Simon ForstmeierUniversität Siegen · Institute of Psychology
Simon Forstmeier
Prof. Dr.
About
186
Publications
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Introduction
Research Interests:
- Clinical geropsychology and psychotherapy with the elderly
- Life review therapy and life story work (e.g., for dementia, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder in old age)
- Psychological Alzheimer’s research: Motivational reserve; CBT in early Alzheimer’s patients
- Self-regulation over the lifespan: delay of gratification; apathy in neurological disorders; motivational and volitional processes in psychotherapy and psychosomatics
Additional affiliations
September 2014 - present
November 2005 - August 2014
April 2005 - October 2005
Publications
Publications (186)
This study investigates whether parents resemble in self-regulation, parenting, and intellectual level. Furthermore, the study tested if the similarity between the parents or rather the total available amount of these parental variables was related to their partnership quality, life satisfaction, and mental health as well as to the development of t...
Despite the therapeutic needs of aging Holocaust survivors, no randomized controlled trial (RCT) of psychotherapy exists for this population, with very few on older adults in general. This RCT aimed to compare the efficacy of Life Review Therapy for Holocaust survivors (LRT-HS) relative to a supportive control group. Holocaust survivors with a prob...
Background
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the reformed guardianship law in Germany, require that persons with a disability, including people with dementia in Alzheimer’s disease (PwAD), are supported in making self-determined decisions. This support is achieved through communication. While content-related communic...
Obwohl die Exposition bei der Behandlung von Angststörungen und Posttraumatischen Belastungsstörungen zu den wirksamsten therapeutischen Interventionen zählt, wird sie vor allem bei älteren Patient:innen in der klinischen Praxis vergleichsweise selten angewendet. Ziel der Studie war es, mithilfe einer Online-Befragung von 88 Psychotherapeut:innen F...
Angststörungen gehören zu den häufigsten psychischen Erkrankungen im Alter. Verfahren zur Exposition und Konfrontation bei Angststörungen werden auch in der Psychotherapie im höheren Lebensalter eingesetzt. Allerdings gibt es einige Merkmale älterer Menschen, die bei der Anwendung eines Expositionsverfahrens berücksichtigt werden sollten: den Alter...
Introduction
Several lifestyle factors promote protection against Alzheimer's disease (AD) throughout a person's lifespan. Although such protective effects have been described for occupational cognitive requirements (OCR) in midlife, it is currently unknown whether they are conveyed by brain maintenance (BM), brain reserve (BR), or cognitive reserv...
The goal of this study was to examine whether a subject’s emotional competence correlates to attachment styles and parenting styles in children and their parents. The study was conducted with fifty children (9–11 years old) and their parents, both of whose emotional competence (EKF) and parenting style (PAQ) were measured. The attachment styles of...
Background:
Prior research mainly focussed on the impact of the teacher-student relationship on teachers emotions and wellbeing. Current data shows a relationship between the quality of the teacher-student relationship and children's mental health. Unfortunately, it has not yet been investigated whether meaningful experiences with teachers also ha...
Experiencing physical disability, dissidents and loss of relatives, the elderly seems to think more about the death, and if this goes beyond its normal limits, it causes them to feel depressed and helpless. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of positive therapy (PT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) on d...
A considerable proportion of young adults studying at universities have a mental disorder. Previous research has shown a negative relationship between various religiosity and psychopathology measures, with different strengths of this correlation depending on the religiosity measure. The aim of the present study is to investigate the strength of ass...
Background
The current study aims to investigate the relationship between attachment styles and happiness through the mediating role of reminiscence styles in the elderly.
Methods
This was a correlational study of structural equations modelling (SEM) type. The statistical population included all the elderly aged at least 60 years living in Kermans...
Previous research demonstrated that spiritually sensitive psychotherapy is an effective treatment for clients with depression or anxiety, with outcomes equivalent to secular control interventions. The goal of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of spiritually sensitive logotherapy intervention in the treatment of depression, anxiety, and stress...
