Monthly Archives: February 2018
Successful Aging Takes a Team!
Successful Aging Takes A Team!
Let’s talk about why it’s critical to their quality of life to have a strong support team around seniors who are growing older.
Why?
Because I see so many older people in my private practice who face, for example, situations where they are grappling with:
- family members or loved ones with very strong opinions about what is best for them – opinions danabol that may or may not be informed and wise
- *no* family members or close friends at all to advocate for them
- a primary care physician who is prescribing medications but not following them in after-care. What is known as the “diagnose and adios” routine.
- a specialist or two who is also prescribing – say for instance a cardiologist or endocrinologist – but who is not tracking the interaction of *all* of the medications involved
- a psychiatrist who may be also be treating and prescribing psychiatric medications
- possibly a nutritionist, alternative health practitioner or two prescribing supplements, vitamins and minerals which may all be fine but which also carry side effects that can contribute to mood problems.
Way more often than not, there is very little, if any, communication and coordination amongst the health professionals. This coordinator function may have been done in the past by the primary care doc who managed the broad perspective overview of how each of his patients were doing. But nowadays primary docs are under so much time pressure in their practices that they just do not have time take on this role.
In order to build that coordinated team which will support an individual’s successful aging, it takes someone stepping into the role of being a skilled ADVOCATE. A person who knows how to coordinate effective communication amongst team members and who is in charge of reaching out on behalf of the patient to represent their concerns. Someone who can help the patient communicate their concerns and questions to other team members, and who also helps the patient remember the answers and instructions of doctors. Team members need to work in concert with each other, supporting the various lens through which each patient is viewed.
All of this process needs to be done with the utmost RESPECT for each patient where the patient has TRUST in the advocate that he or she is representing the wishes of the patient towards the goal of the best possible quality of life at any stage.
Gerontologists and mental health professionals who understand the importance of building good communication and coordination amongst care teams can be invaluable to the patient and family. Sometimes, it is care managers who provide this role, sometimes it’s an adult child, and sometimes it’s gerontological counselor.
Whoever it is that takes the lead in this role, a support team that is identified, built, coordinated and in good communication, will result in a patient who is much more likely to thrive and much less likely to fall through the cracks.
This is the health care situation for older people in our country today. Just the facts. And totally doable to navigate through it successfully. With help. With a solid, caring team.
Why Gerontological Counseling for Older People & Their Families?
Why Does Gerontological Counseling Yield the Most Effective Healing?
If you or your loved one is a senior, the counselor you or she sees absolutely, in my opinion, needs to be up to date on the latest research involving aging.
Take, for example, the topic of brain neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. Why is it critical to know about this when counseling older people? Because, not even 10 years ago in graduate psychology programs around the country, interns were taught that brains decline from age 30 on! That things were was all “downhill” – brain cells wise – from there. The explosion of current, ground-breaking brain research that we’re seeing absolutely refutes this dire and incorrect belief. Not only is that attitude false, it is anti-healing!
Our brains are changing all the time. This is called neurogenesis. It happens until our very last breath. In order to support good brain health, we need to provide some basic tools such as good nutrition, limiting sugar and processed carbs, making sure we get plenty of daily exercise, not smoking, reducing environmental toxins, decreasing stress as much as possible, practicing good mental health habits/practices, staying involved socially with family and friends, making sure we take the appropriate supplements, vitamins and minerals, etc.
When I studied psychology as a graduate student, I learned about Eric and Joan Erikson’s famous Stages of Human Development. They had first published their theories and discoveries when they themselves were very young. As they grew older they realized what the research is showing now. That is, that the years from midlife to 90 years old and up are full of rich experiences, new discoveries, and constant evolution. As Eric and Joan moved through their 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, they abashedly apologized for making ill informed assumptions that our brains basically stagnate after a certain age.
Now, I am not saying that our memories or that the way we think doesn’t change. We all experience what is called age-related cognitive change as we grow older. That is most often because we have so much more data in the “hard drives” of our brains! We can also suffer from ill health of various sorts, inflammatory conditions that affect our thinking, the side effects of medications that can impact us negatively, and depression and anxiety that can also cause foggy thinking. It’s important to approach conditions like these from a looking at the whole person approach to see what the underlying root problems may be.
The important thing to realize is that it is wrong to believe that older age inevitably leads to bleak depression and cognitive decline. Rather, we can and do grow into wisdom and the ability to cut through the chaff to the gist of what is needed to thrive. In fact, the root meaning of word wisdom, Joan Erikson wrote, is “to know how to”.
I’ll end by saying that too often I hear therapists say that they see anybody, that people are all the same. I think we may be similar but I know, without a doubt from my years of professional practice and my life experience, that the issues we face in older years are different and often far more complex, multi-layered and nuanced than when we are young. Plus, our American culture adds an often-harmful overlay of ageism to the mix.
Therapy with a gerontological counselor can help you get more quickly to the root of what is happening with you and/or your loved one and is up-to-date on other resources that can help you get the attention, care and healing support you need.