America's rapidly expanding population of older citizens is becoming the dominant political and policy issue of the new century. Thorny issues are driving decisions made in Washington, D.C. and state capitols, in corporations, and around the family dining table, such as:
-- The future of Social Security
-- Eldercare
-- The cost of Medicare and drugs
-- Retirement and pensions.

Aging in America A to Z is an encyclopedic roadmap to the challenging questions and potential answers facing today's seniors and their children. Important to both seniors and younger Americans who must care directly for parents or share indirectly in the economic and social costs of an aging population, Aging in America A to Z is a fundamental resource for all public and high school libraries.

The psychology of aging usually focuses upon cognitive changes, with a particular focus on dementia and other forms of cognitive decline. But getting older is about more than simply changes to the brain and related health issues. Changes to our social and emotional lives are also hugely significant as we adapt across our lifespan. The second edition of Aging and Development is the only textbook available that responds to the growing interest in social, personal and emotional development in older age. Ideally suited to complement texts on cognitive change, the book provides a holistic developmental perspective on aging. It highlights a range of issues, including the development of personal meaning and spirituality, improvements in emotional control, uses of reminiscence and life review, the importance of healthy attitudes to aging, as well as the maintenance of close personal relationships. It does not avoid the difficult issues of late life decline, but illustrates how even in circumstances of physical and mental frailty a positive sense of self can be created and enhanced. Fully updated to provide the most cutting-edge overview on this burgeoning topic of interest, Aging and Development includes a glossary and list of useful websites both on the study of gerontology and the psychology of aging. It will be essential reading for all students of developmental psychology, as well as anyone either training to work or already working with older people.

At a time, when the section of the older population is increasing in all western societies, more and more attention needs to be paid to the growing number of people who live with and die of drawn-out terminal illnesses, cancer being one of the most common ones. This study focuses on terminally ill people in a German hospice and addresses the question how meaningful experience is constructed for these patients in an attempt to preserve their dignity as persons. It is based on detailed and sometimes moving material from diary texts and active participation of the author in the role of a nurse, which allowed him to watch closely the behaviour of patients and nurses in routine situations and to look at the underlying emotions, values, and assumptions within such interaction. This book goes well beyond this particular case and reaches conclusions about death narratives that are significant for the social sciences more generally.

Originally published in 1987, a well-known Jungian analyst, the late Bani Shorter writes here about how women are initiated into becoming themselves. Her book was an important contribution to the field of analytical psychology at the time, as well as to the increasingly popular study of women's spirituality. In former times transitions from one stage of life to another were prepared for and marked by ritual initiation; in modern times this necessity is overlooked and women's natural development is made more difficult as a consequence. Through working in close therapeutic relationships with women, Bani Shorter found that when challenged by crises and transitions in their lives, today's women instinctively create rituals nevertheless to mark their journey towards maturation, wholeness and meaning. In this process they discover something of who they are and recognise dimensions of themselves which have been previously repressed and undreamed of. The stories unfolded here can be a guide for all women through their own rites of passage.

A negative effect of the ageing population is that more individuals are experiencing cognitive decline and some form of neurodegenerative disease. With the number of people experiencing dementia likely to double in the next 20 years, this change in society presents one of greatest challenges facing public health personnel in the 21st century. The aim of this volume is to describe research that is in progress, and the major findings that have been obtained in the scientific study of dementia. The chapters in the first section of the book focus upon early signs of dementia, and consider several approaches to finding early cognitive signs and biological markers of dementia. The second section considers whether dementia is inevitable for people who become very old, and features chapters on risk factors and proactive influences, cognitive reserve and intervention. Each chapter in the final section describes phenomena which are related to differences in function between memory systems, including anterograde memory in fronto-temporal dementia, and the role semantic memory and semantic cognition may play in developing an understanding of the development of the degenerative processes in dementia. With contributions from world-class researchers in this area, the volume offers a concise overview of key findings in recent research on dementia and memory. It will be of great interest to researchers and advanced students of cognitive psychology, and to those working in related fields, such as gerontology, rehabilitation sciences, and allied health.

What if the world population consisted of a single generation that lived forever? Or what if each successive generation came into being all at once and then perished before the next generation came into existence? How would the absence of many different generations sharing pieces of the same time-line alter how we think about the linked processes of aging and social change? In this book, editor Melissa Hardy presents a collection of strategies for conceptualizing and analyzing the connections between intra-vidual and societal change. Studying Aging and Social Change questions the boundaries between self and society and change and stability. The book includes classic treatments on generations and cohorts by Karl Mannheim and Norman Ryder and presents a new theoretical contribution that explores the meaning of aging as a social process. Each of the six new essays develops a central theoretical concept, linking that concept to issues of research design and analysis. By reexamining the assumptions that underlie our approaches to the study of change, this volume provides key insights into how we can understand fundamental social processes such as human development and socialization, the formation of public opinion and political identity, and the shaping of collective action and group behavior. This enlightening volume will be a valuable resource for academics and students in the fields of social work, gerontology, sociology, and family studies.

