Week 15 Post 2

 When reading Chapter 25 about the caring for frail elderly, one issue stood out to me: elder abuse.  Caregiving sometimes results in resentment and social isolation which increases the risk of depression, poor health and abuse.  Abuse occurs when the caregiver suffers from emotional problems.  These caregivers often believe that overmedication, locked doors and physical restraints are their only options to cope with difficult, frail, elderly relatives.  All of those options are considered to be abuse by professionals.  Studies found that 5% of elders say they are abused and one-fourth of elders are vulnerable but do not report abuse.  Usually the elders that do not report abuse choose not to because they are being mistreated by their relatives and are ashamed to admit it.  Since not all elders report it, the actual rate of elder abuse is closer to one-fourth of all elders.  This statistic surprised me.  I was surprised that so many caregivers would abuse their related elders.  I understand why some of the elders did not report abuse but I just don't get why it would happen to begin with.  If a caregiver cannot take care of the elderly properly, the elder should be placed in long-term care or find some other caregiver.  I understand it could be hard to place your elderly relatives in long-term care but I know if I couldn't properly take care of someone so important to me, I would want to do what is best for them. 

Week 15 Post 2

In chapter 25 I found the self theory very interesting. Self theories is theories of late adulthood that emphasize the core self, or the search to maintain one's integrity and identity. In self theories a person ultimately depends on himself or herself. One self theory came from Erikson. In his 8th stage of development he called it integrity versus despair. Which is a period when older adults seek to integrate their unique experiences with their vision of community. Many older people will show pride and contentment regrading their personal history. Another theory of late adulthood is called stratification theories. Stratification theories are theories that emphasize that social forces, particulary those related to a person's social stratum or social category, limit individual choices and affect a person's ability to function in late adulthood because past stratification continues to limit life in various ways. One version of stratification is disengagement theory. Disengagement theory is the view that aging makes a person's social sphere increasingly narrow, resulting in role relinquishment, withdrawal, and passivity. In this theory people as they age, traditional roles become unavailable or unimportant, social circle shrinks, coworkers stop asking for help, and adult children turn away.

Week 15 Post 1

In chapter 24 it mentions Alzheimer Disease, which is the most common cause of dementia, characterized by gradual deterioration of memory and personality and marked by the formation of plaques of beta-amyloid protein and tangles of tau in the brain. My grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer Disease, and eventually passed away because of the disease. In the book it says the disease progresses quickly reaching the last phase within 3-5 years. After my grandpa was diagnosed with the disease he lived about 7 years, the last three years of his life the disease, it progressed quickly. The book talks about the three stages the disease goes through. Stage 1 people forget recent events, or new information. In stage 2 confusion develops with deficits in concentration and short term memory, speech comes aimless and repetitive, vocabulary is limited, and words get mixed up. In stage 3 memory loss becomes dangerous. Examples would be not dressing properly or forgetting to turn off the stove. In stage 4 full-time care is needed. People with the disease cannot dress themselves, or take care of daily needs for themselves. Finally in stage 5, people become unresponsive.

Week Fifteen Post Two

While reading chapter fifteen I was most interested on the section on holding on to one’s self. Older people consider their personalities and attitudes to have remained quite stable over their life span, even as they recognize the physical changes of their bodies. Older persons who are the victims of a crime feel that their sense of self-efficiency is threatened, especially if they are African American. The tendency to cling to familiar places and possessions may be problematic if it leads to compulsive hoarding. This urge to accumulate old papers, pieces of furniture, and mementos becomes stronger with age, and family members often complain that an elderly person foolishly saves things that take up space and become a fire hazard.  I found this section most interesting because I’ve actually had first hand experience with a hoarder. My grandmother was a huge pack rat and hoarder and she saved everything. Well when she decided to sell her house, we had to go through each and every thing she had packed up in the numerous rooms she had. It took weeks, so many hours of our time was invested in trashing the useless items and saving the valuable. The need to protect oneself explains why many of the old strive to maintain the cultural and religious values of their youth. For intense when, grandparents may painstakingly teach a grandchild language that is rarely used in their current community or encourage the child to repeat rituals or prayers, they themselves learned almost a century ago. This is also true about my grandma. Although the facts about  elders seem to stereotype them, they are pretty accurate.

Week Fifteen Post One

While reading chapter twenty-four, I felt most informed by the section on the aging brain.  It interests me how senescence reduces production of glutamate, acetylcholine serotonin, and dopamine, which allows a nerve impulse to jump quickly across the synapse from one neuron to another.  I am a biology major and never heard of this before so it really struck my interest. Neural fluid then decreases, myelination thins the corpus callosum and is then reduced, and cerebral blood circulates more slowly. I find this process very intriguing.  The result of this is an overall slowdown, evident in reaction time, talking, and thinking.  These are a lot of different senses that are affected in this process. According to most neuroscientists, brain aging is measurable not only in speed but also in size: The brain gets smaller. I was honestly shocked when I learned this fact; I truthfully thought your brain stayed the same size no matter what through life, because as a kid I used to believe my brain would continue to grow as I learned new things. Some areas shrink more than others, among them the hypothalamus and prefrontal cortex. Prefrontal shrinkage may explain inadequate inhibition, evident when some older people talk too much, with “off target verbosity,” to inattentive listeners. And lastly I didn’t ever know the explanation of the elderspeak and what caused it. I think I found the section on the brain to be most interesting because I love to learn how the body develops. Each and every organ, and how it affects our actions.

Week 15 Post 2

The section titled "control processes" in chapter 24 really grabbed my attention. I have learned about control processes before but I have never learned about control processes in late adulthood. Control processes regulate the analysis and flow of information and for many elderly individuals, these processes are impaired. Most control processes are dependent on the prefrontal cortex which may shrink with age. When making decisions, older adults rely mostly on prior knowledge, general principles, familiarity, and rules of thumb which is referred to as the top-down strategy. The top-down strategy involves deductive reasoning and intuitive thought. Intuitive thinking is quicker and older adults' decisions are generally good ones but for complex decisions, analytic thinking may be best for the elderly. The two aspects of memory are storage and retrieval. Storage refers to memories stored in the brain and the ability to produce a stored memory on demand. It is predicted that there is an issue with retrieval  which explains many deficits found in the cognitive tests of adults. Older adults have extensive vocabularies but limited fluency and they are much better at recognition than recall. In addition, they have tip-of-the-tongue forgetfulness and their spelling is much poorer than their speech. Priming is another control strategy in which a person is given a clue before being asked to remember something or when some technique is used to jog the person's memory. Hearing a word before being asked to remember it primes the brain to recall the word later. 

Week 15 Post 1

While reading chapter 24, I found the section titled "Information Processing After Age 65" to be very interesting. As individuals approach and reach the age of sixty-five, their senses are no longer as sharp as they used to be. The reduced acuity impairs cognition because information must cross the sensory threshold which is the divide between what is sensed and what is not, in order to be perceived. Some details and conversations never reach older people's minds because the senses do not detect the stimuli. When elderly people have sensory deficits, the brain automatically fills in missed sights and sounds which means information may be distorted or lost without the person realizing it. One study concluded that input led to the older adults' inaccuracy. Many older adults keep talking after their listener loses interest. They may also miss irony, humor, or sarcasm which are all signaled with facial expressions as well as words. Reduced sensory input affects cognition by increasing interference which is a major impediment to effective and efficient cognition in the elderly. Vital information may be lost because other less important information captures attention. Dealing with gaps in a heard message tires the mind which depletes the mental energy needed to take the next step in information processing. Older adults spend more effort reducing mental interference. This information was intriguing to me because I have never learned about cognition in late adulthood before.