My beloved friend and second mother is shuttled around from this doctor to that one, and it is very straining to her financially and emotionally so that I say the way the medical profession and the laws governing it are set up is a huge challenge to the elderly. I feel that the medical profession could form a geriatric doctoring branch that approaches healing holistically in lieu of a separate doctor, clinic, bill, and stressor for each ailment. At 48 I am old enough to remember when we had a family doctor who knew our history and that we were comfortable with.
Our text makes an interesting statement that says "within the U.S., changes in health maintenance organizations (HMOs) have wreaked havoc in many sectors of the health care industry, causing great anxiety among the public, politicians, and health care professionals. In many ways, the U.S. health care financing crisis is a function of the huge expenses associated with the long‐term care of older adults" (Whitbourne & Whitbourne, 2014, p.248). In Criminal Justice School they taught us about lobbying, and we discussed that most of us believe marijuana should be legalized for testing and treatment of the many physical illnesses it seems to treat and/or cure. The film, Making a Killing, does an excellent job of proving corruption in big pharma which has a huge effect in the medical field ('of Interest, 2012). Big pharma greed and corruption by lobbying to keep healing plants illegal or suppressing olde cures is another challenging aspect of aging.
Fear of death and/or living with the knowledge that one is close to death is another challenging aspect of older adults. Our text states that "invisible death" involves the hiding of death from society and that "as death has become removed from the everyday world, it has acquired more fear and mystery. Instead of developing our own personal meanings, we are at the mercy of the many images of death we see in the media" (Whitbourne & Whitbourne, 2014, p.268). The text describes that families are bringing death back into the home in hopes of returning dignity to death as a natural part of life's process in lieu of the "invisible death of institutions (Whitbourne & Whitbourne, 2014). Our text also declares that "there is surprisingly little research on spirituality and coping, but what evidence exists suggests that our values and beliefs can guide us through difficult losses" (Whitbourne & Whitbourne, 2014, p.261). Maybe more stress on the spiritual and holistic aspects of the Being that we are would alleviate fear of death?
References
'of Interest. (23 Dec, 2012). Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging –
Full Movie (Documentary). Retrieved from https://youtu.be/
Whitbourne, S. K., & Whitbourne, S. B. (2014). Adult development and aging: Biopsychosocial
perspectives (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
No comments:
Post a Comment