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The aging of the population will increase demand for psychological services for older adults, which challenges the profession of psychology to provide those services. In response to that challenge, professional geropsychology has been developing over the past few decades to meet current and prepare for anticipated future demand. The development of a range of training opportunities is important to enable psychologists to work effectively with older adults. This article describes the Pikes Peak model for training in professional geropsychology. The model is an aspirational, competencies-based approach to training professional geropsychologists that allows for entry points at multiple levels of professional development.

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Family members caring for dementia patients must often contend with a complex set of behavioral problems evidenced by their demented older relatives. In this study we examined how strategies to manage dementia problems in (N = 152) older people were associated with the adjustment of family members while providing assistance to the patient. Three Dementia Management Strategies were identified (Criticism, Encouragement, and Active Management) and were found to be associated with three indices of family members' emotional adjustment--burden, psychiatric symptoms, and desire to institutionalize the patient. After controlling for the influence of family member and patient background characteristics and family member coping, Dementia Management Strategies accounted for significant and unique variance in family members' burden and desire to institutionalize the patient but not in family members' psychiatric symptoms. The use of Active Management and Criticism was associated with greater burden, whereas use of Encouragement was tied to less family member burden and less desire to institutionalize.

We compared black (n = 33) and white (n = 119) caregivers of dementia patients on indices of adaptation, adjustment, and utilization of supportive services. Black and white caregivers differed most notably on marital and financial/insurance status, but there were few differences between them in their adaptation to dementia responsibilities. Black caregivers, however, evidenced less burden and less desire to institutionalize their relatives and were more likely to report more unmet service needs than were whites.