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Biomedical subjects

R H Moos

Publications and source records attributed to R H Moos.

At least 163 records · Page 9Linked to original sources
PubMed1984

The process of recovery from alcoholism: III. Comparing functioning in families of alcoholics and matched control families.

Families of recovered (N = 54) and relapsed (N = 51) alcoholic patients were studied 2 yr after the patients completed residential treatment and were compared with sociodemographically matched families of community controls (N = 105) on three sets of family-functioning indices--role functioning, family environment and husband-wife congruence. Families of recovered patients were functioning as well as families of controls. Families of relapsed patients showed less cohesion, expressiveness and recreational orientation, and lower agreement about their family environment than matched families of recovered patients and of community controls, and reported more family arguments than families of recovered patients. They also showed altered role functioning, the nonalcoholic spouse performing more household tasks and the alcoholic partner performing fewer. Family functioning was affected by the adequacy of the alcoholic partner's adaptation, and by life events, stressors and spouse's level of dysfunction.

Alcoholism↗
PubMed1983

Adaptation and the quality of life in work and family settings.

The paper describes the development of scales to assess the perceived social-environmental quality of work and family settings. The use of these scales in comparing and contrasting work and family settings and in examining their role as contexts for adaptation and growth is illustrated. Some tentative conclusions about social-environmental influences on individual and family adaptation are drawn and practical applications for planning ecologically oriented interventions are discussed.

Community Mental Health Centers↗
PubMed1983

Comparisons of children of depressed and nondepressed parents: a social-environmental perspective.

Several lines of evidence indicate that a parent's depression may be a significant health and adaptational risk factor for his or her children. In a controlled comparison, children of 133 depressed parents had significantly more symptoms of emotional, somatic, and behavioral impairment than did children of 135 nondepressed parents. Additional results suggest that the more negative milieu found among families of depressed parents was a mediator of the effects of parental depression. A social-environmental perspective helped to identify aspects of parents' functioning, family stressors, and resources that were related to children's health. Variations in these stressors and resources were strongly related to the probability of disturbance among children of depressed parents.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

Changing hospital work environments: an example of a burn unit.

A liaison psychiatrist invited to help a burn unit staff explore problems affecting morale and patient care employed a four-step procedure: (1) assess the work environment systematically; (2) give the staff feedback from this assessment; (3) help the staff plan and institute changes; and (4) reassess. To assess the work environment, the staff completed the Work Environment Scale (WES), a 90-item, true/false questionnaire that measures ten dimensions of the actual and preferred work environment. At the second of 12 bi-weekly meetings, the psychiatrist presented the unit's WES profile and began helping the staff explore and resolve problems. Reassessment six months later revealed statistically significant changes on several pertinent WES scales and reduced discrepancies between actual and preferred work environments on nine of the ten scales. The findings indicate that systemmatic assessment and feedback procedures may help liaison programs improve the quality of hospital work environments and thereby enhance staff performance and morale.

Burn Units↗
PubMed1983

Psychosocial processes of recovery among alcoholics and their families: implications for clinicians and program evaluators.

This paper provides an overview of a program of research that has focused on the role of extratreatment factors in the process of recovery and relapse among treated alcoholic patients and their families. Consistent with a systems perspective, patients who controlled their drinking showed improvements in nondrinking aspects of their functioning and members of their families showed improved adjustment as well. Moreover, the posttreatment functioning of these recovered families was comparable to that of a matched nonalcoholic community group. In contrast, relapsed alcoholics and their family members suffered from multidimensional impairments. Extratreatment factors such as environmental stressors, coping responses, and social resources had as much influence on the recovery process as did patients' treatment experiences. New procedures to assess these extratreatment factors are described and methods by which clinicians and researchers can use the resulting information to improve treatment outcome and the specificity of program evaluations are discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1983

Social-environmental factors among light and heavy cigarette smokers: a controlled comparison with nonsmokers.

Support for the importance of psychosocial influences on smoking is limited because the evidence is primarily based on intervention studies which deal with self-selected and thus unrepresentative samples of smokers. There have been few comparisons with nonsmokers on these factors. In this study, we examine the role of psychosocial factors among a representative community sample of smokers and nonsmokers. Heavy smokers were distinguished from nonsmokers by only slightly higher levels of environmental stressors, less supportive social resources, and poorer psychological functioning. Light smokers did not differ from nonsmokers on these factors. Although stressors and resources were correlated with psychological functioning across all respondents, such relationships were not significantly stronger for either heavy or light smokers. These results suggest that psychosocial influences may have differential relevance during the different phases of smoking behavior such as initiation, maintenance, and cessation.

Adult↗
PubMed1982

Social support and functioning among community and clinical groups: a panel model.

This study examined the relationship between social support and personal functioning in a longitudinal assessment of a representative sample of community men and women. Although there was considerable temporal stability in several indices of support and personal functioning, changes in levels of support during the follow-up period were associated with changes in functioning. These relationships varied according to the individual's gender and the source of support. Family support was more strongly related to functioning among women, while work support was more strongly related to functioning among men. In comparable analyses on patients recovering from alcoholism, levels of support and functioning were more variable over time, and changes in family support were somewhat more strongly related to changes in functioning. The findings are discussed in light of a perspective that considers the role of environmental stressors and resources in adaptation.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1982

Social support and adjustment: predictive benefits of social climate indices.

This study estimates the relationship between social support and physical and psychological adjustment, using measures that afford a qualitative assessment of social support. Qualitative indices of social support in family (Family Relationships Index) and work (Work Relationships Index) environments were derived from available social climate measures. Respondents were a randomly selected community sample of 267 male and 267 female adult family members. Results support hypotheses that qualitative measures of support in family and work environments predict psychosomatic complaints and depression after variance due to negative life change and quantitative measures of social support is accounted for. While the work environment is a more important source of support for men than women, the family environment provides an especially potent source of support for unemployed women.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1982

Children of alcoholics during the recovery process: alcoholic and matched control families.

Children of relapsed and recovered alcoholic patients were compared with children from sociodemographically matched control families on a set of indices of emotional and physical status. The children of relapsed alcoholics evidenced more symptoms of emotional disturbance than did the control children. In contrast, the children of recovered alcoholics were functioning as well as the control children. Additional analyses showed that the emotional status of children was related to the emotional, physical, and occupational functioning shown by their alcoholic and their nonalcoholic parent, as well as to family life stressors.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1981

The role of coping responses and social resources in attenuating the stress of life events.

The nature of individual coping responses to stressful life events was explored in a representative adult community sample. Two approaches to the classification of coping strategies were operationalized. Using these measures, small but significant gender and contextual differences in coping were identified. Mood and symptom levels were related to coping responses and to quantitative and qualitative measures of social resources. Measures of coping and social resources attenuated the relationship between undesirable life events and personal functioning.

Adaptation, Psychological↗