Segal named Kraemer Family Endowed Professor of Aging Studies

Daniel L. Segal, Ph.D., Professor of Clinical Geropsychology, is continuing his decades of service in the clinical psychology and professional geropsychology fields as the next Kraemer Family Endowed Professor of Aging Studies. Segal is the second to serve in this endowed role (taking over from Professor Emerita Sara Qualls after her 2023 retirement) and was appointed on July 1.

With the endowed position, Segal can bring greater awareness to aging studies, pursue more research opportunities and further contribute to training and education in geropsychology, especially through the university’s Ph.D. program in clinical psychology, which has a long-standing and nationally recognized track in Geropsychology.

“I’m excited to work in this role, and it’s a real honor,” Segal said. “I​ view it ​as ​being the ​champion ​of ​aging ​studies ​in ​the Psychology ​Department, across ​the ​campus, ​and ​also ​in ​the ​community. The ​idea ​is ​to ​be ​involved ​and ​promote awareness ​of ​aging ​issues ​more ​broadly. ​My ​specific ​area of expertise ​is ​aging ​and ​mental ​health, ​but I’d ​like ​to use ​this position to ​help ​broaden ​a ​focus ​of ​aging ​issues ​across ​the ​whole ​campus.”

The potential for further research is an especially exciting aspect with this position, and Segal aims to promote research and the study of aging and geropsychology both in general and within his specializations.

“I mainly focus on three related research areas,” explained Segal. “The first one is looking at how diverse mental disorders manifest in later life, knowing that the context of later life is often very different and that mental disorders often show up in different and unique ways than they do in younger people. The second area is looking at assessment measures of psychopathology and conducting psychometric studies to see how those measures work with an older adult population. The rationale behind that, in general, is that most assessment measures for things like anxiety or depression were developed by, and for, the typical younger adult population, with little thought to how the measures might apply to older adults.”

“The third area is probably the most exciting for me,” he continued. “It’s the development of measures that are specialized for older adults, to respond to that issue that most psychopathology measures were designed and developed with younger adults in mind. I was especially interested in the anxiety area, and so in 2010, my research team and I started working on a self-report screening and quantitative assessment tool for anxiety that was specialized for the older population. We developed the 30-item measure called the Geriatric Anxiety Scale (GAS), which is designed specifically for use with older adults. The interpretation and cutoff scores are all based on fairly large samples of older adults, and the items were created to be consistent with what we know about the unique presentation of anxiety in later life.”

The GAS assessment instrument is popular for use across the U.S., not only in research but in clinical settings as well, and other versions have since been devised for further use. A shorter 10-item version for quick assessment has been developed, along with a version called GAS-LTC, which is adapted specifically for older adults in long-term care settings. The scale has also been adapted for international use as well, which Segal hopes to continue pursuing.

“I’d like to continue to move forward on refining the measure for international use,” he said. “We’ve worked with researchers across the world and translated the measure into several languages and then conducted studies of validity in those languages. It’s not a matter of just translating the measure – you have to then do the validity studies to see what the specific psychometric properties are of the measure in a particular language, in a particular cultural context. To date, we’ve done formal validation studies of the GAS in German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Farsi and Turkish.”

As well as research initiatives, Segal is organizing various events for both campus and community participation around aging studies.

“In the spring, I’m going to sponsor a community-oriented talk on healthy cognitive aging and hope to have community members come to campus to learn about important aspects of aging and mental health,” he shared. “This first one is going to focus on brain health and cognitive aging. I’m also hoping to launch a small grant award program to support students in the Psychology Department’s graduate programs and to fund multiple upcoming projects in the next academic year.”

Segal joined UCCS in 1995, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in Clinical Psychology and Geropsychology, and has been a significant part of developing aging studies on campus. Along with Professor Emerita Qualls, he established the geropsychology doctoral program in 2004 – the College of Letters, Arts & Sciences’ first-ever doctoral program – and co-founded the UCCS Aging Center, serving as its first director. Segal has authored several books, including “Aging and Mental Health,” written more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and received multiple campus awards.

For those interested in learning more about or supporting Segal’s research, visit his research team website at https://agingandmentalhealthlab.uccs.edu/.