Download or read book Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2020-05-14 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Elders Living Alone written by Robert L. Rubinstein and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is it like to be old, have many health problems, and live alone? This book enters the lives of frail elders who live alone and vividly conveys their continuing struggle to maintain their independence. Many look to their homes as the important facilitating element for that independence; the home environment and personal space are often the most significant elements for elders living alone.
Download or read book Aging Alone written by Ruth Alvarez and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-07-19 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What concerns do you have as you grow older without a spouse or partner by your side? Are you worried that you might outlive your money, or have nowhere to turn if you become seriously ill or hurt or want to make new friends in your age group? This book will help you find answers to those questions and more. Ms. Alvarez also is the author of CCRCs: Find the Right Continuing Care Retirement Community for Yourself Or a Loved One
Download or read book Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers written by Sara Zeff Geber and published by Mango Media Inc.. This book was released on 2018-04-15 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A practical yet humorous guide to aging solo gracefully and achieving a happy retirement. In Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers, certified retirement coach Sara Zeff Geber coins the term “Solo Ager” to refer to the segment of society that either does not have adult children or is single and believes they will be on their own as they grow older. This book explores the path ahead for this group. That includes choices in housing, relationships, legal arrangements, finances, and more. Geber reviews the role of adult children in an aging parent’s world and suggests ways in which Solo Agers can mitigate the absence of adult children by relationship building and rigorous planning for their future. Geber shares her expertise on what constitutes a fulfilling older life and how Solo Agers can maximize their opportunities for financial security, physical health, meaning and purpose in the second half of life, and, finally, planning for the end game. Through real-life stories and anecdotes, the author explores housing choices, relationships, and building a support system. You will learn about: · different levels of care and independence in various types of living arrangements · how to initiate discussions among friends and relatives about end-of-life treatment · “what if” scenarios · who to talk to about legal and financial decisions And it’s not just the Solo Ager that can learn from this book. Financial advisors, elder law and estate attorneys, senior care managers, and others whose clientele is on the far side of sixty will benefit as well.
Download or read book Going Solo written by Eric Klinenberg and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With eye-opening statistics, original data, and vivid portraits of people who live alone, renowned sociologist Eric Klinenberg upends conventional wisdom to deliver the definitive take on how the rise of going solo is transforming the American experience. Klinenberg shows that most single dwellers—whether in their twenties or eighties—are deeply engaged in social and civic life. There's even evidence that people who live alone enjoy better mental health and have more environmentally sustainable lifestyles. Drawing on more than three hundred in-depth interviews, Klinenberg presents a revelatory examination of the most significant demographic shift since the baby boom and offers surprising insights on the benefits of this epochal change.
Download or read book Providing Healthy and Safe Foods As We Age written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2010-11-29 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does a longer life mean a healthier life? The number of adults over 65 in the United States is growing, but many may not be aware that they are at greater risk from foodborne diseases and their nutritional needs change as they age. The IOM's Food Forum held a workshop October 29-30, 2009, to discuss food safety and nutrition concerns for older adults.
Download or read book The Three Secrets of Living Alone written by Phyllis Press and published by . This book was released on 2019-07-05 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the echo of one's heartbeat is the sole intimate companion, one is trapped within the confines of hollow loneliness, unable to communicate fears, yearnings and pain. The Three Secrets of Living Alone, written for seniors, reveals this lonely inner world and offers proven solutions to the silent suffering. This book silences the suffering. A crisp blueprint for managing the sorrow, the book illuminates the darkness seniors reluctantly enter at the intersection of aging, and, simultaneously, losing a partner. Struggling with the staggering vision of facing the future alone is a wrenching experience. The unique suffering requires unique assistance. The Three Secrets of Living Alone guides readers from the sorrowful beginnings through the process of renewal and recovery. In detailed steps it shows how to: eradicate loneliness, deal with uncertainty, face fears, regain independence, and find fulfillment.
