Effective counselling for senior citizens to cope up with drastic changes in life

It has been well observed that management of elderly folks is quite challenging and complex because there are numerous changes occur in the life of senior citizens.  These changes may grip senior citizens to experience anxiety or depression.  Some physical vicissitudes also degrade their life like slowing down of physical activity, weak eye sight, hearing or dealing with chronic illnesses or pain.  Social changes can also affect senior citizens mental health.  Major mental threatening condition foe senior citizen is the loss of a spouse, other family member or close friends.  In such conditions, adjustment is very nerve-wracking. Therefore, counsellors are more involved in offering good psychotherapeutic techniques to make life of senior citizen better.

Simply stating, the main problems of the senior citizens are health problems, financial problems, poverty, addiction, social exclusion, retirement, the ageism, abuse.

Senior citizens are at risk of several mental health disorders.  These include:

Depression

Anxiety

Dementia

Alzheimer’s Disorder

But major health concern for senior citizen is depression. It may be due to lack of psychological support, presence of chronic diseases, family conflicts. Both individual and group counselling are available for senior citizens who wants to seek mental health treatment. In individual counselling sessions, clients can discuss thoughts and feelings freely. Group counselling is also successful for elderly group and it provides an additional benefit of decreased isolation through interaction among members.

To facilitate senior citizens, relationship counselling is effective as they can freely express their problems, situation, relationships and even entire past with counsellors. Counsellor’s role is to help elders through a game of questions and answers to resolve issues.

Main feature of counsellors is to facilitate understanding, change, and acceptance of new situations, to overcome some dramatic moments, integration and development. With the help of counsellors, senior citizens may explore and elucidate the strengths and weaknesses, to augment their quality of life.

Counsellors must be aware of the social context in which their older adult clients exist and the challenges of navigating an ageist world. Additionally, modifications to therapy may be necessary due to caregiving issues or living situation. To counsel the elderly people, the speech-language pathologist must help them make successful adjustments to the normal aging process. For positive results in counselling process, counselling must address the effects of the pathology on tertiary aging factors.

At bottom line, senior citizens experience lots of mental issues and they need empathetic attitude from society, family. Well adept counsellors have pivotal role in lessening major problems such cognitive decline. Counsellor can extend physical, mental, and emotional support to older clients.

Important: This article is developed through environmental information and personal view of writer. Writer is not responsible for any disagreement.