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A typically pessimistic view of aging is that it leads to a steady decline in physical and mental abilities. In this volume leading gerontologists and geriatric researchers explore the immense potential of older adults to overcome the challenges of old age and pursue active lives with renewed vitality. The contributors believe that resilience capacities diminishing with old age is a misconception and argue that individuals may successfully capitalize on their existing resources, skills and cognitive processes in order to achieve new learning, continuing growth, and enhanced life-satisfaction. By identifying useful psychological resources such as social connectedness, personal engagement and commitment, openness to new experiences, social support and sustained cognitive activity, the authors present a balanced picture of resilient aging. Older adults, while coping with adversity and losses, can be helped to maintain a complementary focus on psychological strengths, positive emotions, and regenerative capacities to achieve continued growth and healthy longevity.
Applying the principles of the Resilience Doughnut model promotes emotional resilience for employees in the workplace, young adults in transition, adults managing their mental health, and all adults going through life's inevitable challenges. In this ever changing world, the only constant is change, so enabling people to confidently cope with this inevitable change with a practical and usable model is refreshing. The model gives the reader an insight into their own resilience as well as provides them with ways to build on their strengths to help cope with the tough stuff. The Resilience Doughnut has become a foundational ecological model of resilience used by practitioners all around Australia and is quickly spreading to other countries. The work of the Resilience Doughnut across a whole organisation builds staff awareness of the coping resources available and enhances a culture of resilience. Programs using the Resilience Doughnut model have been used with adults in mental health units, rehabilitation services and organisations to increase staff morale with success. Results show those who have significant positive intentional relationships also have high personal and social competence and subsequently report low anxiety and depression symptoms. From these studies Resilience Doughnut programs to enhance positive connections with purpose and meaning have been introduced in corporate and school staff.
Resilience is a key component in maintaining health and happiness in old age. When aging adults struggle with social isolation, financial instability, or the difficult work of caring for a spouse with a chronic illness, their levels of stress can be enormous. But many older adults are living longer and are trying to make the best of their later years despite being more vulnerable to stress. In Resilience and Aging, renowned geriatric psychiatrist Dr. Helen Lavretsky explains how enhanced resilience—which involves positively adapting to adversity in a way that maintains a person’s biological and psychological equilibrium—can counter that vulnerability. She describes how care, practice, and research all can be redirected toward emphasizing the positive aspects of aging and prevention. Lavretsky summarizes the most up-to-date research on resilience, neurobiology, and preventive care. She also describes novel interventions—including yoga, tai chi, meditation, and allopathic techniques—that can help older adults improve their cognition and quality of life. Finally, she explores relevant clinical cases from her practice. Designed for geriatric practitioners, researchers, and family caregivers, this practical book offers critical information on measuring resilience, the role of spirituality in reducing stress, and incorporating resilience-building procedures into clinical practice or everyday life. Throughout, the book’s revolutionary integrative approach aims to amplify personal happiness by allowing aging adults to remain healthy and active while simultaneously reducing the cost of chronic disease to families and society.
In Narratives of Positive Aging, Amia Lieblich presents a qualitative study that explores the life narratives of elderly men and women who engage in practices of "positive aging." They belong to a spontaneous community that assembles daily, early in the morning, on a beach near Tel-Aviv, Israel. At the seaside, the elders practice various outdoor sports, and converse over coffee at the local café. Based on their narratives, procured by individual open-ended interviews, and the author's participant observation, the book explores the impact of routine, physical activity, and social relationships on successful aging. Lieblich additionally presents an analysis of the tension-minimizing discourse adopted at the café and the pleasant bubble-like environment it fosters amongst the community members. Finally, the book debates the adaptive role of narrating one's life story, and its perceived manifestation of wisdom. A combination of complete life stories and extracts of conversations recorded on the beach color every chapter. These texts are complimented and elucidated by a variety of academic claims, theories and findings concerning narratives and aging. This book, based on an Israeli field study, may be viewed both as a local case study as well as a lesson relevant to aging everywhere.
Older aged adults face many adversities over the later life course. This edited volume will address the ways in which seniors bounce back from different types and combinations of adversity – termed “resilience”. While research has been accumulating that identifies inherent abilities and external resources needed to adapt and navigate stress-inducing experiences among aging and older adults, gaps remain in understanding the unique elements and processes of resilience. A series of chapters included in this book will address several overarching questions: why do some older individuals/families/communities adapt to adversity better than others; what are modifiable behavioral protective/risk factors related to resilience; and how can we foster resilience at the individual/community level and which approaches show the most promise? The spectrum of aging-related challenges and responses addressed in this book include: mental health; physical/functional health problems; multimorbidity; socio-economic deprivation; social isolation and loneliness; cultural dimensions of loneliness; housing/homelessness problems; and environmental disasters. This book presents cutting-edge science at the conceptual, methodological, empirical and practice levels applied to emerging resilience sub-fields in gerontology. It will also present potential areas of future research, policy and practice linked to these areas. During a period of the most rapid population aging in the US, Canada and many other nations, coupled with heightened global socio-political change, extending our knowledge of resilience will help society to make important adjustments to maximize health and wellness of older individuals. Supporting and enhancing resilience through technological, social and/or community-level advances in geroscience will help those facing adversity to thrive by harnessing, stretching, and leveraging a wide array of potential resources. The promotion of healthier older populations has far-reaching consequences for health care and social/community support systems, both in terms of public health including pandemic response, and the development and implementation of innovations in treatment and practice guidelines.
The understanding that humans are relational beings is central to the development of an ethical perspective that is built around the significance of care in all our lives. Our survival as infants is dependent on the care we receive from others. And for all of us, in particular, in older age, there are times when illness, emotional or physical frailty, mean that we require the care of others to enable us to deal with everyday life. With this in mind, this book presents the findings of a project that seeks to understand what wellbeing means to older people and to influence the practice of those who work with older people. Its starting point was a shared commitment amongst researchers and an NGO collaborator to the value of working with older people in both research and practice, to learn from them and be influenced by them rather than seeing them as the ‘subjects’ of a research project. Theoretically, the authors draw upon a range of studies in critical gerontology that seek to understand how experiences of ageing are shaped by their social, economic, cultural and political contexts. By employing a broad body of work that challenges normative assumptions of ‘successful’ ageing,’ the authors draw attention to how these assumptions have been constructed through neo-liberal policies of ‘active ageing.’ Notably, they also apply insights from feminist ethics of care, which are based on a relational ontology that challenges neo-liberal assumptions of autonomous individualism. Influenced by relational ethics, they are attentive to older people both as co-researchers and research respondents. By successfully applying this perspective to social care practice, they facilitate the need for practitioners to reflect on personal aspects of ageing and care but also to bridge the gap between the personal and the professional.
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