By Annette Gallagher
UM News

Rod Wellens

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (December 19, 2014) — Albert Rodney “Rod” Wellens, professor and longtime chair of the Department of Psychology who left an indelible mark on the University, the community, and the people he mentored, passed away at home and surrounded by his family on December 17 after an illness. He was 68.

Wellens, who joined the University in 1972, became a full professor in 1988 and chair of the psychology department in 1992—a post he held with distinction until 2013. Read the full story

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (November 11, 2014)—University researchers have developed a family-focused, culturally informed treatment for schizophrenia (CIT-S), one of first to incorporate elements of the patient’s cultural background as part of therapy. Their findings are published online ahead of print in the Journal of Family Psychology.

The novel treatment aimed to reduce patients’ symptoms and improve patient and caregiver emotional well-being, explains Amy Weisman de Mamani, associate professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences and principal investigator of the study.

“We have developed a program for the treatment of schizophrenia that taps into the family’s cultural beliefs, values, traditions, and religious practices to help them come to terms with the illness and better manage the symptoms,” Weisman de Mamani said. “We found that adding culturally based segments to an already established family-focused treatment for schizophrenia reduced patients’ psychiatric symptoms above and beyond an intervention that focused solely on educating family members about the illness.”

For the study, patients diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and their caregivers participated in 15 weekly one-hour sessions. The treatment covered a range of topics and skills, including education about the illness, techniques to bolster family cohesion, and adaptive use of religious coping, communication training, and problem-solving. Homework also was assigned for family members to practice the skills learned during therapy. A control group received three sessions of psycho-education about the illness.

Participants who completed the study came from 46 separate families of different ethnic backgrounds. About half of the families were randomly assigned to the CIT-S program and the other half to the control program. Assessments occurred in either English or Spanish, depending on the individual family’s preference.

The findings indicated that patients who participated in the CIT-S program had significant reductions in their psychiatric symptoms (e.g., hallucinations, delusions, blunted affect) and their caregivers reported significantly lower levels of guilt, shame, and burden.

“The treatment is easy to administer and treatment manuals and materials are available in English and in Spanish,” Weisman de Mamani said. “We hope that the ease and accessibility of CIT-S will facilitate dissemination to hospitals and clinics that service individuals with schizophrenia and their loved ones.”

The study, “A Randomized Clinical Trial to Test the Efficacy of a Family-Focused, Culturally Informed Therapy for Schizophrenia,” was co-authored by Marc J. Weintraub,  Kayla Gurak, and Jessica Maura, who are PhD. students from the Department of Psychology.

The next step is for the researchers to test whether CIT-S can outperform a matched length control treatment that includes all of the ingredients of CIT-S, except those that directly tap into participants’ cultural beliefs, values, and behaviors. They also want to verify that changes in the use of adaptive cultural practices and belief systems are what account for the efficacy of CIT-S.

By Annette Gallagher
UM News

The two-year study will focus on immune system functioning following a five-week cognitive behavioral or relaxation training program.

Coral Gables, Fla. (July 7, 2014) – Can psychological intervention help women adapt to the stresses of breast cancer? It appears that a brief, five-week psychological intervention can have beneficial effects for women who are dealing with the stresses of breast cancer diagnosis and surgery. Intervening during the early period after surgery may reduce women’s distress, and providing cognitive or relaxation skills for stress management may help them adapt to treatment.

UM researchers found that women who received cognitive behavioral or relaxation training reported greater improvements in mood than women in a health education control group that also lasted five weeks. Women in the cognitive behavioral group also reported reduced breast cancer-specific distress, as well as improved emotional well-being, while women in the relaxation group reported reduced disruptions in social activities.

The next step in that research, which will be funded by the Florida Breast Cancer Foundation for a two-year period, is to identify the cellular and molecular changes that could explain these effects, according to Michael Antoni, professor in the Department of Psychology at the College of Arts and Sciences and co-leader of the Cancer Prevention Control and Survivorship program at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. The grant will support Momentum2: The Breakthrough Campaign for the University of Miami.

Antoni’s team hopes to show that the five-week program produces the same changes in stress hormone levels and measures of immune function and inflammatory processes over an extended follow-up period that have been seen in patients who participated in longer programs, typically from 10 weeks to 12 months. Indicators of psychological and physiological well-being may provide a pathway through which these interventions could improve quality of life and health outcomes over the long-term survivorship period, with positive effects seen as much as five years later.

