Exercise rehabilitation is recommended increasingly for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This study examined the effect of exercise and education on 79 older adults (M age = 66.6 +/- 6.5 years; 53% female) with COPD, randomly assigned to 10 weeks of (a) exercise, education, and stress management (EXESM; n = 29); (b) education and stress management (ESM; n = 25); or (c) waiting list (WL; n = 25). EXESM included 37 sessions of exercise, 16 educational lectures, and 10 weekly stress management classes. ESM included only the 16 lectures and 10 stress management classes. Before and after the intervention, assessments were conducted of physiological functioning (pulmonary function, exercise endurance), psychological well-being (depression, anxiety, quality of life), and cognitive functioning (attention, motor speed, mental efficiency, verbal processing). Repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance indicated that EXESM participants experienced changes not observed among ESM and WL participants, including improved endurance, reduced anxiety, and improved cognitive performance (verbal fluency).

Compared the effects of 2 psychotherapies based on divergent conceptualizations of depression in later life. Seventy-five older adults diagnosed with major depressive disorder were assigned randomly to problem-solving therapy (PST), reminiscence therapy (RT), or a waiting-list control (WLC) condition. Participants in PST and RT were provided with 12 weekly sessions of group treatment. Dependent measures, taken at baseline, posttreatment, and 3-month follow-up, included self-report and observer-based assessments of depressive symptomatology. At posttreatment, both the PST and the RT conditions produced significant reductions in depressive symptoms, compared with the WLC group, and PST participants experienced significantly less depression than RT subjects. Moreover, a significantly greater proportion of participants in PST versus RT demonstrated sufficient positive change to warrant classification of their depression as improved or in remission at the posttreatment and follow-up evaluations.

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