It was chance, really, that led Cynthia McRae (PhD ’87) to find a research niche that has been her passion for more than 20 years now.
McRae, a professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Denver Morgridge College of Education, knew the impact Parkinson’s disease can have on a patient and his or her family because her dad came down with the debilitating central nervous system disorder when she was a graduate student. When she first joined the University of Denver faculty in 1988, one of her colleagues was involved in research about the disease and was scheduled to speak to a Parkinson’s disease support group. He was double booked that day and asked McRae to step in for him.
“The group was nice and open and I thought, ‘Gosh, I have so much in common with these people,’” McRae said.
After that brief encounter, she continued to attend the group meetings and suddenly found herself following a new research path.
“I use this as an illustration to my students to keep their options open and pursue things not only that you are interested in but that might present themselves unexpectedly,” she said.
McRae attended a conference in Europe and connected with others doing Parkinson’s research. Through that conference, she learned of a researcher in Denver who could use her help. Curt Freed was studying patients who underwent surgeries in which embryonic tissue is implanted in the brain to potentially ease symptoms.
Through a National Institutes of Health grant, McRae and Freed worked with 40 patients—20 of whom got the surgery and 20 who got a placebo surgery. McRae wrote her own grant to study the patients’ quality of life following the surgery in relation to whether or not they believed they had the real surgery.
“What people thought they got made a huge impact,” she said. “It was really a demonstration of the mind-body connection.”
McRae also studied caregivers to learn about their perceptions of the patients’ conditions as well as to analyze their feelings and experiences as caregivers.
She’s now working to investigate the effectiveness of the Brooklyn Parkinson Group’s Dance for Parkinson’s Disease program, which is cosponsored by the Mark Morris Dance Group. She describes watching the participants as a “real privilege.”
“They are able to leave their ‘patient’ identity behind for a while and enjoy social contact with others and experience the freedom of expression and movement that is not generally part of their everyday lives,” she said.
In addition to making an impact through her research, McRae, who credits College of Education professors Betsy Altmaier, Dave Jepsen, and Al Hood with encouraging and nurturing her talents, is now impacting students of her own.
Emily Fazio has worked with McRae for seven years—first as a master’s student and now as a doctoral candidate. Fazio said she is inspired by the integrity and compassion McRae brings to her work and the way her research compliments work in the medical and neurological fields.
“Professor McRae’s work validates the impact of non-medical symptoms such as quality of life, depression, loneliness, and other psychological factors that are often associated with Parkinson’s disease, but are not always included within medical research,” Fazio said.
McRae said she has found joy in digging into an intriguing topic as well as inspiration from the people she researches.
“I have come to appreciate and be humbled by their ability to deal with something that I know is extremely difficult,” she said. “They are heroes for meeting these incredible challenges and figuring out in their own ways how to manage life. That’s very inspirational for me.”
