Respond to two colleagues by describing additional ways in which their perspectives might impact work with older adults.
Use the Learning Resources to support your posts. Make sure to provide APA citations and a reference list.
1-JEN
Describe two to three biological changes that occur in later adulthood and explain how the social environment influences them. Then explain how these biological changes could affect the psychological and social domains. Finally, reflect on your own thoughts, perspectives, and experiences related to the aging process. How might these perspectives impact your work with older adults?
According to Zastrow, 65 is the line between middle and old age. However, gerontologists have divided later adulthood into two groups: young-old (65 to 74) and old-old (75 and older). Society tends to define old age by chronological age, a person’s physical and mental conditions.
- Intellectual Functioning– As adults age, they can maintain their level of general intelligence, but they may score lower on IQ tests due to a gradual decline. This decline could be due to a diminished ability to see and hear (Zastrow et al., 2019). There can also be additional anxieties with timed tests. There can also be a terminal drop in intelligence for those who are weeks to months away from death due to a terminal illness.
- Reserve Capacity- As adults age, they may use their bodies less due to stressful demands and limited mobility (Zastrow et al., 2019). An older person may have been able to respond quicker and recover faster from illnesses. As they age, their reserve capacity will diminish, causing them to be less able to care for themselves.
As a person age several stereotypes can be imposed on the elderly. The most prevalent is that as a person age, they will lose their memory (Nelson, T. 2016). This impacts older adults negatively. Adults can be labeled as being senile, treated like they cannot do day-to-day tasks due to becoming fragile, and be treated as though they are a burden. Older adults will sense in their bodies that they need to slow down due to biological changes.
I have worked with people of all ages in my career. I have seen people treated like they were fragile become reliant on someone else to help take care of them, but I have seen older adults who were independent and more than capable. One thing I notice with each person is how involved and how family is involved in their lives.
For instance, I was called to a home for a 90-year-old woman who has lived independently for 30-plus years. She maintained a clean home, had food to eat, had her medications sorted, etc. The reason that I was called to her home was that she had started to become forgetful and aggressive towards family members. They were concerned that she was not taking her medications. They felt that it was time for her to go into assisted living so that she had someone to help take care of her. When I spoke to her, she was articulate and could tell me how to cook food, when to take her medications without looking at the bottles, etc. I did notice some aggression, and she seemed weak. There were other concerns, but for HIPPA, I will leave them out. I did have her go to the hospital, and it was found that she had a UTI. Once she was treated, she was back to her baseline behaviors.
Another instance was a family that did not talk or interact with their parent. They did everything for them and did not include them in things. They more or less taught them as if they were a child. The woman was in her 70s; she did not cook, clean, or hold conversations and could not answer basic questions. She was taken to the hospital for medical treatment, and then she was put into assisted living. She died less than five years later.
Those experiences taught me a lot. The first was that not all mental health issues are due to declining mental health and that physical ailments can affect mental health. I want to keep such things in mind while working with individuals. There have been times when it is just as important to educate younger adults about how older people can age. The second was that I could see a faster decline in those who are more or less left to themselves. I want to continue seeing clients as people and not as numbers.
2 MO- Biological changes that occur later in adulthood are a reduction in sexual responses and intellectual functioning. These two changes have the most psychological and social effects because losing the two is like an eye-opener to the realization that you are old or, as the phrase states, “one foot in the grave and one foot out.” The E-book Empowerment Series: Understanding Human Behavior and the Social Environment details the decline in sexual responses from a study by Hyde and DeLamater: “Sexual activity gradually declines among older adults pg.650 (Hyde & DeLamater, 2014) (Zastrow, 2018).” As reported in the E-book, “the reduction in intellectual functioning in later adulthood has less to do with their intellectual competence but with other associated factors including speed and diminished vision and hearing, that may make hearing instructions difficult pg.646 (Zastrow, 2018).” Psychologically, both declines could cause the later adult to feel a sense of loss or loneliness as if they are losing a part of themselves. Loneliness, where they may reframe from sexual activity or not even engage in intellectual conversations due to them having self-defeating thoughts. My personal experience with aging in later adulthood is having my father move in with me. My father yearns for the companionship of a woman and finds himself frustrated with his phone due to his limitations in understanding how to operate social media (which he loves.) It is sad to hear my father feel that society has “forgotten about older people.” So, as a social worker, I would empower him to take free classes offered at the local library or AARP geared towards operating cell phones and activities where he is placed in a social environment with his peers. I recently let my father utilize the Facebook dating feature to encourage him to meet a female companion; he enjoys it.