Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults

Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2020-05-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0309671035

Social isolation and loneliness are serious yet underappreciated public health risks that affect a significant portion of the older adult population. Approximately one-quarter of community-dwelling Americans aged 65 and older are considered to be socially isolated, and a significant proportion of adults in the United States report feeling lonely. People who are 50 years of age or older are more likely to experience many of the risk factors that can cause or exacerbate social isolation or loneliness, such as living alone, the loss of family or friends, chronic illness, and sensory impairments. Over a life course, social isolation and loneliness may be episodic or chronic, depending upon an individual's circumstances and perceptions. A substantial body of evidence demonstrates that social isolation presents a major risk for premature mortality, comparable to other risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking, or obesity. As older adults are particularly high-volume and high-frequency users of the health care system, there is an opportunity for health care professionals to identify, prevent, and mitigate the adverse health impacts of social isolation and loneliness in older adults. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults summarizes the evidence base and explores how social isolation and loneliness affect health and quality of life in adults aged 50 and older, particularly among low income, underserved, and vulnerable populations. This report makes recommendations specifically for clinical settings of health care to identify those who suffer the resultant negative health impacts of social isolation and loneliness and target interventions to improve their social conditions. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults considers clinical tools and methodologies, better education and training for the health care workforce, and dissemination and implementation that will be important for translating research into practice, especially as the evidence base for effective interventions continues to flourish.

Old and Alone

Old and Alone
Author: Jeremy Tunstall
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2024-05-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1040008224

Aging with a Plan

Aging with a Plan
Author: Sharona Hoffman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2015-05-12
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN:

This book offers a concise, comprehensive resource for middle-aged readers who are facing the prospects of their own aging and of caring for elderly relatives—an often overwhelming task for which little in life prepares us. Everyone ages, and nearly everyone will also experience having to support aging relatives. Being prepared is the best way to handle this inevitable life stage. This book addresses a breadth of topics that are relevant to aging and caring for the elderly, analyzing each thoroughly and providing up-to-date, practical advice. It can serve as a concise and comprehensive resource read start-to-finish to plan for an individual's own old age or to anticipate the needs of aging relatives, or as a quick-reference guide on specific issues and topics as relevant to each reader's situation and needs. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Aging with a Plan: How a Little Thought Today Can Vastly Improve Your Tomorrow develops recommendations for building sustainable social, legal, medical, and financial support systems that can promote a good quality of life throughout the aging process. Chapters address critical topics such as retirement savings and expenses, residential settings, legal planning, the elderly and driving, long-term care, and end-of-life decisions. The author combines analysis of recent research on the challenges of aging with engaging anecdotes and personal observations. By following the recommendations in this book, readers in their 40s, 50s, and early 60s will greatly benefit from learning about the issues regarding aging in the 21st century—and from investing some effort in planning for their old age and that of their loved ones.

Ethics, Law, and Aging Review, Volume 10

Ethics, Law, and Aging Review, Volume 10
Author: Marshall B. Kapp, JD, MPH
Publisher: Springer Publishing Company
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2004-12-06
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0826116396

Although the topic of decision making capacity and older persons has been discussed in the literature, there still is much to be learned about it theoretically and practically. Experts continue to disagree about which standards are important for assessing decision making capacity. Questions such as: ìWhen should a capacity assessment be done on an older person and by whom?î are covered by the editors. Topics included in this volume are the application of an original framework for ethical decision making in long term care; an elder's capacity to decide to remain living alone in the community; the quest for helpful standardized instruments for evaluating decision making capacity; and end-of-life liability issues.

Elder Abuse

Elder Abuse
Author: XinQi Dong
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 721
Release: 2017-02-22
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 3319475045

This book provides a global comprehensive and systematic state-of-the review of this field that fills the gaps between research, practice, and policy. The book addresses the epidemiology of the issue and the global prevalence of elder abuse in both developed and developing countries, which synthesizes the most up-to-date data about risk factors and protective factors associated with elder abuse and consequences of elder abuse; clinical assessment and management of elder abuse, including screening, detection, management of elder abuse, and the role of decision making capacity and forensic approaches; practice and services that describe adult protective services, legal justice, elder court systems, and guardianship system; elder abuse and culture, which provides more in-depth anthropological and ethnographic experiences; policy issues, which highlights the elder justice movement, GAO reports, elder justice act, older American act and elder justice coordinating council; and future directions, which explores translational research, practice, education/training and policy issues surrounding elder abuse. Elder Abuse: Research, Practice and Policy is a useful resource for aging researchers, social services, general internists, family medicine physicians, social workers, nurses, and legal professionals interested in the issues of elder abuse.

The Ends of Harm

The Ends of Harm
Author: Victor Tadros
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 901
Release: 2011-09-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0191018414

Every modern democratic state imprisons thousands of offenders every year, depriving them of their liberty, causing them a great deal of psychological and sometimes physical harm. Relationships are destroyed, jobs are lost, the risk of the offender being harmed by other offenders is increased and all at great expense to the state. How can this brutal and costly enterprise be justified? Traditionally, philosophers answering this question have argued either that the punishment of wrongdoers is a good in itself (retributivism), or that it is a regrettable means to a valuable end, such as the deterrence of future wrongdoing, and thus justifiable on consequentialist grounds. This book offers a critical examination of those theories and advances a new argument for punishment's justification, calling it the 'duty view'. On this view, the permission to punish offenders is grounded in the duties that they incur in virtue of their wrongdoing. The most important duties that ground the justification of punishment are the duty to recognize that the offender has done wrong and the duty to protect others against wrongdoing. In the light of these duties the state has a permission to punish offenders to ensure that they recognize that what they have done is wrong, but also to protect others from crime. In contrast to other justifications of punishment grounded in deterrence, the duty view is developed in the light of a non-consequentialist moral theory: a theory which endorses constraints on the pursuit of the good. It is shown that it is normally wrong to harm a person as a means to pursue a greater good. However, there are exceptions to this principle in cases where the person harmed has an enforceable duty to pursue the good. The implications of this idea are explored both in the context of self-defence, and then in the context of punishment. Through the systematic exploration of the relationship between self-defence and punishment, the book makes significant progress in defending a plausible set of non-consequentialist moral principles that justify the punishment of wrongdoers, and marks a significant contribution to the philosophical literature on punishment.