Older people who would prefer to stay in their homes and states whose funds are being depleted by the rising costs of Medicaid payments to nursing homes find the current system of long-term care unsatisfactory. From Nursing Homes to Home Care arms educators, policymakers, public health professionals, gerontologists, and advocacy groups with the information they need to participate knowledgeably in the debate about aging and long-term care needs. The book shows readers where things are, where they are going, and where they need to be in changing the system of long-term care. From Nursing Homes to Home Care evaluates future needs for long-term care by analyzing on-going systems and assessing key features of proposed long term programs in the context of population aging. Readers gain a thoughtful analysis of the complex dimensions of making future long-term care policy and program decisions as they read about: patterns of demographic aging, disability, and health needs intersections of formal and informal care including intergenerational equity issues long-term care services needs and accessibility planning for funding, quality assurance, and range of services implications of shifts from the current system to a system of home and community-based services Chapters in From Nursing Homes to Home Care express the collective thinking of leaders in long-term care policy and research. Contributors address implications for changing the current system in relation to the emerging needs of the aging population and use this as a basis for examining alternative decisions. Information in the book helps readers determine how to best blend formal and informal services, how to assure quality of care and quality of life in long-term care policy, how to finance devised programs, which health needs to address, and whether to use regulatory or competitive approaches. Professionals, educators and students, and policymakers at all levels learn about factors to consider in policy planning and decision making, including features of aging baby boomers; trends in the growth of the aged population; newly emerging trends in morbidity, disability, and mortality and their effect on the demand for long-term care in the short and long term; access issues from the perspective of the historical evolution of publicly funded long-term care services, the distribution of formal and informal systems of care; utilization patterns of the minority and poor; how to pay for care, how to design an appropriate mix of services, how to maintain quality with efficiency, and how to mesh services with social and family values. From Nursing Homes to Home Care is an invaluable resource in evaluating and advocating policy changes and decisions for an improved long-term care system.

This book was nurtured by the belief that the new dynamics of today's and tomorrow's aging has not yet been treated well in the gerontology literature. Several questions drove the choice of substance for the book: What kind of new dynamics of aging deserves consideration? What kinds of theories and fields are at the core of treating such a new dynamics? And what kind of empirical evidence should be considered? The master hypothesis on which the book is based maintains that the new dynamics of old age is best observed in a range of everyday aging contexts that have been undergoing major change since the second half of the 20th century. In particular, five areas of new and persistent dynamics are treated in depth: the social environment, with a focus on cohort effects in social relations and the consideration of family relations and elders as care redelivers; the home environment, with emphasis on housing and quality of life, relocation and urban aging issues; the outdoor environment, with consideration of out-of-home activity patterns, car-driving behaviour and the leisure world of aging; the technological environment, with treatments of the role of the Internet and the potential of technology for aging outcomes and; and the societal environment with a focus on global aging, the new politics of old age and older persons as market consumers. The book's main purpose is to provide the scholarly gerontology community with a comprehensive and critical discussion of these new trends related to old age. The book will be of interest for the scholarly community of gerontology in a variety of disciplines; sociology, psychology, demography, epidemiology, humanities, social policy and geriatrics; students in gerontology education and in the disciplines named above who have an interest in aging issues (graduate level); professionals in practical and applied fields related to aging such as community and urban planners, health and care providers and policymakers; people involved in senior citizens' organizations and those in industry who wish to serve older people with new products.

People react very differently to the process of ageing. Some people shy away from old age for as long as they can and eventually spend it reflecting on times when they were physically and mentally stronger and more independent. For others old age is embraced as a new adventure and something to look forward to.

In this book psychoanalyst Danielle Quinodoz highlights the value of old age and the fact that although many elderly people have suffered losses, either of their own good health or through bereavement, most have managed to retain the most important thing their sense of self. Quinodoz argues that growing old provides us with the opportunity to learn more about ourselves and instead of facing it with dread, it should be celebrated. Divided into accessible chapters this book covers topics including:

• the internal life-history
• remembering
• phases of life
• anxiety about death
• being a psychoanalyst and growing old.

Throughout Growing Old the author draws on both her clinical experience of working with the elderly, and her own personal experience of growing old. This makes it an interesting read for both practising psychoanalysts, and those who wish to gain a greater insight of the natural progression into later life.

