Getting to Know the Life Stories of Older Adults PDF Download

Author: Kathy Laurenhue
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781932529258
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Positive relationships begin with people enjoying one another. This fresh look at reminiscence uses fun-filled, lively activities to help people laugh with, as well as learn from, each other. The engaging program will foster understanding and build a sense of community through meaningful interaction. Nine in-depth group exercises and more than 30 informal mini-exercises cover broad topics such as individuals' backgrounds, personal preferences, and social history. Games, discussion, storytelling, and other interactive methods are used to reveal participants' unique characteristics, experiences, and interests. Substantial benefits will result including expanded self-awareness and self-esteem strengthened relationships among participants, families, and caregivers disclosure of useful information for personalizing care enhanced brain functioning Appropriate for people of all ages, but aimed particularly at older adults, these activities can be used in long-term care settings, assisted living facilities, adult day centers, and senior centers. The exercises can also be adapted for one-on-one use in home or community settings and used with intergenerational groups. Each main exercise is completely scripted and easy-to-implement with minimal preparation. The manual also includes adaptations for people with dementia, additional resource lists, and a CD-ROM with printable handouts. Every person is unique--use these activities to discover, celebrate, and benefit from the experience and individuality of older adults.

Author: Elina Ellis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781509882274
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
Children's Book of the Week in The TelegraphA very funny and lovable picture book tribute to grandparents and older people.When you're small, everybody bigger than you seems really old. But does being older have to mean being boring, or slow, or quiet? NO! Elina Ellis' wonderful illustrations reveal that the age you are makes no difference to how amazing you can be.From the winner of the Macmillan Prize for Illustration 2017, The Truth About Old People is an instant favourite with children and grown-ups that tackles ageism without being preachy. Elina has a great talent for characterful illustration: you'll feel like you've known this family all your life.

Author: Louise Aronson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620405482
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 467

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Book Description
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction A New York Times Bestseller Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Winner of the WSU AOS Bonner Book Award Winner of the 2022 At Home With Growing Older Impact Award As revelatory as Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, physician and award-winning author Louise Aronson's Elderhood is an essential, empathetic look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life. For more than 5,000 years, "old" has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever before, we've made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, denigrated, neglected, and denied. Reminiscent of Oliver Sacks, noted Harvard-trained geriatrician Louise Aronson uses stories from her quarter century of caring for patients, and draws from history, science, literature, popular culture, and her own life to weave a vision of old age that's neither nightmare nor utopian fantasy--a vision full of joy, wonder, frustration, outrage, and hope about aging, medicine, and humanity itself. Elderhood is for anyone who is, in the author's own words, "an aging, i.e., still-breathing human being."

Author: David Lereah
Publisher: Quill Driver Books
ISBN: 9781610353601
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
Americans are unprepared for aging. The Power of Positive Aging is a training course to help you survive and thrive through the greatest challenge of your life--growing old. Americans now live longer than ever--a full 30 years longer than they did in the early 20th century. Our culture and personal expectations have not yet adapted to that change. These extra years can be a burden or an adventure, depending on your mental attitude. You can't fight the inevitable changes to your aging body, but author David Lereah says these changes are at worst inconveniences that won't prevent living a fulfilling life. Based on life lessons learned during Lereah's successful battle against cancer, The Power of Positive Aging gives readers a practical program of mental and spiritual exercises teaching mindfulness and acceptance, plus strategies for pursuing a balanced life and seeking and accepting social support. Based on timeless spiritual (but completely practical) principles, The Power of Positive Aging presents a concrete program of specific actions to put these principles into use in everyday life.

Author: Linda May Grobman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781929109210
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"This book, like its predecessors Days in the Lives of Social Workers and More Days in the Lives of Social Workers, highlights the experiences of social workers through first-person narratives. This volume focuses on professional social work in direct and indirect practice with and on behalf of older adults. The contributors to this book are social workers at the BSW, MSW, and doctoral levels. Here are some of the social work practice settings, roles, and topics you will read about: working in communities; hospitals, hospice, and home health; nursing home social work, administration, inspection, and advocacy; addictions, mental illness, and homelessness in older adults; Alzheimer s and Parkinson s diseases; international settings;gerontological research; policy and macro practice; social work student experiences in gerontology; centenarians and their secrets to long life. Gerontological social work is a growing and exciting practice specialty! The stories told by these gerontological social workers will transform your thinking about what this type of work entails. You will gain a better understanding of the issues facing older adults and their social workers, and you may be inspired to pursue this career path. This engaging collection will make a welcome supplement to the theory found in traditional textbooks. Organizations, Web sites, additional readings, and a glossary of terms are included to assist you in further exploring these areas of social work practice. Photographs by social worker/photographer Marianne Gontarz York are featured to expand your visual images of real people as they grow older."--pub. desc.

Author: Gary Kenyon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199842671
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
In its brief but vigorous history, gerontology has spawned a broadening range of specializations. One of the newest of such specializations is narrative gerontology, so named for its emphasis on the biographical, or inside, dimensions of the experience of aging. Telling stories about our world, our relationships, and ourselves is fundamental to how we make meaning. Everything from our history to our religion and our memories to our emotions is linked to the tales we tell ourselves, and others, about where we have come from and where we are going. They are central to who we are. The biographical side of human life is every bit as critical to fathom as the biological side, if we seek a more balanced, positive, and optimistic perspective on what aging is about; if we would honor the dignity and complexity, the humanity and uniqueness of the lives of older persons, no matter what their health or economic standing. In this respect, a narrative approach is particularly suited to the exploration of such topics as meaning, spirituality, and wisdom, and the connections they share. This volume reflects a selection of new directions and insights, and constitutes a general broadening and deepening of narrative gerontology, exploring its implications for theory and research in the field of aging, and for the quality of life of older adults themselves. Such deepening indicates a greater refinement of thought, method, and intervention. The evolution of narrative gerontology is also evidenced by a significant increase in the number of faculty and graduate students engaged in research in this area, as well as by increasing collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and administrators in applying narrative insights to contexts such as long term care - indeed, healthcare in general. These initiatives have given rise to the phrase, "narrative care as core care".

