Parents make homes safe for children by plugging electrical outlets and cushioning sharp corners. It may seem patronizing to suggest that children should make homes safe for their parents. Aging adults, after all, have learned to avoid the hazardous behaviors that imperil children. Still, older people as a group are more susceptible to certain kinds […]
The long-term implications of the various surges of the covid variant have ushered into the children of aging parents a feeling of vulnerability and a need to look for more real ways to help. Though vaccinations are a first, most effective line of defense against a serious illness such as Covid-19 and its variants, vaccinations […]
Living in the same household as an aging parent is often the best way for an adult child to provide for the parent’s needs. About 14% of adults who live in someone else’s home are the parent of the head of household. That percentage doubled between 1995 and 2018. Multigenerational households have been increasing for […]
Health authorities discourage social gatherings as a way to slow the spread of the virus that is responsible for COVID-19. Large groups of people in workplaces and schools also increase viral transmission, as governments discovered when newly opened schools closed after witnessing a spike in new COVID-19 cases. In some settings, including nursing homes and […]
Providing senior care and maintaining social distancing may seem like incompatible goals. Some services, whether provided by home health aides or by the staff of a senior living facility, need to be provided in person. A certain amount of physical contact — or at least close proximity — is necessary when seniors need assistance bathing, […]
As the country reopens and stay-at-home orders are eased, the risk to seniors from COVID-19 may increase. While the curve has flattened in some parts of the country, infected people still inhabit every state. Since a large percentage of individuals who carry the coronavirus have no symptoms — and may never develop symptoms — it […]
Here’s yet another myth buster about growing older: Mental health disorders are not a normal part of aging. In fact, there are three “patterns” of mental health disorders commonly seen across the lifespan, including individuals who: Develop a disorder (usually between the mid-teens and mid-20s) and maintain it for a lifetime; Experience some mental disorder […]
“I don’t consider myself a natural-born doctor,” Victoria Sweet recently told a group gathered at San Francisco’s Institute on Aging. She then described her unlikely scholastic path to physiciandom: a major in math, minor in classics — and an awakening to Karl Jung while browsing in a bookstore one day. “I was taken by the […]
Potential perils of seniors suffering from loneliness are now well documented and well trumpeted. For older people, being lonely and isolated is akin to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, they say. It increases the risks of heart disease, strokes, high blood pressure — and can even hasten death. A fact less pondered: Unpaid family caregivers […]
In November 2018, the town of Paradise in northern California (population 26,218), known for its physical beauty, friendly residents, prolific fruit crops, and annual Johnny Appleseed Festival, was decimated by the deadliest fire in the state’s history. Nearly 100 people died in the so-called Camp Fire; their average age was 71 — and city officials […]