College of Letters & Science

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The College of Letters and Science, the largest center for learning, teaching and research at Montana State University, offers students an excellent liberal arts and sciences education in nearly 50 majors, 25 minors and over 25 graduate degrees within the four areas of the humanities, natural sciences, mathematics and social sciences.

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Author: search.filters.author.Gameon, Julie A.search.filters.applied.f.department: search.filters.department.Psychology

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    The Role of Complicated Grief in Health Inequities in American Indian Communities
    (SAGE Publications, 2024-09) Gameon, Julie A.; McNamee, Alex; Firemoon, Paula; Skewes, Monica C.
    Complicated grief is both a cause and a consequence of health inequities in Native (American Indian/Alaska Native [AI/AN]) communities. Given disproportionately high rates of physical (e.g., cancer, diabetes, and heart disease) and mental health problems (e.g., substance use disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder) in Native communities, it is common for AI/AN people to suffer many losses each year. Experiences of traumatic or repeated losses may lead to the development of maladaptive grief, often known as complicated grief. The aim of the current study was to understand the perspectives of community members on grief and its connection with health inequities among AI people who have experienced the loss of a person with whom they were close. Using a community-based participatory research framework, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 AI adults from a rural reservation community. The ages of the participants ranged from 32 to 80 years (M = 54.33, SD = 14.46) and women (n = 7, 58.3%) and men (n = 5, 41.7%) were included. The participants reported many barriers to healthy grieving and linked chronic, complicated grief with the development of multifaceted health problems, which were seen as exacerbating health disparities and leading to additional losses and grief. While coping with loss was difficult, many people were able to heal from extraordinary losses through community support and cultural practices. Future research with AI/AN communities is needed to develop, implement, and evaluate culturally responsive therapeutic grief treatments. There is also a pressing need to address current physical and mental health inequities to reduce the mortality rate and, thus, complicated grief in AI/AN communities.
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    Development and Preliminary Validation of the Complicated and Adaptive Grief Inventory for Native Americans
    (SAGE Publications, 2024-08) Gameon, Julie A.; FireMoon, Paula; Skewes, Monica C.
    Grief research among American Indian (AI) and Alaska Native (AN) people has been limited to studies on historical trauma and elevated mortality rates among AI/ANs. A lack of validated measures is one barrier to grief research with AI/ANs. Therefore, we conducted three studies to develop and validate a culturally congruent measure of grief. In Study 1, interviews were conducted with 12 AI reservation-based community members to understand perspectives on grief. In Study 2, AI/AN community members (n = 10) and professionals (n = 7) provided feedback on measure items adapted or developed in Study 1. In Study 3, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses using separate randomly selected samples from a web-based survey of 600 AI/ANs were conducted to identify the factor structure of the Complicated and Adaptive Grief Inventory for Native Americans (CAGI-NA). Findings suggest that the resulting 30-item CAGI-NA is valid, reliable, and suitable for use in research with AI/AN people.
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