Download or read book Aging with a Plan written by Sharona Hoffman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a concise, comprehensive resource for middle-aged readers who are facing the prospects of their own aging and of caring for elderly relativesan often overwhelming task for which little in life prepares us. Everyone ages, and nearly everyone will also experience having to support aging relatives. Being prepared is the best way to handle this inevitable life stage. This book addresses a breadth of topics that are relevant to aging and caring for the elderly, analyzing each thoroughly and providing up-to-date, practical advice. It can serve as a concise and comprehensive resource read start-to-finish to plan for an individual's own old age or to anticipate the needs of aging relatives, or as a quick-reference guide on specific issues and topics as relevant to each reader's situation and needs. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Aging with a Plan: How a Little Thought Today Can Vastly Improve Your Tomorrow develops recommendations for building sustainable social, legal, medical, and financial support systems that can promote a good quality of life throughout the aging process. Chapters address critical topics such as retirement savings and expenses, residential settings, legal planning, the elderly and driving, long-term care, and end-of-life decisions. The author combines analysis of recent research on the challenges of aging with engaging anecdotes and personal observations. By following the recommendations in this book, readers in their 40s, 50s, and early 60s will greatly benefit from learning about the issues regarding aging in the 21st centuryand from investing some effort in planning for their old age and that of their loved ones.
Download or read book A Life Less Lonely written by Nick Duerden and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-04 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The practical advice in this book is gold dust not only for lonely people, but for those who long to help them.' - Joanna Lumley Loneliness is an epidemic on the rise. It has long been documented that older people suffer from social isolation, but teenagers do too, likewise new parents, those with disability or illness, and anybody going through a significant life change. As more people work full-time, and we interact via social media rather than face-to-face, we need to stop and ask ourselves: what can we do to ensure all our futures are more connected and socially satisfying? This book will help to share stories of loneliness to increase our empathy and understanding of it, and to look for possible solutions. Using the research the Jo Cox Commission undertook following the MP's senseless death in 2016, it offers a wealth of practical advice: how to spot the symptoms in yourself and in others; how to ease them; how to seek help and, ultimately, how to understand this most fundamental of human emotions. Its aim is simple: to provide us all with the tools we need to lead kinder, more connected lives.
Download or read book Families Caring for an Aging America written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2016-11-08 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Mobile Technology for Adaptive Aging written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2020-10-25 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To explore how mobile technology can be employed to enhance the lives of older adults, the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine commissioned 6 papers, which were presented at a workshop held on December 11 and 12, 2019. These papers review research on mobile technologies and aging, and highlight promising avenues for further research.
Download or read book World Report on Ageing and Health written by World Health Organization and published by World Health Organization. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The WHO World report on ageing and health is not for the book shelf it is a living breathing testament to all older people who have fought for their voice to be heard at all levels of government across disciplines and sectors. - Mr Bjarne Hastrup President International Federation on Ageing and CEO DaneAge This report outlines a framework for action to foster Healthy Ageing built around the new concept of functional ability. This will require a transformation of health systems away from disease based curative models and towards the provision of older-person-centred and integrated care. It will require the development sometimes from nothing of comprehensive systems of long term care. It will require a coordinated response from many other sectors and multiple levels of government. And it will need to draw on better ways of measuring and monitoring the health and functioning of older populations. These actions are likely to be a sound investment in society's future. A future that gives older people the freedom to live lives that previous generations might never have imagined. The World report on ageing and health responds to these challenges by recommending equally profound changes in the way health policies for ageing populations are formulated and services are provided. As the foundation for its recommendations the report looks at what the latest evidence has to say about the ageing process noting that many common perceptions and assumptions about older people are based on outdated stereotypes. The report's recommendations are anchored in the evidence comprehensive and forward-looking yet eminently practical. Throughout examples of experiences from different countries are used to illustrate how specific problems can be addressed through innovation solutions. Topics explored range from strategies to deliver comprehensive and person-centred services to older populations to policies that enable older people to live in comfort and safety to ways to correct the problems and injustices inherent in current systems for long-term care.