Background: The current study aims to investigate the relationship between attachment styles and happiness through the mediating role of reminiscence styles in the elderly.
Methods: This was a correlational study of structural equations modelling (SEM) type. The statistical population included all the elderly aged at least 60 years living in Kerman...
The current systematic review aimed to explore the interdependence of relationship-defining memories (RDMs) with positive and negative marital outcomes in order to gain a deeper insight into the nature, content, and the reminiscence of RDMs, as well as the role they may serve in the marital relationship. The studies included in the current systemat...
Anxiety disorders belong to the most common mental health diagnoses in older adults. One of the cognitive-behavioral treatment approaches for late-life anxiety disorders is exposure therapy. This chapter discusses several characteristics of older adults that are important to consider when using exposure therapy with this population, including physi...
Lebensrückblickinterventionen führen nachweislich zur Verbesserung psychischer und physischer Gesundheit. Die Autor:innen geben einen Einblick in die unterschiedlichen Formen lebensgeschichtlichen Erzählens und stellen das Erinnern und Erzählen in seinen Funktionen als hilfreich und wirkungsvoll für die psychosoziale Entwicklungsaufgabe im Alter vo...
Lebensrückblickinterventionen führen nachweislich zur Verbesserung psychischer und physischer Gesundheit. Die Autor:innen geben einen Einblick in die unterschiedlichen Formen lebensgeschichtlichen Erzählens und stellen das Erinnern und Erzählen in seinen Funktionen als hilfreich und wirkungsvoll für die psychosoziale Entwicklungsaufgabe im Alter vo...
Lebensrückblickinterventionen führen nachweislich zur Verbesserung psychischer und physischer Gesundheit. Die Autor:innen geben einen Einblick in die unterschiedlichen Formen lebensgeschichtlichen Erzählens und stellen das Erinnern und Erzählen in seinen Funktionen als hilfreich und wirkungsvoll für die psychosoziale Entwicklungsaufgabe im Alter vo...
Lebensrückblickinterventionen führen nachweislich zur Verbesserung psychischer und physischer Gesundheit. Die Autor:innen geben einen Einblick in die unterschiedlichen Formen lebensgeschichtlichen Erzählens und stellen das Erinnern und Erzählen in seinen Funktionen als hilfreich und wirkungsvoll für die psychosoziale Entwicklungsaufgabe im Alter vo...
Lebensrückblickinterventionen führen nachweislich zur Verbesserung psychischer und physischer Gesundheit. Die Autor:innen geben einen Einblick in die unterschiedlichen Formen lebensgeschichtlichen Erzählens und stellen das Erinnern und Erzählen in seinen Funktionen als hilfreich und wirkungsvoll für die psychosoziale Entwicklungsaufgabe im Alter vo...
Lebensrückblickinterventionen führen nachweislich zur Verbesserung psychischer und physischer Gesundheit. Die Autor:innen geben einen Einblick in die unterschiedlichen Formen lebensgeschichtlichen Erzählens und stellen das Erinnern und Erzählen in seinen Funktionen als hilfreich und wirkungsvoll für die psychosoziale Entwicklungsaufgabe im Alter vo...
Lebensrückblickinterventionen führen nachweislich zur Verbesserung psychischer und physischer Gesundheit. Die Autor:innen geben einen Einblick in die unterschiedlichen Formen lebensgeschichtlichen Erzählens und stellen das Erinnern und Erzählen in seinen Funktionen als hilfreich und wirkungsvoll für die psychosoziale Entwicklungsaufgabe im Alter vo...
Lebensrückblickinterventionen führen nachweislich zur Verbesserung psychischer und physischer Gesundheit. Die Autor:innen geben einen Einblick in die unterschiedlichen Formen lebensgeschichtlichen Erzählens und stellen das Erinnern und Erzählen in seinen Funktionen als hilfreich und wirkungsvoll für die psychosoziale Entwicklungsaufgabe im Alter vo...