As the baby boom generation ages, there are few ethnographies that capture the dynamics of aging. This new book is based on years of participant observation in "the Sands," a beautiful ocean community of well-off individuals and couples seeking the easy life. Yet the community members contend with deep uncertainties about health as they learn to face the realities of death. Identity, sexuality, gender, and conflict play into a sense of "who belongs where," who is counted a friend or stranger in the struggles of old age. Warren shows how the vicissitudes of the aging body center the present and become anchors for the past and future. Expressed in beautiful literary prose, this book moves beyond wealth to explore the realities of aging in poignant new ways that will enliven discussion in courses on Gerontology, Medical Sociology, Inequality, and many others.

This book is a major reassessment of work in the field of critical gerontology, providing a comprehensive survey of issues by a team of contributors drawn from Europe and North America. The book focuses on the variety of ways in which age and ageing are socially constructed, and the extent to which growing old is being transformed through processes associated with globalisation. The collection offers a range of alternative views and visions about the nature of social ageing, making a major contribution to theory-building within the discipline of gerontology. The different sections of the book give an overview of the key issues and concerns underlying the development of critical gerontology. These include: first, the impact of globalisation and of multinational organizations and agencies on the lives of older people; second, the factors contributing to the "social construction" of later life; and third, issues associated with diversity and inequality in old age, arising through the effects of cumulative advantage and disadvantage over the life course. These different themes are analysed using a variety of theoretical perspectives drawn from sociology, social policy, political science, and social anthropology. "Aging, Globalization and Inequality" brings together key contributors to critical perspectives on aging and is unique in the range of themes and concerns covered in a single volume. The study moves forward an important area of debate in studies of aging, and thus provides the basis for a new type of critical gerontology relevant to the twenty-first century.

As the baby boom generation ages, there are few ethnographies that capture the dynamics of aging. This new book is based on years of participant observation in "the Sands," a beautiful ocean community of well-off individuals and couples seeking the easy life. Yet the community members contend with deep uncertainties about health as they learn to face the realities of death. Identity, sexuality, gender, and conflict play into a sense of "who belongs where," who is counted a friend or stranger in the struggles of old age. Warren shows how the vicissitudes of the aging body center the present and become anchors for the past and future. Expressed in beautiful literary prose, this book moves beyond wealth to explore the realities of aging in poignant new ways that will enliven discussion in courses on Gerontology, Medical Sociology, Inequality, and many others.

The Handbook of Gerontology Research Methods offers a clear understanding of the most important research challenges and issues in the burgeoning field of the psychology of aging. As people in developed countries live longer, so a range of research methods has evolved that allows a more nuanced understanding of how we develop psychological and neurologically. Allied to this is an increasing concern with the idea of well-being, a concept which places cognitive performance and development within a more socially grounded context. With contributions from a range of top international scholars, the book addresses both typical and atypical aging, highlighting key areas such as physical and cognitive exercise, nutrition, stress, diabetes and issues related to death, dying and bereavement. Successful ageing is emphasised throughout the text. Each chapter concludes with a series of practical tips on how to undertake successful research in this area. This unique collection is the first book to provide both a concise overview of the major themes, findings and current controversies in this growing field, as well as an understanding of the practical issues when researching older adults which may impact on research outcomes, intervention, policy and future directions. Designed for both students and researchers interested in the psychology of aging, but also highly relevant for students or researchers in related fields such as health psychology and social care, the Handbook of Gerontology Research Methods is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand more about the psychology of aging.

In Life After Ninety Micheal Bury and Anthea Holme have surveyed and interviewed 200 individuals, living at home and in institutions, to examine old age stereotypes and present a unique picture of the health, quality of life, and social circumstances of the very old. Longevity and the factors which promote it are also discussed, and throughout the book the concept of the 'life course' is employed, which brings together the biographical experiences of individuals, and the changing historical circumstances of the twentieth century, through which they have lived.

Failure to Launch is a book geared towards helping clinicians work with dependent adult children. The book first attempts to define the problem of failure to launch as well as identify the underlying causes such as entitlement, narcissism, enabling family systems, and undiagnosed mental health problems. Failure to Launch also lays out a step-by-step treatment plan to help guide clinicians with these clients to help facilitate change. The book includes case studies, sample chapters, and the latest research to help illustrate the theoretical basis for the treatments in this book.

When her husband's ill health forces them to move into an assisted living facility, Anne M. Wyatt-Brown suddenly finds herself surrounded by elderly residents. In this lively and provocative collection, other distinguished gerontologists reflect on Anne's moving account of her transition to becoming a member of a vibrant and sociable community that offers care-giving support, while encouraging her to pursue her own interests, including exercising, reviewing articles for scholarly journals, serving on committees, and singing. By redefining notions of care and community, undoing the stigmas of aging, and valuing the psychological factors involved in accepting assistance, this volume provides a bold new framework for thinking about aging, continuing care, making the big move to a retirement community, and living with vitality in the new environment.

