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Memories of World War II Older Adults Recollections of Wartime Childhoods in the UK

 

Fiona Tasker is working with Stuart Rusby (an honorary Associate Research Fellow at Birkbeck) to look at childhood experiences of older adults who were brought up in the county of Kent in Britain during the 1930’s. Most of these older adults were evacuated away from their family into foster families during World War II.  The project looks to examine perceived influences from the social context of family experiences during childhood upon subsequent life-span development (using Life Course Perspective theory) and examines both quantitative and qualitative data from questionnaires in the JSM Rusby Archive World War II Kent Older Adults’ Memories Project (WWII: KOAMP).

Selected publications:

Rusby, J.S.M. & Tasker, F. (2009) Long-term effects of the British evacuation of children during World War 2 on their adult mental health. Aging & Mental Health 13 (3), pp. 391-404. ISSN 1360-7863

Rusby, J.S.M. & Tasker, F. (2008) Childhood temporary separation: Long-term effects of the British evacuation of children during World War 2 on older adults' attachment styles. Attachment and Human Development 10 (2), pp. 207-221. ISSN 1461-6734.

Depression in Adults: Factors Contributing to Experiences of Depression in Adulthood.

Stuart Rusby and Fiona Tasker are also working on twin pair analyses to investigate the interaction between genetic and environmental components of depression. The work is being conducted with the TwinsUK Adult Twin Registry held in the Department of Twin Research (DTR) at St Thomas’ Hospital London and King’s College London.

Selected publications:

Rusby, J.S.M., Tasker, F. & Cherkas, L. (2016). Genetic and environmental components of female depression as a function of the severity of the disorder. Brain & Behavior, DOI: 10.1002/brb3.519

Rusby, J.S.M., Harris, J.M. & Tasker, F. (2013). Female interpersonal dependency: genetic and environmental components and its relationship to depression as a function of age. Aging & Mental Health, 17, 1044-51. doi: 10.1080/13607863.2013.807421.