Download or read book Elders Living Alone written by Robert L. Rubinstein and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 1992 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is it like to be old, have many health problems, and live alone? Never before have there been so many elders, and never before have so many of them been living alone and pursuing their lives independently. This book enters the lives of frail elders who live alone and vividly conveys their continuing struggle to maintain their independence. Many look to their homes as the important facilitating element for that independence, and that the home environment as well as personal space are the most significant elements for elders living alone. The authors' approach combines an eye and an ear for the telling individual detail, in all of its human complexity, with broader societal and communal concerns. In interviewing their subjects, Rubinstein and his colleagues examine how these elders view the choices they have, understand their independence, and raise possibilities and alternatives. Using a framework that will interest both anthropologists and case workers, the authors explore the cultural background of concepts such as independence and choice, and how they are symbolically located in the home. The authors register their subjects' urban isolation, fraught with needs of the most basic kind, imperiled by intermittent and uncertain human conduct, erratic provision, and occasionally engulfing solitude. These voices, seldom heard and often with reluctance, are caught and interpreted in these pages. The general hypothesis was that active management of the environment is itself a source of well-being for frail elders living alone.
Download or read book Aging in the Right Place written by Stephen M. Golant and published by Health Professions Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highlights the profound significance of where older people live and receive care. This book explores many pathways to thriving in old age, ranging from aging in place to moving to housing and care settings specially tailored to match a person's lifestyle and vulnerabilities.--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Elders Living Alone written by R. L. Rubinstein and published by . This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Golden Years written by Deborah Carr and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thanks to advances in technology, medicine, Social Security, and Medicare, old age for many Americans is characterized by comfortable retirement, good health, and fulfilling relationships. But there are also millions of people over 65 who struggle with poverty, chronic illness, unsafe housing, social isolation, and mistreatment by their caretakers. What accounts for these disparities among older adults? Sociologist Deborah Carr’s Golden Years? draws insights from multiple disciplines to illuminate the complex ways that socioeconomic status, race, and gender shape the nearly every aspect of older adults’ lives. By focusing on an often-invisible group of vulnerable elders, Golden Years? reveals that disadvantages accumulate across the life course and can diminish the well-being of many. Carr connects research in sociology, psychology, epidemiology, gerontology, and other fields to explore the well-being of older adults. On many indicators of physical health, such as propensity for heart disease or cancer, black seniors fare worse than whites due to lifetimes of exposure to stressors such as economic hardships and racial discrimination and diminished access to health care. In terms of mental health, Carr finds that older women are at higher risk of depression and anxiety than men, yet older men are especially vulnerable to suicide, a result of complex factors including the rigid masculinity expectations placed on this generation of men. Carr finds that older adults’ physical and mental health are also closely associated with their social networks and the neighborhoods in which they live. Even though strong relationships with spouses, families, and friends can moderate some of the health declines associated with aging, women—and especially women of color—are more likely than men to live alone and often cannot afford home health care services, a combination that can be isolating and even fatal. Finally, social inequalities affect the process of dying itself, with white and affluent seniors in a better position to convey their end-of-life preferences and use hospice or palliative care than their disadvantaged peers. Carr cautions that rising economic inequality, the lingering impact of the Great Recession, and escalating rates of obesity and opioid addiction, among other factors, may contribute to even greater disparities between the haves and the have-nots in future cohorts of older adults. She concludes that policies, such as income supplements for the poorest older adults, expanded paid family leave, and universal health care could ameliorate or even reverse some disparities. A comprehensive analysis of the causes and consequences of later-life inequalities, Golden Years? demonstrates the importance of increased awareness, strong public initiatives, and creative community-based programs in ensuring that all Americans have an opportunity to age well.
Download or read book Alone and Invisible No More written by Dr. Allan S. Teel and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2011-07-13 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Alone and Invisible No More, physician Allan S. Teel, MD, describes how to overhaul our eldercare system. Based on his own efforts to create humane, affordable alternatives in Maine, Teel's program harnesses both staff and volunteers to help people remain in their homes and communities. It offers assistance with everyday challenges, uses technology to keep older people connected to each other and their families, and stay safe. This approach works.
