Mental Wellness in Aging: Strengths-Based Approaches / Edition 1

by Judah L. Ronch, Scott D. Miller, Joseph A. Goldfield, Joseph Goldfield

Overview

Prepare yourself, your students, or your care culture to meet the "age wave" of self-advocating clients demanding a high quality of life and positive mental wellness. This provocative volume guides practitioners and future practitioners alike in using strenths-based interventions to help other adults help themselves and improve their quality of life by reinforcing and valuing their age, wisdom, and experiences. This book's renowned authos fulfill the mandate of the landmark 2000 U.S. Surgeon General's report on mental health. They emphasize an extremely practical, strengths-based, multidisciplinary - social, physical, and spiritual - approach to therapy with older adults. An abundance of detailed case studies shows you how this approach can be applied. Learn innovative ways to focus interventions on older adults' remaining strengths and successful coping strategies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781878812698
Publisher:	Health Professions Press
Publication date:	08/28/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.90(h) x 1.00(d)

Table of Contents

	About the Editors	vii
	Contributors	ix
	Acknowledgments	xi
	Foreword: Blurring the Lincs, Expanding the Vision	xiii
	Introduction	xix
Section I	Engaging People's Strengths for Successful Aging
Chapter 1	Aging in the Next Millennium: What the Future Holds for Us	3
Chapter 2	Autonomy and Consumer Empowerment: Making Quality of Life the Organizing Principle for Long-Term Care Policy	15
Chapter 3	Strengths-Based Health Care: Self-Advocacy and Wellness in Aging	33
Chapter 4	Care Management: A Strengths-Based Approach to Mental Wellness with Older Adults	85
Chapter 5	The Social Portfolio: The Role of Activity in Mental Wellness as People Age	113
Chapter 6	Why Most People Cope Well with Retirement	123
Chapter 7	Conscious Aging: A Strategy for Positive Change in Later Life	139
Chapter 8	Changing Institutional Culture: Can We Re-value the Nursing Home?	161
Section II	From Symptoms to Strengths in Therapy and Counseling
Chapter 9	Fundamental Concepts of Milton II. Frickson and Their Relevance to Older Clients	181
Chapter 10	Solution-Focused Therapy: Elders Enhancing Exceptions	201
Chapter 11	Narrative Therapy with Older Adults	237
Chapter 12	The Narrative Solutions Approach: Bringing Out the Best in People as They Age	273
Chapter 13	Strengths-Based Approaches to Trauma in the Aging: An Albanian Kosovar Experience	299
Chapter 14	Caring for People with Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias: Strengths-Based Approaches	315
Chapter 15	Lessons from the Lifelines Writing Group for People in the Early Stages of Alzheimer's Disease: Forgetting that We Don't Remember	343
Chapter 16	Exploring the Creative Potential of People with Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementia: Dare to Imagine	353
	Afterword	369
	Index	373

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: David O. Staats, MD (University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center)
Description: This multiauthored book uses the concept of strengths to discuss mental health among older persons. It is a brilliant synthesis of the best contemporary psychology and gerontology has to offer.
Purpose: The purpose is to explain strengths-based approaches and demonstrate how effective this approach is to helping older persons. The authors score a home run in every chapter with this approach.
Audience: The audience is students and practitioners in social work, gerontology, psychology/psychotherapy, geropsychiatry, counseling and policy making. To this I would add trainees and practitioners in geriatric medicine. The book is written by first-rate authors in a clear and inviting style.
Features: This book is a marvel. It talks about retirement, long-term care, the fundamental work of the American psychotherapist Milton Erikson, care management of older persons; all with a strengths-based approach that accentuates the positive. The discussion of spirituality and the aging self transcends the usual and gives new insights into the nature of cultural competence.
Assessment: This book is as seminal as Butler and Lewis's Mental Health and Aging (1979). It is a superb work that covers so many areas of aging and mental health in under 400 pages. This book is clearly the best rendition of the psychology of aging extant today. Each chapter leads to new levels of insight. The positive tone is a splendid example of professionalism mixed with experience and compassion. This book would make an excellent textbook for trainees in many disciplines. Much of its content is unique. Every medical library should possess this wonderful book and it should be must reading for every geriatric medicine fellow.

Doody's Review Service

4 Stars! from Doody