Outside of large professional meetings, finding psychologists with shared interests in applied gerontology has not been especially easy. Clinical geropsychologists continue to be rare birds in the psychology field - although recently the flock appears to be growing. It has been the good fortune of seven New York area geropsychologists to find each other and through our affiliation to collaborate on a variety of professional endeavors.
In the Winter of 1991 seven New York geropsychologists including Kathleen Byrne (Beth Israel Medical Center), Nanette Kramer (Teachers College, Columbia University), Amy Raphael (Gouverneur Hospital), Eileen Rosendahl (Hillside Hospital), Michael Smith (Peninsula Hospital Center), Richard Zweig (Hillsdale Hospital), and I met to share our common interests in geropsychology. Since then we have met at least monthly in a series of meetings or activities that have been professionally and personally rewarding. Group members have well-developed professional interest and experience in geropsychology as well as teach and do research in aging. Settings in which members work include nursing home, geriatric inpatient unit, out patient clinics, day hospital, and services delivered within the home.
Initial discussions focused on issues of broader concern to geropsychologists: the nature of our psychological interventions with older adults, the scientific basis of these interventions, the problem of knowing when to end treatment with patients who evidence ongoing late-life problems, lack of norms for older adults for many assessment instruments, issues in delivery of care within different settings, problems in the psychology-psychiatry interface, reimbursement for services through Medicare/Medicaid, delivery of services to the aged (especially in nursing homes settings) by psychologists with little preparation in clinical aging, and related topics.
Group members' varied research projects in clinical aging have interwoven these discussions including studies of communication between nursing home aides and patients, a meta-analytic investigation of the impact of psychological interventions with the elderly, predictors of suicide in the elderly, and family issues in late-life dementia and depression. Clinical and research interests were combined to create a symposium on mental health services and the elderly that group members presented at the 1993 meeting of the Gerontological Society.
A growing awareness of the need for continuing education offerings in clinical geropsychology led to the group's development and presentation of continuing education workshops at the 1993 and 1994 annual meetings of APA. The group has designed a two-day APA pre-conference workshop on aging and clinical practice for August, 1995 that is co-sponsored by Teachers College, Columbia University, and Division 20. Group members as well as distinguished geropsychologists from around the country will participate.
The coalescing of this group has obviously led to a number of specific professional endeavors that have helped us to better understand and improve the psychological interventions we make in varied settings and to share that knowledge with others. A less tangible but equally important dimension to our affiliation has been an opportunity to share with each other the richness of our clinical work, to marvel at older adults' enormous capacity to cope in the face of extremely difficult life problems, to come to terms with the varied meanings of the suffering we in our older clients and their possible implication for our lives, and to learn the best sense of the word "colleague".
To direct comments about the information contained in these pages, please write to marsiske@ufl.edu