The study, co-led by Bonnie Blomberg, professor of microbiology and immunology at Sylvester, will measure the changes in cortisol levels, check immune responses in cells, and look for decreased inflammation at the RNA level in cells. The new grant research, which began July 1, focuses on the women who show the most elevated levels of distress in the weeks after breast cancer surgery.

“The hope is that these psychoneuroimmunologic (PNI) effects will show us clearly how therapies like relaxation therapy can affect immune system regulation,” Antoni said.  “Does effective stress management reduce cortisol levels, increase immune function, and decrease inflammation early in the course of women’s treatment for breast cancer? We expect that women who show the greatest reductions in distress will also show the greatest reductions in inflammatory signaling and the greatest improvements in immune cell functioning over their first year of treatment.”

“We know stress management is effective in a 10-week program, and women who only attended half the sessions had the same benefits, so we are testing the idea that five weeks might be enough time,” he said. “The 10-week program also helped us focus on the most important things patients need to learn: being able to relax when needed and being able to cognitively process their emotions. We think we can achieve that in less than 10 weeks by using very focused interventions, and that will be more practical in a clinical setting.”

“Drs. Antoni and Blomberg’s project was evaluated and scored by a panel of both researchers and laypersons who are advocates for breast cancer research,” said Russell Silverman, executive director of the Florida Breast Cancer Foundation. “It was recommended to our committee with great enthusiasm, and we feel that this work will have a positive impact on the future of breast cancer treatment.”

Annette Gallagher can be reached at 305-284-1121.

By Maya Bell
UM News

The TOOL team includes Monica Webb Hooper, seated, and, standing from left, Victoria A. Rodriguez, Stephanie Kolar, Marcia McNutt, Brooke Genkin Rogers, Chelsea Greaves, Alyssa Vazquez, and Shaneisha Allen.

MIAMI, Fla. (June 27, 2014)—For nearly 30 years, cigarettes ruled Jerome Hicks’ life, robbing him of his health, his money, and his time. But one Monday morning in 2013, the disabled concrete finisher woke up with the determination, the support system, and, most importantly, the tools to conquer the deadly addiction that disproportionally harms African Americans like himself.

Before even climbing out of bed, he applied a nicotine patch to his left arm, then got dressed, and headed to the first of eight intense counseling sessions of UQuit, a smoking cessation study being conducted by the Department of Psychology’s Tobacco, Obesity, and Oncology Laboratory, or TOOL. In just four years, the study has screened 1,000 potential participants, a notable milestone as it seeks to determine whether the combination of nicotine replacement and traditional cognitive behavioral therapy is as effective an intervention for mostly low-income, racially and ethnically diverse smokers as it has proven to be for middle-class white smokers.

Monica Webb Hooper, associate professor of psychology and a member of the cancer prevention, control, and survivorship program at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, established TOOL in part to answer that question. As she notes, African American and Hispanic smokers suffer more health consequences from cigarette smoking, yet they are underrepresented in smoking cessation clinical trials. She is encouraged by both the response to and the preliminary results of UQuit. The only evidence-based smoking cessation research clinic in South Florida, UQuit is funded by the James and Esther King Biomedical Research Program, the Pap Corps Champions for Cancer Research, and the University.

“We are having an impact,” Webb Hooper said. “Smokers and their families are interested in what we are doing and want to be involved because, by word of mouth, they know it can work.”

To date, more than half of the 250 smokers who completed UQuit, many of whom are African Americans like Hicks, managed to stop smoking by the end of the four-week program. A year later, 45 percent still hadn’t resumed the costly habit, an extraordinary success rate.

“Nine out of ten attempts to quit smoking are unsuccessful, especially for people who try to do it alone,” Webb Hooper notes.

After 30 years of smoking, Jerome Hicks is now free of cigarettes.

Now 45, Hicks, who began smoking at age 15, hasn’t touched a cigarette since that Monday morning he attended his first session of UQuit, which asks participants to attend eight individual or group counseling sessions over four weeks, and wear an increasingly lower-dose nicotine patch for eight weeks.

In the counseling sessions, participants learn strategies to cope with nicotine withdrawal, to change the patterns that perpetuated their habit, and to handle stress without the smoking crutch they’ve relied on for so long.