Lebensrückblickinterventionen führen nachweislich zur Verbesserung psychischer und physischer Gesundheit. Die Autor:innen geben einen Einblick in die unterschiedlichen Formen lebensgeschichtlichen Erzählens und stellen das Erinnern und Erzählen in seinen Funktionen als hilfreich und wirkungsvoll für die psychosoziale Entwicklungsaufgabe im Alter vo...
Lebensrückblickinterventionen führen nachweislich zur Verbesserung psychischer und physischer Gesundheit. Die Autor:innen geben einen Einblick in die unterschiedlichen Formen lebensgeschichtlichen Erzählens und stellen das Erinnern und Erzählen in seinen Funktionen als hilfreich und wirkungsvoll für die psychosoziale Entwicklungsaufgabe im Alter vo...
The current study aims to investigate the meaning of life, psychological well-being, self-care, and social capital, with depression and death anxiety in the elderly living in nursing homes through the mediating role of loneliness. The statistical population included all the elderly aged at least 60 years living in Tehran, Qazvin and Zanjan, Iran in...
Having reached the last phase of their lives, many Holocaust survivors (HS) experience an increase in vulnerability. Despite their remarkable ability to adapt, the process of aging presents them with new challenges, often leading to an increased need for therapy. This is made all the more difficult by the fact that there is little research on traum...
The heterogeneity in the operationalisation of successful ageing (SA) hinders a straightforward examination of SA associations and correlates, and in turn, the identification of potentially modifiable predictors of SA. It is unclear which SA associations and correlates influence all facets of the SA construct, and whether psychosocial reserve model...
Brain reserve (i.e., the ability of the brain to tolerate age- and disease-related changes in a way that cognitive function is still maintained) is assumed to be based on the lifelong training of various abilities. Motivational reserve (MR) is a form of brain reserve and can be defined as a set of motivational abilities that provide the individual...
Purpose
: To investigate the association between health-related quality of life and ego integrity among the oldest old.
Materials and methods
: Cross-sectional data were taken from follow-up wave 9 of the multicenter prospective cohort study “Needs, health service use, costs and health-related quality of life in a large sample of oldest-old primar...
Zusammenfassung. Zielsetzung unserer Studie war es, erwachsene Kinder aus suchtbelasteten Familien (Alkohol) im universitären Setting im Hinblick auf deren Leistungsverhalten zu untersuchen. Die Fragestellung war, ob es bei Studierenden Hinweise auf zwei unterschiedliche Leistungsverläufe gibt. Diese Fragestellung basiert auf den Ergebnissen einer...
Background
Equine-assisted therapy is more often practiced with children and adolescents than with the elderly, although individuals in the second half of life could also profit from it. This group, from the age of 50, is characterised by increasing emotional, social, health-related and cognitive changes; a critical life event, such as a neurologic...
Zusammenfassung. Theoretischer Hintergrund: Psychotherapie im höheren Lebensalter (PihL) gewinnt in Deutschland in den letzten Jahrzehnten zunehmend an Bedeutung. Dennoch ist dieses Feld trotz des großen Bedarfs weiterhin unterrepräsentiert. Fragestellung: Wie werden angehende Psychotherapeut_innen aktuell in Bezug auf die psychotherapeutische Beha...
Background:
The Holocaust was one of the most traumatic catastrophes in recorded human history. Survivors seeking psychotherapeutic help today, now in their seventies and older, often show symptoms of a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, or prolonged grief disorder. Established psychological treatments for PTSD (e.g. cognitive behav...
Background
The present study aims to investigate the quality of the dyadic relationship between mild Alzheimer patients and their caregivers. The main objective is to evaluate the consistency, agreement and validity of the German version of the Scale for Quality of the Current Relationship in Caregiving (SQCRC). The secondary objective was to exami...
