Chapter 14 Notes PDF

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Chapter 14 Notes...

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Chapter 14 Notes This is the stage (75+) that was added to Erickson’s stages because people are living longer now than they did in the past. In the US, the fastest growing segment of the population is the 85 and over group. There are persons who are old-old and who have physical or cognitive decline and there are the young-old, who are full of life and energy. The developmental tasks of this stage include coping with the physical changes of aging, developing a psychohistorical perspective, and developing new life structures. Persons who are 75 and older are likely to have experienced some of the sensory declines associated with aging, TI is very important to remain fit in your older years as studies have linked fitness with better cognitive functioning and mental health in old age. Your book reviews behavioral slowing, which I referred to in the previous chapter. Older people don’t react as quickly as younger people and that is one reason the older person often gives when he or she has driven into a building. There is a relationship between behavioral slowing and processing load—that is when you have a lot of information to process and a more complex task, the effect of behavioral slowing will be more pronounced. Your book explains the sensory changes well, so you can read them but in summary, here are some changes: vision: the lens is less elastic and accommodating to different bright nesses is difficult. Glare has a stronger effect on older adults than younger persons. The lens also clouds and that affects vision. The risk of glaucoma and cataracts are stronger in old age. Hearing; older people have a harder time with high pitched sounds and it’s more difficult for them to filter out extraneous noise (e.g. loud air conditioner). Taste and smell: the older person has a reduced sensitivity to tastes and so their cooking may decline or they may eat food that is bad, but they don’t smell or see that it is rotten  Older people may also stop eating when their taste and smell declines. How do older people cope with sensory declines? Selective optimization with compensation is one method that older people use to deal with losses in the sensory abilities. The risk of having an organic brain syndrome such as dementia may increase as one ages. Dementia involves a pattern of symptoms such as cognitive decline, memory difficulties, confusion, and language problems. The disease of dementia can be from chronic alcohol abuse, strokes, Alzheimer’s and other conditions. Your books reviews the stresses and strains associated with caring for a person with a dementia and you should read that section. Persons in very old age should also be able to review their past and evaluate their present and future so that they have a psychohistorical perspective. Older persons have so much to teach us based on their experiences and accumulated wisdom. The last developmental task is to develop new life structures during this stage. Successfully aging involves being engaged with life, avoiding disease and maintaining high cognitive and physical functioning. I mentioned in the last chapter that many older women live alone after they are widowed. After age 75 older women are even more likely to live alone and there are differences according to race and ethnic groups. Some cultures feel that they must live with the older relative rather than have that person living alone. Gentrification or the process of renovating lower income neighborhoods and selling them to higher income persons, thus making it impossible for the low income person to continue to live in the area, affect older adults. Elderly individuals may also move to another state with

less harsh weather, closer relatives, or lower cost of living. Only about 5% of all older persons live in nursing homes and often, older people are residents of a nursing home for a short time in order to rehabilitate. Many older people live in retirement communities and assisted living centers. One housing option is a continuing care retirement community, which provides residential services nearby a nursing home, just in cast the need for a nursing home arose. Also during later life, older men feel more comfortable with traditionally feminine characteristics and women feel more secure with expressing masculine characteristics— gender role convergence. Studies of men and women in aging have indicated that men and women in later life are about the same in how much they value helping others, but men are more interested than women in instrumental values (e.g. getting challenging things done). Although some might cringe when we think of older persons having sex, older people tend to have healthy sex lives. This cringe may be related to the ageism and negative images that we see of older people and their sexuality. The psychosocial crisis of very old age is immortality (feeling that some part of you continues on after your death and that the afterlife will be a relief). And the core pathology is extinction (you are afraid that your life and your death represent nothingness). I mentioned in the previous chapter how important social support is to the stresses in later life and social support is the central process for negotiating the psychosocial crisis of this stage. Your book talks about the many benefits of social support and the research findings related to social support. Read that section of the book as it is self-explanatory. The prime adaptive ego quality of very old age is confidence (trust in yourself and how meaningful your life is) and the core pathology is diffidence (feeling so much self-doubt that you are almost paralyzed). The last topic in the book is the needs of the frail elderly. When professionals working with older adults assess the needs of older adults, they look at the activities of daily living (how well the person functions in the things we need to do in life such as bathing). There are also instrumental activities of daily living which are more complex daily tasks such as shopping and housekeeping. When older persons become frail, we want hem to attain optimal functioning and sometimes the roles are reveres between child and parent and the child acts as a parent....