The Language of Aging: Caring for Oneself When Caring for One's Elders

Sunday, 21 June 2009 - 9:00 am - 5:00 pm

Lea Baider PhD and Lodovico Balducci MD

Only in English / Ausschließlich auf Englisch

Target Audience:

Everyone in the field of health.


Workshop Objectives:

The attendee shall be able to:

• understand the subjective and objective needs of geriatric patients and their caregivers,
• obtain psychological-behavioral tools that will assist in changing the lives of geriatric patients, and
• use the group's learning process as a means to experience being old.

Workshop Description:

The workshop will integrate theoretical concepts of "being older," comorbidity and role of elderly caregivers with a pragmatic group experience. We will teach the participants practical exercises that they can use in their own clinical settings. The life-course perspective as a world view provides a framework for thinking about the development of older individuals embedded in biological, sociological, cultural and psychological terms. We will focus primarily on "life review" as the creative development of a self-concept about who we are, who we have been and who we would like to be in years to come. Life review with older patients is about understanding life, understanding aging and reconstructing one's self concept and identity in later life. How did I become older? What is my life about? Where are we in the successive, generational structure of our own family?

It is important to place older patients within their social, historical and cultural context, shaping the narrative of their individual identities. In relation to caregiving, it is important to work in a support group setting to provide a normalization of feelings and experiences associated with caregiving.

Exercises:
We will introduce alternative meanings using group interaction, thoughts and behaviors about past life-events. The purpose is to reconsider the meaning that patients attach to many of their memories of life experiences. We will employ practical concepts of attachments, techniques with photographs, card games, stories of past secrets and the healthy use of denial mechanisms.

Questions:

• How did I become older?
• What is my life like now that I am old?
• What did I learn about myself in caring for an older person?
• How would I like to be cared for?
• What could I give to my partner, friends, colleagues and my children once I have become old and disabled?

Requirements:
Participants should bring two family photos of significant people from their past.