Author: Wendy Lustbader
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101547677
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
The acclaimed author of What's Worth Knowing reveals the truth about aging: Old age often offers a richer, better, and more self-assured life than youth. From our earliest lives, we are told that our youth will be the best time of our lives-that the energy and vitality of youth are the most important qualities a person can possess, and that everything that comes after will be a sad decline. But in reality, says Wendy Lustbader, youth is not the golden era it is often made out to be. For many, it is a time riddled with anxiety, angst, confusion, and the torture of uncertainty. Conversely, the media often feeds us a vision of growing older as a journey of defeat and diminishment. They are dead wrong. As Lustbader counters, "Life gets better as we get older, on all levels except the physical." Life Gets Better is not a precious or whimsical tome on the quirky wisdom of the elderly. Lustbader-who has worked for several decades as a social worker specializing in aging issues-conducted firsthand research with aging and elderly people in all walks of life, and she found that they overwhelmingly spoke of the mental and emotional richness they have drawn from aging. Lustbader discovered that rather than experiencing a decline from youth, aging people were happier, more courageous, and more interested in being true to their inner selves than were young people. Life Gets Better examines through first-person stories, as well as Lustbader's own observations, how a lifetime of lessons learned can yield one of the most personally and emotionally fruitful periods of anyone's life. As an eighty-six-year-old who contributed her story to the book noted, "For me, being old is the reward for outlasting all the big and little problems that happen to all of us along life's pathway." The collected stories in Life Gets Better provide a hopeful corrective to the fear of aging aggressively instilled in us by the media. Don't dread the future: The best years of our lives just may be ahead.

Author: Nancy Kropf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019068223X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Evidence Based Treatment with Older Adults: Theory, Practice, and Research provides a detailed examination of five research-supported psychosocial interventions for use with older adults: cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, life review/reminiscence, problem solving therapy, and psychoeducational/social support approaches. These interventions address the diversity of mental health conditions and late-life challenges that older adults and their family members experience. Detailed explanations of the approaches, skills, and strategies employed in each intervention are provided, as are adaptions for use of the interventions with older adults. Vignettes are also used to demonstrate the use of specific practice skills and techniques with older clients. The theory undergirding each approach and the historical development of the interventions is explained, and provides the reader with a rich understanding of background and context of each therapy. In addition, the distinct issues such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse/misuse for which evidence exists are highlighted. Research support for application of the interventions in community-based, acute care, and long-term care settings and in individual and group formats is also discussed. Finally, implementation issues encountered in therapeutic work with older adults are described as are accommodations to enhance treatment efficacy. In sum, this book provides a comprehensive overview of evidence based psychosocial interventions for older adults; it is ideal for students and mental health professionals interested in clinical work with older adults and their families.

Author: William Lowell Randall
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780973631326
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
ABOUT THE BOOK"In Our Stories Lies Our Strength: Aging, Spirituality, and Narrative" is aimed at thoughtful older adults who are committed to aging as creatively, as positively, and as resiliently as possible amid the challenges and changes that come with later life. It is aimed as well at professionals and volunteers who offer spiritual care to older adults in a wide range of settings, from hospitals to nursing homes, from hospice to rehabilitation, and from religious congregations to community centers. These include: chaplains, pastors, rabbis, priests, parish nurses, social workers, therapists, spiritual directors, and volunteers - anyone whose calling is to listen deeply to older adults' stories and, in the process, help them to re-story in healing and life-affirming ways.ABOUT THE AUTHORWilliam L. (Bill) Randall is Professor of Gerontology at St. Thomas University. Prior to entering academic life, he was a minister for 11 years with the United Church of Canada, serving pastorates in Saskatchewan, Ontario, and New Brunswick. A graduate of Harvard College, Princeton Seminary, and the University of Toronto, he is author or co-author of over 60 publications on the topic of Narrative Gerontology, including the books "The Stories We Are: An Essay on Self-Creation" (University of Toronto Press, 1995/2014), "Reading Our Lives: The Poetics of Growing Old" (Oxford University Press, 2008), and "The Narrative Complexity of Ordinary Life: Tales from the Coffee Shop" (Oxford UP, 2015). He has been chief co-organizer of three international conferences called "Narrative Matters" and is co-editor of the online, peer-reviewed journal, "Narrative Works." With a special interest in aging and spirituality (broadly defined), Bill joins a growing number of researchers and practitioners worldwide who acknowledge the power of "narrative care" in promoting emotional and mental well-being in later life.

Author: Eunice Helgeson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Older people
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
"The purpose of this project was to determine how older adults would like to share their life stories and what kind of help, if any, they would like to have in order to share them the way they would like to do so. The study showed that older adults would like to have their life stories be part of a family history or genealogy book and that they would like help researching history, researching genealogy, including pictures. There is also interest in having help writing, organizing, and formatting the writing and documents so that they can be printed. This study further found that older adults think it is important to include family and life stories as part of the legacy that they hand down to present and future generations."--leaf 3.