A Guide to Aging and Well-Being for Healthcare Professionals

This book provides practical evidence-based strategies that will help clinicians across a broad range of disciplines to address and discuss the main issues an aging person is likely to face and overcome if they are to maintain a sense of well-being as they age. Based on an extensive body of research, the relevant up-to-date knowledge for each topic is concisely presented, followed by practical, concrete, evidence-based suggestions as to how a healthcare provider might acknowledge and create a partnership with their clients to help the person increase their sense of well-being. Each chapter contains a list of key terms, a summary, and case examples that illustrate in realistic and humanistic ways how a person might present the concern being addressed and intervene. The specific challenges associated with aging that are addressed include: anxiety attached to an increasing awareness of mortality; retirement; the increasing number of losses of significant others; regrets; memory loss; the arrival of old-old age and feelings of loneliness, mattering insufficiently, and a loss of purpose; and finally, dealing with imminent death. This book is suitable for all health professionals who provide clinical services or advice to older adults including physicians (i.e. particularly in the specialties of internal medicine, family medicine, geriatrics, and geriatric psychiatry), nurses, social workers, psychologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and audiologists.

Norman M. Brier (PhD) is a psychologist who was a Professor of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM). He has supervised hundreds of healthcare professionals in assessing and intervening with patients presenting with a variety of clinical concerns, and for more than 20 years has taught a class in patient-doctor communication. Dr. Brier is the author of a number of original articles and books. He continues to maintain a private practice in Bedford, New York and focuses especially on facilitating well-being in older individuals.

Introduction; 1. Aging and well-being; 2. Well-being and the anxiety about the awareness of limited time people have remaining; 3. A major challenge to well-being as people age: Retirement; 4. A second major challenge to a person's well-being as they age: The increasing number of deaths of significant others; 5. Aging, well-being, and life regrets; 6. Still another challenge: Age-associated memory loss; 7. Aging, well-being, and old-old age; 8. Three additional threats to a person's well-being in old-old age: Loneliness, a loss of purpose, and a feeling of mattering less; 9. Decline, imminent death, and well-being; 10. Summary and synthesis; References; Index