Chapter fourteen was based on the personal context of later life, which pretty much means we learned about older individuals lives. Another way to describe a good amount of this chapter is by classifying it as gerontology which is the study of ageing. The number of older individuals are increasing significantly, people are living longer thanks to medical and technological advancements. As we age there are two main factors that cane effect our life expectancy, genetic and environmental. Genetic is what you are born with, so individuals have no control over if they have good genes or not. Environmental factors can be controlled slightly based on where someone may live or what kind of lifestyle they live. Part of aging though is dealing with physical ages, the cardio vascular system decreases in efficiency and other senses decrease as well such as: breathing, vision, and hearing. …show more content…
Normal changes include a slower reaction time and forgetfulness such as just needing a reminder of something. There are different tools scientists and therapist have developed to help older people keep their memory with different activities to work their mental processing skills. Cognitive processing changes with age, many believe that as we age we become wiser with experience, so make sure to respect your elders. Sadly, many people believe older people are all depressed, but that’s a myth, depression declines with age. Dementia is the biggest problem older people are at risk for, it is impairment of behavior and cognitive functioning. There are may different types of dementia, it is an umbrella term that covers Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. They all cause permanent damage to the brain, but have different
Physical – Senescence, which is biological ageing, causes deterioration of bodily functions. These declines obviously differ from individual to individual but generally they include; Lower energy levels Less flexibility in the skin and emergence of wrinkles and brown spots Thinning and greying of hair Declining eye sight and hearing ability Height and weight loss Slower reflexes Weakening muscle strength Some aspects can’t be predicted but have a major effect on physical well-being like strength of immune system, nutritional intake and whether the person has a minor or serious illness or physical disability. Intellectual – The National Institute of Health explains how as you age your brain shrinks and decreases in weight.
Aging that can not be helped like cells changing and, biological changes are called primary aging. The opposite of primary aging would be attributed to something like not enough exercise or lack of vitamins would be secondary aging. The chapter explains that a yound adult gains new responsibilities when they reach adulthood and the opposite is true once you reach the golden years. Elderly people soon hit retirement where they get pulled out of their paying jobs to be put on government support. This occurrence was very different from how it used to be.
Alzheimer’s disease is a specific cognitive impairment that falls under the dementia umbrella. Currently there is no cure and researchers are still looking to find the cause for diseases like Alzheimer’s. It is important, as the baby-boomer generation ages, to make sure the general public is educated on common myths and misconceptions about dementia. 1.
Dementia is a disorder which causes the brain cells to deteriorate therefor causes a decline in several symptoms and affects a person’s mentality, capacity and how they go about their everyday life. NVQ 1.2 2) Describe the functions of the brain that are affected by dementia. There are many brain functions affected by dementia depending on which form of dementia the individual has. The temporal lobe’s functions affected are Memory loss for example forgetting things you have just been told or something you have just said so repeating yourself several times, balance, posture and vision can also be affected due to decline in health of the temporal lobe. Frontal lobe affects behaviour for example becoming withdrawn.
The first most common type of Dementia we are going to talk about is Alzheimer’s. 1. According to the CDC article about
Introduction Alzheimer’s is a chronic neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and gets worse over time. The most common early symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events or short memory loss. As the disease advances, symptoms can include difficulty with language, disorientation, mood swing and behavior problems. As a person 's condition progressed, they often withdraw from friends and family. Slowly, bodily functions deteriorated and eventually death occurs.
With the undeniable truth, everyone must age and grow older. Although this is a natural process of life, not everyone is accepting of this. At this age, being an older adult you face difficulties such as aging, sexuality, relationship dynamics and having to face reality that you are not in your prime as you once were. Heart attacks, strokes, and other ailments are examples of this. However, just as there younger counterparts they still able to do somethings they were able to do in their earlier stages.
personality is developed in a series of eight stages that take place from the time of birth and continue on throughout an individual’s complete life. He characterises old age as a period of "Integrity vs. Despair", during which a person focuses on reflecting back on his life. Newman & Newman proposed a ninth stage of life, Elder- hood. Elder-hood refers to those individuals who live past the life expectancy of their birth cohorts. There are two different types of people described in this stage of life.
There are many physical changes that we go through once we enter into late adulthood, not only do we change externally, graying hair, wrinkles, sagging skin and a decrease in height due to the breaking down of cartilage in our backs but, we also go through internal physical changes. As our external aging features become more obvious there are also multiple internal changes taking place. As we get further into late adulthood, a sort of chain reaction starts. Blood vessels start to harden and shrink, which in turn causes the heart to lose the ability to pump as much blood to the brain, which causes it to shrink and pull away from the skull.
Helping the older adult remove clutter, remove unsafe rugs, make sure there is good lighting, and have handrails in locations that they can use to hold on to. The physical changes that occur in the aging body may also benefit from occupational or physical therapy and
Not all cognitive functions will decrease because of aging, and there exist many other factors that are associated with cognitive decline. Kathy (2013)
The human brain is able to continually adapt and rewire itself. Even in old age, it can grow new neurons. Severe mental decline is usually caused by disease, whereas most age-related losses in memory or motor skills simply result from inactivity and a lack of mental exercise and stimulation. In other words, use it or lose it. (Than, Ker 2007)
Research has shown that, just like the body, the brain gets weaker as we age. Our brains get smaller and that causes us to process things much slower. The impact of this depends on the person and their gene pool. This article refers to a 2015 MIT study on the brain which states “The majority of mental processing skills like
Late Adulthood is the stage of the human life cycle where an individual nears the end of their life. The life expectancy in the United States has slowly increased over the years therefore allowed many to further analyze the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial development during late adulthood. The stage of late adulthood has been emphasized by ageism and the stereotypical "old" person but, will be further educated by the normative development of the life cycle of late adulthood. For the “old” experience dramatic changes in their development as they face loss, death, and illness.
CHANGING CARE NEEDS THROUGH LIFE STAGES The aim of this assignment is to discuss in general the physical, intellectual, emotional and social development of a person in late adulthood. This will be completed by going through each heading and describing the different elements of each stage. Following that, I will compare *the norm* with a lady called Margaret.