Older adults have the lowest mental health utilization of any age cohort. This study compared baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964 versus older adults born in 1944 or earlier, on attitudes and intentions to utilize mental health services. Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior and its related constructs of attitudes, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and intentions were used as a theoretical model. The Inventory of Attitudes toward Seeking Mental Health Services (IASMHS) and Beliefs About Psychological Services (BAPS) were used for measuring the constructs in the theory of planned behavior. Gender and previous mental health service utilization were also measured. Participants (n = 401) included current and retired faculty and staff from a mid-sized Midwestern University. Statistical analysis, using MANOVA, found main effects for previous mental health experience and age cohort, but not for gender. Those with previous mental health service experience expressed more positive attitudes, intentions, and perceived behavioral control over receiving mental health services. Contrary to the primary hypothesis, the older adult cohort expressed more positive attitudes, greater intentions, was less affected by the subjective norm, and had more perceived behavioral control than baby boomers. Regression analyses, using gender, previous mental health service use, attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control accounted for 55.7% of the variance in intentions for the older adult cohort and 58.2% for baby boomers. For both cohorts, attitudes accounted for the greatest amount of variance. Promoting positive attitudes through reducing environmental and economic barriers and increasing education regarding mental health services is likely to increase mental health service utilization in baby boomers and older adults. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

The aim of this study is to design a computer interface, which links the user to commercial Finite Element Analysis (FEA) program, MSC.Marc-Mentat to make automatic FE analysis of an excavator boom by using DELPHI as platform. Parametrization of boom geometry is done to add some flexibility to interface called OPTIBOOM. Parametric FE analysis of a boom shortens the design stages and helps to find the optimum design in terms of stresses and mass.

Social ideologies appeared to influence dietary behaviour, physical activity and BMI. These influences varied through different pathways in younger and older baby boomers. Studies provide insight into the segmentation of baby boomer population in relation to concrete social ideologies that could be used for policy development and effective health promotion.

Sexual excess is one of an increasing list of ‘excessive’ behaviours which have in recent times been pathologised by the psycho-medical establishment, increasing regulation and control of spheres previously accepted as ‘normal.’ This study analyses the genealogy of the events, institutions, organisations and individuals in post-World War II United States of America to the present which made it possible to think scientifically and nosologically about ‘excessive’ male sexual behaviour as ‘sexual addiction.’ / The grass-roots twelve-step ideologies of Alcoholics Anonymous in the mid-1970s gave birth to twelve-step programs for ‘sex addicts’ predicated on admitting powerlessness over sex and lust rather than over alcohol as the key to recovery as the first step. The publication of Patrick Carnes’ Out of the Shadows: Understanding and Treating Sexual Addiction in 1983 created the academic concept and discourse of sex addiction, which in turn paved the way for widespread scientific debate and investigation of the concept. The AIDS phenomenon offered a platform for many groups to highlight their own causes amid the chaos of illness and death. The sex addiction movement was one such group which made use of the hysteria by pathologising homosexuality and the gay lifestyle as symptomatic of ‘sexual addiction.’ This forged an inexorable conceptual nexus between sexual addiction and AIDS and death motifs, thereby legitimising the concept of sexual addiction as a harmful and often fatal disorder. / Analysis of psycho-medical and public discourse on the sex lives of two American presidents, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, in two different eras revealed changing understandings of male sexual excess. Journalistic mores, socio-cultural values and psycho-medical ideologies (or the lack thereof) played a great role in pathologising Clinton’s behaviour while leaving Kennedy’s, at the time of his presidency but not so in the decades following it, unscathed. / This study has far-reaching implications because sex is an issue affecting and involving people from all walks of life, irrespective of gender, race, colour, creed or religion. Analyses demonstrated how the sexual addiction movement’s assault on traditional conceptions of masculinity predicated on promiscuity as a rite of passage or envied and admired behaviour has precipitated a convergence of the genders in respect of prescriptive sexual behaviour. The pendulum of power is subtly shifting from males embracing notions of sexual liberation and sexual self-determination to mental health professionals whose new diagnostic labels pathologise and stigmatise.

Thesis (D.B.A.)--Argosy University, Sarasota, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-[176]).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1995. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 188-200).

Thesis (M.B.A.) - Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 202-218). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Harding Graduate School of Religion, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 219-230).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 1997. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 237-252).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2003. / Advisor: William M. Scarth. Includes bibliographical references. Also available via World Wide Web.