The book examines various theories of aging including a contrast between the strengths-based person-in-environment theory and the pathologically based medical model of psychological problems. It advocates truly engaging with the older client during the assessment phase, and discusses a variety of intervention modalities. The book integrates an advanced clinical social work practice with in-depth knowledge of evidence-based practice as well as geriatric medicine, psychiatry and gerontology. The social worker must evaluate the status of the client’s housing, transportation, food, clothing, recreation opportunities, social supports, access to medical care, kinship and other factors considered important by the social worker or the client. Constructivist theory is a conceptual framework that is foundational to existential therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and narrative therapy, which are effective for older adults. Stigma associated with race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation produce psychosocial stressors that converge on older clients. The book discusses several medical conditions affecting older adults such as Alzheimer’s disease, arthritic pain, diabetes and various types of cancers. Older adults may also suffer from substance abuse-related problems, hypersexuality, and various types of abuse such as neglect. The book also highlights the problems faced by the older adult LGBT community and those suffering from HIV disease. It ends with discussions on care and residential settings for the older adults, and palliative care and euthanasia.

The importance of the field of geropsychology (psychology of aging) is seen in the ever-increasing demographics of older adults. A psychologist needs to understand the various life stages that define different cohorts of older adults. Older adults are affected by the forces of stigma and ageism, which are of four types: personal, institutional, intentional, and unintentional. A majority of older adults experience age discrimination and stigmatization after the age of 65. The use of medical model of psychopathology causes contradictions and distortions, one of which is the use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Assessment of deficits in olfactory functioning are potentially useful for a psychologist who is attempting to differentiate between cognitive disturbances of normal aging and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Sexual interest remains high throughout old adult developmental stages, but sexual activity declines in most men as they age. While older adults are more likely to avoid illicit substances, many older adults having chronic pain from cancer or arthritis need opioid medications. Older adult abuse is a multifactorial phenomenon as the abuse may be emotional, financial, physical, sexual, or self-induced. Environmental geropsychology is based on Lewin’s field theory model Lawton and Nahemow’s ecological model, and an environmental geropsychologist focuses on the environmental component to develop interventions to change older adults’ interpersonal and intrapersonal experiences. Heightened awareness of coming of death results in an existential crisis for many older adults causing a loss of their sense of purpose for their lives.

This book on nursing care of adoption and kinship families begins with a chapter, which focuses on the historical, cultural, and legal landscape that has shaped adoption and kinship care in the United States and describes the types of adoption, trends in adoption, and processes involved in adopting a child. This is followed by a discussion highlighting the common health care needs of both adoptive and kinship children. Some birth parents do not voluntarily release parental rights of their children and experience grief and postpartum depression after relinquishing a baby. Parental postadoption depression (PAD) should be screened for by advanced practice nurses (APNs) to optimize parental functioning and avoid negative outcomes. The book discusses the broader issues like maltreatment of children, educational and social issues, and transracial adoption, and the outcomes of children adopted by same-sex individuals. It explores the role and needs of kinship parents, a unique, vulnerable, diverse population with health risk factors compounded by the responsibilities of raising children as older adults. Complex and diverse relationships exist among birth parents, their children, and the kinship caregivers who have stepped in as surrogate parents. Children under the care of kin experience maltreatment and traumatic events. The book also provides an overview of systems and practices that surround adoption and kinship triads.

