THE GOOD DIE YOUNG
Attitudes and emotions that are destructive when you are young are very beneficial as you age.
It seems the wrong old people are dying. The mean and paranoid survive while my cheery cooperative mentally healthy friends die off. A pinch of paranoia can be quite useful as you age. Aggressive and suspicious old live on while cooperative outreaching people quietly deteriorate.
We are cynical about the psychology of aging. The old are not just people with white hair. They each have a unique psychology.
If you approach stress with a lot of hype, you emotionally disintegrate when you are disappointed. Losing friends and relocating to new surroundings require finding an identity in you new world. Your unrealistic expectations can be crushed by defeat. Always looking at the bright side can be crushing by the reality of your new nursing home surroundings.
Age brings less contact with the outside world and less confirmation of who you really are. You need outside stimulation to convince yourself you are the same person you were when you were young.
Behavior of many old people may seem odd to doctors and we try to suppress it with drugs. Rather than try to change their understanding we must try to change their behavior.
Today’s culture looks at the elderly as cracks, geezers, and gorks. Patient care and preventive checkups have no place in our health care system for the aged. The system does not address chronic care but only treats acute care.
Medicare is also set up for acute care only. Without a clear understanding of the needs of the elderly, how can we offer adequate benefits, or DO WE CARE? Our aged are deteriorating in our well-run state of the art nursing homes. This negative attitude must be changed.
Our elderly are convinced that when they enter the nursing home or institution, they are sent there to die and will never leave it. You start off in a senior center, next to an assisted living, followed by a nursing home and a hospice center. Our passive elderly to what is expected of them, THEY DETERIORATE AND DIE. Those mentally healthy find it the hardest to adjust.
Life expectancy is 6 years after entering a home and half of those who enter are dead within the first year. The survivors must become aggressive, surely, demanding, and downright mean to get the services they should be getting. The squeaky wheel gets oiled in a nursing home. Often the personnel respond, not with love and compassion, but with heavy doses of tranquizers to sedate demanding behaviour.
Personality changes occur in those close to death. They are more docile and less aggressive. The spark is gone. They are withdrawn from family and friends, have no social contact, and fail in recognition and association. They refuse to think about their thoughts and feelings.
Old people fear death less than the younger crowd. When they are removed from familiar surroundings, the fear of dying again intensifies. People who live in home situations and can remain healthy rarely have these personality changes.
How can we match home environments to the needs of the individual patient? The psychological needs of patients are rarely considered. The nursing home should not just be a hotel or hospital, but also a social recreational facility.
As our parents age, can we see their personality changes as natural rather than bizarre, we might not pack them quickly into an institution.
We tell our moms and dads to be nice to the doctor and behave in the nursing home so the staff will not be inconvenienced. We should tell grandma not to worry about being nice to the staff, nurses and doctors. Do what you want to do. You don’t need to be sweet. If you want to discharge yourself and leave,, lets go. Insist on what you want grandma, its your life.
None of us have been over 80 before. Lets show our elderly more compassion.
Source; Science Dec. 1985
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