Background:
Increasing the quality of life with short interventions for vulnerable patients is one of the objectives of palliative care. Biographical approaches are used in a range of different interventions which may require considerable resources of staff time and energy. This study evaluated the feasibility of training hospice volunteers in bio...
Aim:
We find several interventions in palliative care to cover psychosocial needs and to relieve distress of patients. There is a growing interest in therapies using biographical approaches, but discussion about interventions is sparse, and there is no concept for comprehensive and sustainable provision. Research on interventions with a single bio...
Background
Reminiscence is used in a range of different interventions in palliative care, for example, Dignity Therapy or Life Review. However, literature has focused mainly on the methodology, and little has been published on patients’ priorities and primary concerns.
Objective
This study looks at themes emerging in a reminiscence intervention wi...
In diesem Band von Psychotherapie im Alter werden sowohl die intergenerationellen Beziehungen G1-G2 als auch G1-G3 näher betrachtet. Dabei
sollen sowohl entwicklungs- bzw. gerontopsychologische Grundlagen als
auch klinische Anwendungsaspekte berücksichtigt werden.
Background
An increasing number of older people in our society raises the need for offers to promote social participation. At the same time, older people are faced with the task to accept their own life’s course.
Materials and methods
To include older people and to support the development of acceptance for their biographies practice material for a...
Background
Approximately 1 quarter of people aged 65 years and older suffer from a mental disorder; however, it is presumed that mental disorders are underdiagnosed in this age group, which would then lead to a lack of appropriate treatment. Life review interviews enhance mental health and are simultaneously easily applicable and not tied to any me...
Objectives: Survivors of the Holocaust have reached an age during which it is common for them to look back on their lives. Previous research has shown that reminiscence can take on either adaptive (‘self-positive’) or detrimental (‘self-negative’) forms, which in turn are differently linked to psychological well-being. Thus, the question of “why” a...
Attachment style is one of the most significant driving forces across the lifespan as identified by a variety of studies. Many studies have suggested that there might be an association between attachment and mental health. In a different thread of research, studies provided evidence that dysfunctional emotion regulation has a potential impact on an...
Background:
Motivational abilities (MA), that describe skills in relation to goal-oriented behavior, have recently been found to be associated with neuropathological aging. Here we examine the impact of MA on the long-term course of mild cognitive impairment (MCI).
Methods:
We followed-up N = 64 individuals diagnosed with MCI (Mage = 73 years, 4...
Einleitung:
Im höheren Alter stehen Menschen vor der Aufgabe den Verlauf ihres eigenen Lebens zu akzeptieren, gleichzeitig ist ihnen die Teilhabe am gesellschaftlichen Leben erschwert. Beide Aspekte sind wichtige Ressourcen zum Erhalt des psychischen und physischen Wohlergehens. Im Rahmen des Verbundprojektes „VorteilJena“ (Vorbeugen durch Teilhab...
Die Gruppe älterer Patienten, die in Psychosomatischen Kliniken behandelt werden, wächst. In bisher vorliegenden Evaluationsstudien kommen über 70-jährige Patienten allerdings kaum vor. Deswegen wird hier eine erste Studie mit Behandlungsergebnissen über 70-Jähriger vorgestellt, die in einer Psychosomatischen Rehabilitationsklinik behandelt worden...
The delay of gratification (DoG) in children is widely investigated with an experimental procedure originally called the "marshmallow test," whereas the studies on self-regulation (SR) in adolescents and adults usually use self-report questionnaires. Delay discounting (DD) measures simplify the DoG procedure and focus on monetary rewards. The aim o...
Im höheren Lebensalter erleben Menschen eine Reihe von Veränderungen des Körpers, des Denkens und der Emotion sowie der sozialen Beziehungen. Neben Funktionseinschränkungen aufgrund chronischer Krankheiten sind die häufigsten psychischen Störungen die Demenz, depressive Störungen, Schlafstörungen und Angststörungen. Altersspezifische Modifikationen...