This book fills a gaping void in the selection of textbooks to use in graduate courses on the psychology of aging. It serves as a primer for any graduate student who is going to work in a clinical setting with older adults, or in a research lab that studies some aspect of the psychology of aging. The book introduces students to the background knowledge needed in order to understand some of the more complex concepts in the psychology of aging. Additionally, it provides clear explanations of concepts (e.g., genetics of aging research, neuroimaging techniques, understanding of important legal documents for older adults). The book focuses solely on older adults, providing in-depth coverage of this burgeoning population. It also provides coverage on cognitive reserve, neurocognitive disorders, and social aspects of aging. The book is intended for graduate students or upper-level undergraduate students in psychology, biology, nursing, counseling, social work, gerontology, speech pathology, psychiatry, and other disciplines who provide services for, or perform research with, older adults. It is organized into four sections. Section I presents introduction to the psychology of aging. Section II gives a core foundation in biological aspects of aging. It covers general biological theories of aging, common physical health problems in older adults, and normal changes that occur to the brain with aging. Section III describes the psychological components of aging such as changes in personality and emotional development, mental health aspects of aging, normal changes in cognitive functioning, cognitive reserve and interventions for cognitive decline, neurocognitive disorders in aging, aging's impact on relationships and families, and working in late life and retirement. The final section presents the social aspects of aging, which includes death, bereavement, and widowhood, aging experience in ethnic and sexual minorities, and lastly, aging and the legal system.

This book is intended as an approachable reference guide for one of the most common neurological conditions, Parkinson’s disease and the spectrum of Parkinson-like syndromes. Parkinson’s disease is a slowly progressing neurodegenerative disease that primarily affects older adults. The book outlines the new advances in the management and treatment of the Parkinson patient, comparing risks and benefits as well as efficacy of new and older anti-Parkinson’s disease drugs. The task of diagnosing Parkinson’s disease and providing comprehensive guided treatment requires a multidisciplinary approach. Those involved in the diagnosis and care of the patient include neurologists; nurse practitioners; nurses; physical, occupational, and speech therapists; sleep medicine specialists; neuropsychologists; psychiatrists; radiologists; nutritionists; and social workers. The book is divided into seventeen chapters spread across four sections. The first section, Parkinson’s Disease, describes the following: neurobiology of Parkinson’s disease, patient exam, idiopathic Parkinson’s disease, imaging and advanced studies, neuropsychological analysis, and additional evaluations. The second section, Parkinsonisms, discusses Parkinson-plus syndromes and other Parkinsonisms. The third section, Treatment of Motor and Non-Motor Symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease, describes treatment of motor symptoms and non-motor symptoms such as autonomic dysfunction, sleep disturbances, disturbances of thought, and neuropsychiatric symptoms. The final section, Alternative Therapies and Other Considerations, talks about exercise, complementary and alternative therapies, nutrition, and caregiver burden. The book provides additional details such as Hoehn and Yahr Scoring scale, drugs that should be avoided in patients with Parkinson’s disease, patient-prepared information, standardized intake questions for evaluating a Parkinson’s patient, standardized questions for evaluating the patient in a follow-up visit, and resources in the appendices.

The ability to reduce the burden of illness among older adults is necessary as individuals are living longer and experiencing lower rates of disability. Advanced practice nurses are skilled to relieve the burden of illness among older adults through specialized training and providing treatment in a variety of clinical settings. While geriatric-focused content exists, advanced practice nurses can benefit from clinical pearls specific for the advanced practice nurse providing holistic mental health care. This handbook offers advanced practice nurses, nurse educators, and graduate nursing students a reference that is intended to be supplemental to uniquely providing care for older adults which includes an overview of the aging process as well as assessing and developing treatment plans for older adults with mental health disorders. As older adults often work collaboratively with family, friends, caregivers, and health care providers, approaches to such relationships are explored and intended to serve as a resource for providing mental health care that can contribute to the overall success of treatment. The text provides an interprofessional box that encourages and assists the advanced practice nurse navigating through interdisciplinary collaborative practice. Such interprofessional partnerships can enhance care—particularly in cases of complexity. Advanced practice nurses can utilize the provided case studies to identify and modify service delivery that promotes evidence based practice.

