Current Research and Scholarly Interests
Our research group works primarily on psychiatric program evaluation and the quality of health care. The studies focus heavily on health care programs and the context, process, outcome, and cost of care. To guide our work, we use a conceptual framework that encompasses the characteristics and quality of psychiatric programs; it also focuses on how patients' life contexts, especially stressful life circumstances and social resources, and patients' coping responses, affect the selection, duration, process, and outcome treatment.
Some ongoing projects focus primarily on life stressors and coping among healthy and high risk groups. In this area, we are developing new procedures by which to assess life stressors and social resources in stess-prevention and resistance; examining the concurrent and predictive associations between life context and coping factors and problem drinking among late-middle-aged adults; and focusing on the influence of psychiatric disorders such as alcohol abuse and depression on the family members of affected individuals.
