PSYCHOSOCIAL

ASPECTS OF
AGING
 Retirement
 Economic change
 Role changes
 Loneliness
 Relocation
 Maintaining independence and self esteem
 Depression and suicide

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STRESS AND COPING

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 STRESS
Stress is a biological term which refers to the
consequences of the failure of a human body to
respond appropriately to emotional or physical
threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined.

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 SOURCES OF STRESS
 Normal aging changes that impair physical function,
activities and appearance
 Disabilities and chronic illness
 Social and environmental losses of income, roles and
activities
 Death or illness of significant others
 Physical and sexual abuse
 Depression, heavy drinking, or insufficient sleep

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COPING STRATEGIES
◎ Problem focused strategies
◎ Emotion focussed strategies

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RELAXATION TECHNIQUES
Progressive relaxation
Meditations
Imaging
Biofeedback
Self hypnosis
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 COGNITIVE
ASPECTS OF AGING

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◎ Perception
• Ability to perceive the environment
and react appropriately is diminished.
◎ Cognitive ability:
• the older adult maintains intelligence,
problem solving, judgement, creativity
and other well practiced cognitive
skills.

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◎ Memory
• Memory of the activities of the recent past of
few hours is recent memory.
• Information stored for periods longer than 72
hours and usually weeks or years is the long
term memory
• Older adults tend to forget the recent past.

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◎ Learning
• Problem of retrieving information.
◎ Spirituality and aging
• Strong religious convictions and continue
to attend religious meetings or services.

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◎ Drug abuse
• Older may take drugs for sleep disturbance,
constipation, and joint pain
• Self-administration of medications may lead
to a variety of misuse situations, including
taking too much or too little medication,
combining alcohol with medications, taking
medicine at wrong time, taking someone
else’s medication

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◎ Dementia
• Chronic progressive loss of cognitive
function characterized by changes in
memory, judgement, language,
mathematic calculation, abstract
reasoning and problem solving ability

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