiety in older adults: a quantitative review.
This literature review quantitatively summarized 49 published and unpublished research studies concerning the relationship between death anxiety and age, ego integrity, gender, institutionalization, physical and psychological problems, and religiosity in older adults. Results indicated that lower ego integrity, more physical problems, and more psychological problems are predictive of higher levels of death anxiety in elderly people. A suggestive but equivocal relationship was found for the predictor institutionalization. Furthermore, the review statistically demonstrated the importance of using sound methods for measuring death anxiety and sampling from the elderly population.
Age Factors↗