This book is written to provide a general overview of health literacy, as it is difficult to incorporate a comprehensive illustration of every type of health literacy encounter. It is divided into four parts with specific chapters within each part for quick and easy reference. The first part of the book provides an overall baseline knowledge of health literacy. It touches on health literacy and its impact on accessing care and navigating throughout a complex health care delivery system and reviews the major health literacy efforts of the federal government, scientists, health researchers, health policy experts, and health professionals. The second part focuses on the role of oral communication. It incorporates the role and importance of culture, language, and communication access services needed to provide quality, safe person-centered care and focuses on nursing strategies to enhance effective communication and understanding. The third part focuses on written health communication. It discusses content design and layout of written health information and patient education. How written information is presented can have a tremendous impact on readability and understandability. The final part of the book helps to prepare nurses who care for unique populations. It presents health literacy implications when caring for persons in in palliative care and making difficult end-of-life decisions and identifies the uniqueness of caring for young children, patients with mental health disorders and older adults. Finally, the book presents the ethical principles of human research subjects and how to ensure that research participants with low health literacy are protected.

The field of counseling is an exciting and challenging career choice. It is a profession that has a prolific history of enabling person-centered counseling approaches for individuals, couples, partners, and families, and facilitates therapeutic services for children, adolescents, adults, and older adults. This book offers an excellent resource for graduate-level coursework that relates to an orientation to the counseling profession, professional issues, and special topic seminars, as well as other counseling-related coursework. It provides both contemporary insight and practical strategies for working with the complexity of real-life issues related to assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of diverse clients and their families. The book provides professionals with chapters organized into the 10 CACREP and CORE content areas that address the awareness, knowledge, and skills required to work with children, adolescents, individuals, groups, couples, families, and persons from diverse cultural backgrounds. The content areas are: professional counseling identity, ethical and practice management issues, case management and consultation issues, multicultural counseling awareness, counseling theories and techniques, career counseling and human growth, assessment and diagnosis, counseling couples, families, and groups, counseling specific populations, and contemporary issues in counseling.

This third edition, has been written as a reference and certification test review guide for registered nurse (RNs) preparing for gerontological certification. It is also a useful text for students who are studying gerontology, teachers preparing gerontology classes, and RNs working with older adults. The book presents information about preparing for the certification exam, a comprehensive compilation of content specific to gerontology, and a test bank of questions specifically developed for the RN preparing for certification in gerontology. It focuses on topics specific to the aging population, such as demographics, myths about aging, theories of aging and nursing, communication skills geared for the older adult, teaching–learning principles that work well with older adults, and the history of gerontological nursing. The book identifies the health promotion needs of elders, such as nutrition, exercise, primary and secondary prevention strategies, and alternative and complementary healthcare practices used with older adults. It describes the environment, including safety and security, relocation, transportation, the importance of space, community-based resources, and residential facilities. It discusses spirituality and dying with special attention to advance directives, hospice and palliative care, and the grieving process. The book describes the acute and chronic physical illnesses most frequently experienced by older adults and discusses the cognitive and psychological disorders experienced by elders, including dementia, delirium, and depression. It covers common medications used by older adults, as well as discussions about polypharmacy, issues related to pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, noncompliance, and adverse drug effects. It also discusses special topics such as pain, sexuality, and elder neglect and abuse, and covers descriptions of health policy issues and organizations that advocate for older adults. The book finally discusses the scope and standards of geriatric nursing practice relating to leadership and management, research, ethical and legal issues, and professional competency.

Across healthcare settings, older adults represent the majority of consumers served. They present with the most clinically and socially complex situations and thus require nurses to possess highly developed assessment competencies, critical thinking abilities, and relationship-based skills. Nurses have an enormous responsibility when providing care to older adults in this rapidly changing healthcare environment with its increasing regulatory requirements, variable staffing levels, and unpredictable reimbursement. Nurses also have an amazing opportunity to positively change the daily experiences and health of older adults. As in the previous editions, authors present up-to-date information on assessment and interventions for common health problems and geriatric syndromes. They expanded their robust clinical content to include evidence based approaches to support LGBTQ elders, persons living with dementia and their families, and older adults living with HIV. In this sixth edition, the authors provide guidelines that are developed by experts on the topics of each chapter and are based on the best available evidence. A systematic method, the AGREE (Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation) process, was used to evaluate the protocols and identify a process to help the reader to improve the validity of the book’s content.