Navigating the Challenges of Aging -A Mental Health Guide PDF Download

Author: Gaius Quill
Publisher: Gaius Quill Publishing
ISBN: 1917186908
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 71

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Book Description
In "Navigating the Challenges of Aging: A Mental Health Guide," readers are invited on an enlightening journey to explore the multifaceted relationship between aging and mental health. This comprehensive guide is designed to empower older adults, caregivers, and family members with the knowledge and tools needed to tackle the psychological hurdles that often accompany aging. Through six meticulously crafted chapters, the book sheds light on the intricacies of mental health in the later stages of life, debunking common misconceptions and highlighting actionable strategies for fostering mental wellness. From understanding the natural changes that come with aging to recognizing the signs of mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and dementia, this guide offers a compassionate and insightful look into the challenges many face as they grow older. It emphasizes the importance of building a supportive network through leveraging community resources, creating new friendships, and strengthening family and caregiver connections. Practical strategies for enhancing mental wellness form the core of this guide, covering lifestyle adjustments, the benefits of mindfulness and relaxation techniques, and ways to support cognitive health. Additionally, it navigates the complexities of professional help, including how to find the right therapist, manage medications effectively, and advocate for oneself in healthcare settings. Planning for the future is addressed with care, offering guidance on legal and financial planning, exploring living arrangements that support aging with dignity, and creating a personalized mental wellness plan to ensure ongoing health and happiness.

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309671035
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Social isolation and loneliness are serious yet underappreciated public health risks that affect a significant portion of the older adult population. Approximately one-quarter of community-dwelling Americans aged 65 and older are considered to be socially isolated, and a significant proportion of adults in the United States report feeling lonely. People who are 50 years of age or older are more likely to experience many of the risk factors that can cause or exacerbate social isolation or loneliness, such as living alone, the loss of family or friends, chronic illness, and sensory impairments. Over a life course, social isolation and loneliness may be episodic or chronic, depending upon an individual's circumstances and perceptions. A substantial body of evidence demonstrates that social isolation presents a major risk for premature mortality, comparable to other risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking, or obesity. As older adults are particularly high-volume and high-frequency users of the health care system, there is an opportunity for health care professionals to identify, prevent, and mitigate the adverse health impacts of social isolation and loneliness in older adults. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults summarizes the evidence base and explores how social isolation and loneliness affect health and quality of life in adults aged 50 and older, particularly among low income, underserved, and vulnerable populations. This report makes recommendations specifically for clinical settings of health care to identify those who suffer the resultant negative health impacts of social isolation and loneliness and target interventions to improve their social conditions. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults considers clinical tools and methodologies, better education and training for the health care workforce, and dissemination and implementation that will be important for translating research into practice, especially as the evidence base for effective interventions continues to flourish.

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309448093
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
Family caregiving affects millions of Americans every day, in all walks of life. At least 17.7 million individuals in the United States are caregivers of an older adult with a health or functional limitation. The nation's family caregivers provide the lion's share of long-term care for our older adult population. They are also central to older adults' access to and receipt of health care and community-based social services. Yet the need to recognize and support caregivers is among the least appreciated challenges facing the aging U.S. population. Families Caring for an Aging America examines the prevalence and nature of family caregiving of older adults and the available evidence on the effectiveness of programs, supports, and other interventions designed to support family caregivers. This report also assesses and recommends policies to address the needs of family caregivers and to minimize the barriers that they encounter in trying to meet the needs of older adults.

Author: Ronda Hughes
Publisher: Department of Health and Human Services
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description
"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/

Author: Daniel L. Segal
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119133130
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Fully updated and revised, this new edition of a highly successful text provides students, clinicians, and academics with a thorough introduction to aging and mental health. The third edition of Aging and Mental Health is filled with new updates and features, including the impact of the DSM-5 on diagnosis and treatment of older adults. Like its predecessors, it uses case examples to introduce readers to the field of aging and mental health. It also provides both a synopsis of basic gerontology needed for clinical work with older adults and an analysis of several facets of aging well. Introductory chapters are followed by a series of chapters that describe the major theoretical models used to understand mental health and mental disorders among older adults. Following entries are devoted to the major forms of mental disorders in later life, with a focus on diagnosis, assessment, and treatment issues. Finally, the book focuses on the settings and contexts of professional mental health practice and on emerging policy issues that affect research and practice. This combination of theory and practice helps readers conceptualize mental health problems in later life and negotiate the complex decisions involved with the assessment and treatment of those problems. Features new material on important topics including positive mental health, hoarding disorder, chronic pain, housing, caregiving, and ethical and legal concerns Substantially revised and updated throughout, including reference to the DSM-5 Offers chapter-end recommendations of websites for further information Includes discussion questions and critical thinking questions at the end of each chapter Aging and Mental Health, Third Edition is an ideal text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in psychology, for service providers in psychology, psychiatry, social work, and counseling, and for clinicians who are experienced mental health service providers but who have not had much experience working specifically with older adults and their families.