They also hear a lot of hard science and cold facts—including how the nicotine patch doesn’t include the 7,000 other chemicals and toxins in cigarettes, or how more people die each year from smoking-related diseases than from alcohol, cocaine, heroin, car accidents, murder, suicide, fire, and AIDS combined.

“It works because we provide the gold standard,’’ said TOOL research associate Shaneisha Allen. “We don’t just give them a nicotine patch. We target all three parts of nicotine dependence—the emotional dependence, the physical dependence, and the habit. We provide a great support system, and we believe in them. We also know you never quit quitting. If you don’t succeed the first time, you try again. We provide positive motivation.”

Hicks’ initial motivation came from his doctor, who warned him that his lungs were turning black from his two-pack-a-day habit. But, he says, UQuit counselors enabled him to endure nicotine withdrawal, banish the thoughts and routines that revolved around his next smoke, and enjoy spending his free time—and his money—on healthier pursuits, such as reading and exercising.

“I couldn’t have done it without the program. It wasn’t easy, but it changed my behavior,” said Hicks, who has a plate in his neck from a job injury. “I learned I could control my stress without smoking, and I did. “I’m really proud of that. Now I wake up every morning with more money in my pocket and feeling really good.”

For more information about UQuit, visit http://www.psy.miami.edu/tool, or call 1-877-850-8665 (TOOL).

Maya Bell can be reached at 305-284-7972.

UM neuroscientist Amishi Jha conducts brain wave recording research.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (June 3, 2014)–The University of Miami Hurricanes football program will partner with UM neuroscientist Amishi Jha for an innovative research study to investigate how mindfulness training can help football players better cope with the high stakes and high demands of collegiate athletics.

“The question we ask is if mindfulness training—which has been found to benefit high-stress groups like soldiers, Marines, CEOs, and college students—can help student-athletes in their academic and athletic performance,” said Jha, associate professor in the UM College of Arts & Sciences Department of Psychology and director of contemplative neuroscience for the UMindfulness Initiative.

Jha will be the lead researcher on the study. Previous research by her group found that mindfulness training helps curb mind wandering and improve attention as high-stress undergraduates near exam season.

Mindfulness is defined as a state of active, open attention to the present. Practitioners of mindfulness observe their thoughts and feelings without judgment, and focus on “living in the moment.”

The Jha-Hurricanes football collaboration is the first phase of a larger “Cane Brain Project,” which aims to determine if mindfulness training may be brain protective in collegiate football players. Jha will begin the project this summer, working with Scott Rogers, director of the UM Mindfulness and Law Program, to develop and deliver an innovative mindfulness program to UM’s football student-athletes.

A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that the hippocampus, a part of the brain necessary for memory, is smaller in college football players, especially those who have had concussions. Other research has shown that mindfulness training may help grow this area.

“While better helmet design may help protect their brains from the outside in, very little is known about what types of cognitive training exercises might help protect athletes’ brains from the inside out,” said Jha. “We are eager to see if mindfulness training might help.”

Josh Rooks, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology and a member of Jha’s research team, said, “Our very first step is to see if cognitive performance and academic performance benefits from mindfulness training in collegiate football players.”

Rooks, a former college football player who practiced mindfulness during his time as a tight end for the Northwestern University Wildcats, joined Jha’s lab in 2012.

“I recently returned from the ACC Conference meetings and a symposium given by the NCAA’s chief medical officer, Dr. Brian Hainline,” said Al Golden, head football coach of the Hurricanes. “Dr. Hainline shared with us two of the greatest challenges facing college athletes: overuse, as a result of pre-puberty specialization and year-round participation; and mental health and welfare. The latter is why we are thrilled to be partnering with Dr. Jha to study mindfulness training.”

He continues, “Mental health is a vital, yet often overlooked component, of academic and athletic achievement. Our football program is excited about mindfulness training and enhancing student-athlete focus, stress management, working memory, and the overall competitive environment here at The U.”

Recently, Congressman Tim Ryan, a mindfulness practitioner who will be speaking at UM this summer through the UMindfulness lecture series, invited former NFL players and military veterans to the Capitol to discuss the benefits of mindfulness in their recovery from brain trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition, the 2014 Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks revealed that many team members practiced mindfulness meditation throughout their winning season.