APF awards research grants on gay and lesbian family psychology and family therapy
The American Psychological Foundation (APF) has announced the recipients of the 2001 Roy Scrivner Research Grants, which seek to encourage promising research on lesbian and gay family psychology and family therapy at the pre- and postdoctoral levels. This is the second year that grants have been awarded. The honorees are:
* Esther D. Rothblum, PhD. Rothblum, professor in the University of Vermont psychology department, received $4,000. She has researched and written extensively on lesbian mental health. She is the former chair of the APA Committee on Lesbian and Gay Concerns and received the 1991 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from Div. 44 (Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian and Gay Issues). More recently, she served as Div. 44 president. Her latest research has focused on sisters of lesbians as a comparison group for demographic and mental health factors. Rothblum's Scrivner-funded research will
focus on brothers and sisters of lesbians, gay men and bisexual men and women.
* Nanette Gartrell, MD, Amy Banks, MD, and Carla Rodas, MPH. The research team received a total of $4,000. Gartrell is associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco, where she has taught ethics and feminist psychotherapy theory. She has been documenting sexual abuse by physicians since 1982 and conducting a national longitudinal study of lesbian families since 1986. The Scrivner award will help fund Phase Four of the longitudinal project, which is the largest and longest-running prospective study of lesbian families ever conducted. In Phase Four, mothers will report on their health status, parenting experiences, relationship stress, support systems and discrimination concerns.
Banks is clinical instructor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and a faculty member at the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute at Wellesley College. Rodas is project manager with the department of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
* Mary Lambert. Lambert, currently a PhD candidate in clinical psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, received $1,000. She received her master's degree in counseling psychology from Loyola College and was a high school mathematics teacher for 10 years. Her research focuses on stress and coping, and her Scrivner award money will go toward her study, "Minority stress and coping in lesbian mothers."
Her project is designed as a longitudinal study, with data to be collected again from the participants in about 12 to 18 months. "This prospective design will allow me to examine the ability of psychosocial stress and coping resources to predict adjustment in this stigmatized group and to develop a checklist measure of psychosocial stress among lesbian mothers," Lambert says.
* Kevin Pedretti. Pedretti is a doctoral student at the California School of Professional Psychology, San Francisco Bay Campus, and has completed predoctoral internships at Stanford University's Counseling and Psychological Services Center and at the McAuley Behavioral Health Services Institute of St. Mary's Hospital in San Francisco.
His dissertation research, which has also received
an award from the Fahs-Beck Foundation for Experimentation and Research, will study the impact that coming out can have on a son's relationship with his parents over time.
In the study, he will compare about 150 disclosed and 150 undisclosed sons to determine the specific behavioral ways that the groups differ in terms of their current and past predisclosure relationships with their parents. "I hope to test those aspects of certain models of gay identity development that conceptualize coming out to one's parents as being a necessary component in the process of developing differentiated, authentic relationships with them," he says.
The Scrivner Research Grants are awarded annually in memory of Roy Scrivner, PhD, a counseling and clinical psychologist and former president of the Texas Psychological Association. Members of APA Divs. 43 (Family) and 44 serve on both the Scrivner oversight and awards committees. In 2002, research grants for both professionals (two for up to $4,000 each) and doctoral students (two for up to $1,000 each) will again be available. The deadline is Nov. 1.
Megivern receives Todd E. Husted Memorial Award
Deborah Megivern, a doctoral candidate in social work and psychology at the University of Michigan School of Social Work has been named the 2000 recipient of the Todd E. Husted Memorial Award.
Fund provides the annual $1,000 award for a dissertation proposal or abstract that indicates the potential to contribute toward the development and improvement of services for those with serious mental illness (SMI). APA's Science Directorate administers the award, and its dissertation awards committee recommends a winner to the APF Board of Trustees for final approval.
Megivern's dissertation research examines the impact of SMI and subsequent mental health service utilization on academic and social functioning in college. In addition, a qualitative component of her work focuses on the experiences of students with SMI as they manage their roles as students.
"The typical age of onset for SMI coincides with the college years; however, research has been limited," says Megivern. "Investigation of typical adult roles for people with SMI has been minimal in the past, partly because of lowered expectations and stigma. Improved mental health services open up possibilities for community integration, including after the onset of SMI."
Megivern began her undergraduate education at Luther College in Iowa, initially majoring in psychobiology, with the intention of contributing to research on neurotransmitters and SMI, but later she added a major in social work. Through her social work internships, she was exposed to community health services as well as to the county and state institutional care systems. After earning her doctoral degree this year, Megivern will begin a new position as a postdoctoral researcher with the Center for Mental Health Services at Washington University in St. Louis.
"Without such monetary assistance from the foundation, the study would not benefit from a longitudinal perspective, and, perhaps most important, would not include an examination of short-term college attendance patterns for these students," she says.