Author: Lloyd I. Sederer MD
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393708810
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Advice on Helping Your Loved Ones, from the medical director of the country's largest state mental health system and the mental health editor of The Huffington Post More than fifty million people a year are diagnosed with some form of mental illness. It spares no sex, race, age, ethnicity, or income level. And left untreated, mental disorders can devastate our families and communities. Family members and friends are often the first to realize when someone has a problem, but it is hard to know how to help or where to turn. Our mental health “system” can feel like a bewildering and frustrating maze. How can you tell that someone has a mental illness? What are the first and best steps for you to take? Where do you go to find the right care? The Family Guide to Mental Health Care is the first comprehensive print resource for the millions of people who have loved ones suffering from some kind of mental illness. In this book, families can find the answers to their most urgent questions. What medications are helpful and are some as dangerous as I think? Is there a way to navigate privacy laws so I can discuss my adult daughter’s treatment with her doctor? Is my teenager experiencing typical adolescent distress or an illness? From understanding depression, bipolar illness and anxiety to eating and traumatic disorders, schizophrenia, and much more, readers will learn what to do and how to help. Real-life scenarios and authoritative information are written in a compassionate, reader-friendly way, including checklists to bring to a doctor’s appointment so you can ask the right questions. For readers who fear they will never see the light at the end of the tunnel, this book gives hope and a path forward. As one of the nation’s leading voices on quality care in mental health, Dr. Lloyd Sederer has played a singular role in advancing services for those with mental illness. Now, the wealth of his expertise and clear guidance is at your disposal. From the first signs of a problem to sorting through the variety of treatment options, you and your family will be able to walk into a doctor’s office know what to do and what to ask.

Author: Sandi Peters
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1623174376
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
An experiential guide to re-orienting our understanding of late adulthood as one of life's most meaningful and transformative stages Aging can bring new fears, challenges, and concerns. Loss of career, loved ones, or changing physical and cognitive abilities can leave us feeling isolated and scared. Sandi Peters shows us that growing older need not mean the end of personal growth. In fact, late adulthood can prove to be the most meaningful and transformative period of one's life. The key, says Peters, is the development of one's inner life, and with it a shift in one's relation to the aging process. The book draws on history, philosophy, psychology, gerontology, and spirituality to deepen and expand our understanding of what it means to grow old in the twenty-first century. Peters shares time-tested contemplative practices such as meditation, active imagination, dream work, and creative writing designed to enhance one's inner worlds and enable us to face life's inevitable changes with equanimity and insight. She offers practical advice on issues such as assisted living and home care, and a refreshingly new perspective on matters of memory and cognitive change.

Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309256658
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
At least 5.6 million to 8 million-nearly one in five-older adults in America have one or more mental health and substance use conditions, which present unique challenges for their care. With the number of adults age 65 and older projected to soar from 40.3 million in 2010 to 72.1 million by 2030, the aging of America holds profound consequences for the nation. For decades, policymakers have been warned that the nation's health care workforce is ill-equipped to care for a rapidly growing and increasingly diverse population. In the specific disciplines of mental health and substance use, there have been similar warnings about serious workforce shortages, insufficient workforce diversity, and lack of basic competence and core knowledge in key areas. Following its 2008 report highlighting the urgency of expanding and strengthening the geriatric health care workforce, the IOM was asked by the Department of Health and Human Services to undertake a complementary study on the geriatric mental health and substance use workforce. The Mental Health and Substance Use Workforce for Older Adults: In Whose Hands? assesses the needs of this population and the workforce that serves it. The breadth and magnitude of inadequate workforce training and personnel shortages have grown to such proportions, says the committee, that no single approach, nor a few isolated changes in disparate federal agencies or programs, can adequately address the issue. Overcoming these challenges will require focused and coordinated action by all.

Author: Stefano Masiero
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331957406X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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Book Description
This book clearly explains when and how different rehabilitation techniques should be applied in the aging patient, thereby enabling readers to identify and apply those rehabilitation strategies that will maximize quality of life and functional independence in individual cases. It is specifically designed for ease of consultation and rapid retrieval of the information most relevant to clinical practice. Prominence is given to the benefits of a multidisciplinary approach to rehabilitation, with discussion of a very wide range of aspects of rehabilitation in different disease settings. The breadth of coverage is illustrated by the attention paid to less commonly addressed topics such as visual and hearing rehabilitation, the role of robotics and 3D imaging techniques, variations in approach among health care systems, and rehabilitation in end-of-life care. The authors are international academic experts in their fields, guaranteeing a high scientific standard throughout. This manual will be an invaluable tool and source of knowledge for geriatricians and physiatrists but will also appeal to a wider range of clinicians, practitioners, and students.

Author: Merck & Co., Inc.
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345482743
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 994

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Book Description
"A VALUABLE RESOURCE FOR ANYONE WHO SEEKS A HEALTHIER OLD AGE FOR THEMSELVES OR THEIR LOVED ONES.” –William D. Novelli, CEO, AARP If aging were an open book, it would be The Merck Manual of Health & Aging. From one of the most trusted names in medical reference comes an accessible, all-inclusive guide for older adults that shares what measures to take to optimize the aging process, prevent disease, and improve your overall health. This comprehensive book also explains the health care system and the disorders seniors are most likely to experience. Inside you’ll discover clear, authoritative information on • preventive medical care and good nutrition • common medical disorders in older adults • strategies for coping with disease • steps for finding the best in medical care • how to communicate with health care practitioners • the role of alternative and complementary medicine • the benefits and risks of medical tests • the challenges of caregiving and rehabilitation • how the body ages • safe, easy-to-follow cardio exercises • the social, legal, and ethical issues of aging Also featuring candid essays by seniors who share their insights and personal experiences on growing older, The Merck Manual of Health & Aging is an essential home reference for making your later years truly golden.