Aging & the Life Course: Social & Cultural Contexts provides an accessible, up-to-date introduction to the study of aging and the life course from a distinctly sociological perspective. It explores the sociocultural dimensions of aging while encouraging critical thinking about the diversity of aging experiences, societal attitudes toward older adults the politics and economics of growing old, and end-of-life resources. Throughout, the text emphasizes the relevance of the material for working with older populations, understanding social policy and policy debates, improving communities, relating to others, and understanding ourselves.

The first book in the new series Diversity and Aging, Laura Hurd Clarke's Facing Age examines the relationship between aging and women in a culture obsessed with youthfulness. From weight gain, to wrinkles, to sagging skin, to gray hair, the book explores older women's complex and often contradictory feelings about their bodies and the physical realities of growing older. Although the women in the book express discontent about their aging visage, they also emphasize the importance of functional abilities and suggest that appearance becomes less central in later life. Drawing on in-depth interviews conducted over a ten year period, Hurd Clarke brings alive feminist theories about aging, beauty work, femininity, and the body. The book also discusses medicine and the aging appearance, with interviews from medical providers and women about treatments such as Botox injections and injectable fillers. This book makes an important and timely contribution to the discussion of gendered ageism and older women's experiences of growing older in a youth-obsessed culture.

Cognitive Aging and the Role of Strategy is the English Language edition of 'Vieillissement cognitif et variations strategiques', oriiginally published in French . Lemaire is a well-respected professor and text-book author of Cognitive Psychology in France and his English language edition will have updated content on theories of cognitive aging to provide a broad view of adult development and the aging process. This title will be of interest to students of specialist psychology courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Cognitive Aging and the Role of Strategy is the English Language edition of 'Vieillissement cognitif et variations strategiques', oriiginally published in French . Lemaire is a well-respected professor and text-book author of Cognitive Psychology in France and his English language edition will have updated content on theories of cognitive aging to provide a broad view of adult development and the aging process. This title will be of interest to students of specialist psychology courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Decision Making near the End of Life provides a comprehensive overview of the recent developments that have impacted decision-making processes within the field of end-of-life care. The most current developments in all aspects of major underlying issues such as public attitudes, the impact of media, bioethics, and legal precedent provide the background information for the text. The authors examine various aspects of end-of-life choices and decision-making, including communication (between and among family, medical personnel, the dying person), advance directives, and the emergence of hospice and palliative care institutions. The book also explores a variety of psychosocial considerations that arise in decision-making, including religion/spirituality, family caregiving, disenfranchised and diverse groups, and the psychological and psychiatric problems that can impact both the dying person and loved ones. Case studies and first-person stories about decision-making, written by professionals in the field, bring a uniquely personal touch to this valuable text.

Today, concerns about the financial stability of Social Security, trends in disability, health care costs, and the supply of caregivers are all driven by the coming explosion inthe number of people over the age of 65. Aging in America focuses on the economic and demographic portrait of the senior population and can provide a context for analysis of broader population issues. It provides a wide range of characteristics of the older population including: age composition, race and Hispanic origin, educational attainment, living arrangements, veteran status, employment and income, health insurance, disability and housing characteristics. Extracting comparative information from the Census Bureau's FactFinder dissemination system can be difficult and time-consuming. Aging in America provides comparative data on a variety of topics in a single, easy-to-use volume. Some of the benefits of Aging in America include: It provides a cross-section of socio-economic characteristics focused on the aging population for commonly researched geographic areas: states, counties, cities, metropolitan and micropolitan areas, and congressional districts The tables are structured to allow easy comparisons across geographic areas and easy profiling of characteristics

How well do the places where we live support the wellbeing of older adults? The Canadian population is growing older and is reshaping the nation's economic, social and cultural future. However, the built and social environments of many communities, neighbourhoods and cities have not been designed to help Canadians age well. Bringing together academic research, practitioner reflections and personal narratives from older adults across Canada, this cutting-edge text provides a rare spotlight on the local implications of aging in Canadian cities and communities. It explores employment, housing, transportation, cultural safety, health, planning and more, to provide a wide-ranging and comprehensive discussion of how to build supportive communities for Canadians of all ages.

The housing problems of older people in our society are highly topical because of the growing number of retired people in the population and, especially, the yet-to-come increasing number of 'very old' people. Government policies on the care of older people have been forthcoming from Whitehall, but the issue of housing is just beginning to be seriously addressed. This book represents a first attempt at bringing together people from the worlds of architecture, social science and housing studies to look at the future of living environments for an ageing society. Projecting thinking into the future, it asks critical questions and attempts to provide some of the answers. It uniquely moves beyond the issues of accommodation and care to look at the wider picture of how housing can reflect the social inclusion of people as they age. Inclusive housing in an ageing society will appeal to a wide audience - housing, health and social care workers including: housing officers, architects, planners and designers, community regeneration workers, care managers, social workers and social care assistants, registered managers and housing providers, health improvement staff and, of course, current and future generations of older people.