We investigated the efficacy of reminiscence therapy (RT) on symptoms of depression in patients with mild to moderate dementia. Out of 227 patients with mild to moderate dementia from a specialized physician's office, 27 pairs (N = 54; mean age 79.04 ± 6.16 years) who had either received treatment as usual (TAU) or TAU combined with RT, were matche...
About 90% of all mild Alzheimer dementia (AD) cases experience neuropsychiatric symptoms. Although some research has supported the effectiveness of specific psychotherapeutic approaches for mild AD, there are only few attempts to evaluate a multi-component treatment programme. This randomized controlled trial evaluates the effect of an integrative...
Objective:
Discrepancy between self- and caregiver apathy ratings was examined longitudinally for persons with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease. Particular focus was on the distinction between the positive and negative caregiver bias and its predictive value for a clinical diagnosis of apathy.
Method:
Apathy rating discrepancy wa...
Lifespan developmental psychopathology refers to pathological aging processes over the lifespan, including pathways to cognitive and affective disorders in old age as well as resources and resilience to maintain well-being in old age.
This study investigated self-efficacy (self-perceived and rated by an informant) as a mediator of the relationship between social network variables (including network size, frequency of social contacts, satisfaction with social contacts and social support) and cognitive impairment. Participants were 189 adults with a mean age of 75 years, 32 of who...
This study investigated self-efficacy (self-perceived and rated by an informant) as a mediator of the relationship between social network variables (including network size, frequency of social contacts, satisfaction with social contacts and social support) and cognitive impairment. Participants were 189 adults with a mean age of 75 years, 32 of who...
Self-regulation refers to the successful use of executive functions and initiation of top-down processes to control one’s thoughts, behavior, and emotions, and it is crucial to perform self-control. Self-control is needed to overcome impulses and can be assessed by delay of gratification (DoG) and delay discounting (DD) paradigms. In children/adole...
Motivational processes have received increasing attention in applied and
basic gerontological research and have recently been found to exert a protective influence on neuropathological
aging. It was the aim of the current study to examine the impact of motivational abilities on the long-term course of
mild cognitive impairment (MCI). It was hypothe...
Objectives:
To examine whether delay discounting (DD) develops differently within individuals diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or mild Alzheimer's disease (AD).
Method:
We set out to study trajectories of DD in N = 111 older adults (Mage = 75.2 years, range: 55-94, 53% female) with MCI (n = 64) or mild AD (n = 47). Data were repeat...
Background:
Brain reserve, i.e., the ability of the brain to tolerate age- and disease-related changes in a way that cognitive function is still maintained, is assumed to be based on the lifelong training of various abilities. The Motivational Reserve in Alzheimer's (MoReA) is a longitudinal study that aims to examine motivational processes as a p...
Background:
About 90 % of all persons with mild Alzheimer's disease experience neuropsychiatric symptoms, most frequently apathy, depression, anxiety and irritability. These symptoms are associated with greater morbidity, a reduced quality of life for the patient, an increased burden and depression for the caregiver, and higher costs of care and n...
Traumatic experiences may affect an individual's ability to exercise self-control, which is an essential characteristic for successfully managing life. As a measure of self-control, we used the delay discounting paradigm, that is, the extent to which a person devalues delayed gratification. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship...
Obwohl bereits eine größere Anzahl an psychotherapeutischen Interventionen für Patienten mit beginnender Alzheimer-Demenz und ihre Angehörigen beschrieben wurde, gibt es nur für einige Einzelinterventionen ausreichende empirische Evidenz. Dazu gehören der Aufbau angenehmer/strukturierter Aktivitäten, das Training des Angehörigen in Verhaltensmanage...
Lifespan developmental psychopathology refers to pathological aging processes over the lifespan, including pathways to cognitive and affective disorders in old age as well as resources and resilience to maintain well-being in old age.
