The developmental crisis of Erikson’s last stage is integrity versus despair, when older adults try to find ways to integrate their distinctive experiences with their visualization of society. Many develop self-importance and satisfaction with their private lives, in addition as with their society or personal life. Some others despair, feeling afraid that their lives are nearing an end. As at every other phase, tension between the two contrasting aspects of the developmental emergency helps move forward the person toward a deeper understanding (Berger, 2008).Through a person’s life time, he or she experiences many fundamental changes, which take place in his or her life physically, and mentally. Late adulthood poses many problems than any other phase in life. People in this stage experience their youthfulness from one stage to the next and watch it dwindle down, and pass away. Late adulthood is time for apparent changes to take place and the opportunity for individuals to deal with critical issues of aging and to make changes to live a longer healthier life until the end of life. Evaluate how individuals can promote health and wellness into late adulthood and mitigate the negative effects of aging.
Individuals can advance health and wellness into late adulthood and lessen the negative effects of aging through eating right, exercising, helping and supporting others through service, becoming active in church and prayer, and acquiring needed vitamins, and minerals. An innovative study inspects the correlation between increased omega-3 fatty acids and increased endurance in patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). Atherosclerosis is the increase of fatty plaques on the inner lining of the arteries, and it causes coronary heart disease. In the United States, CHD is the single leading cause of death in the United States. An estimated 1.26 million Americans may experience a new or recurring heart attack this year (Farzaneh, Lin, Epel, Harris, Blackburn, & Whooley, 2010), . According to Farzaneh, Lin, Epel, Harris, Blackburn, & Whooley (2010),
The researchers in this study—including a scientist who won a Nobel Prize for her work with telomeres—investigated the relationship between omega-3 fatty acid intake and telomere length. Telomeres are repeat sequences at the end of chromosomes that protect and stabilize the DNA. Telomeres shorten with each replication of the DNA during cellular division. Short telomeres induce apoptosis (programmed cell death), thus telomere length has been suggested to play a role in biological aging. In this new study, researchers investigated the relationship between omega-3 fatty acid intake and telomere length in subjects with coronary artery disease (p. 1).
Analyze ageism and stereotypes associated with late adulthood. However, the first stages of aging changes are universal because they take place in everyone. Nonetheless, in the process of aging many different kinds of diseases that are prevalent in this stage do not affect everyone. Many diseases do not affect everyone for example, one person may have heart trouble, another person may experience bone fractures, and yet some other may suffer from dementia. However aging is universal because every living organism ages. The subsequent phase, which characterizes aging, is that it is intrinsic. In the acknowledgement of lifestyle changes, exercise, and eat a proper diet in an effort to slow the aging process and maintain health, aging take place regardless. Third, aging is progressive because it cannot it is not reversible. The fourth criteria, is the likelihood of disease, virtually every physiological and biochemical change involved in health and maintenance of homeostasis moves in an unfavorable direction. Individuals in late adulthood experience many changes because of the factors in aging in the realm of physical and mental changes.
Aging correspond to changes that a human body progress through, which weaken the body’s ability to restore making it susceptible to illness and disease (Berger, 2008). Gerontologists describe aging as a continuous, universal, progressive, intrinsic, and deleterious (CUPID) procedure that reduce a organism’s capability to sustain homeostasis in the face of environmental stressors and consequently increases the organism’s probability of dying..The physical changes associated with aging are characteristically slow with obvious declines in vision, taste, hearing, and smell. Additionally, some elderly individuals experience more major health concerns such as high blood pressure, dementia, diabetes, high cholesterol, cancer, and brittle bones. Explore different views of death and dying at different points in human development. Many people in the last phase of life worries about dying and fear it tremendously. Death remains an immense unknown, one of the fundamental issues with which faith, way of life, and science have struggled with from the foundation of human history. However, dying is a inevitable action, the thought of it happening can become overwhelming for people in the last stage of life.
Death is a common natural part of a way of life but it is frightening to know it can happen at any time. People do not often plan to die immaturely, and situations often arrive when death shows up suddenly as in a fatal car wreck. Death and dying process are difficult for everyone because it is final. However, in many cases, sickness is a major cause for the reasons people may die early as oppose to later years of life, however, when a person is aging death is surely coming. Many older people dies because of natural causes, and some because of various illnesses. Oftentimes, in spite of treatment, a condition or illness will cause death, a person may opt to not have surgery and die naturally. In such cases, patients may make a decision what they want done, and do not want done. Often, they may have a will addressing their wishes. Some older people plan their funerals in advance, and pay for total expenses before hand. Advance directives are methods some older people use to assist with carrying wishes out to their families, and health care providers. Care at the end of life focuses on making patients calm. However, some older people request to receive medicines and treatments to manage pain and other symptoms.
Many patients may have a desire to choose to die at home or in a relative’s home. Some prefer to die in a hospital or a hospice away from the family’s home (Medline Plus, 2012). Advance care planning report to medical decision-making for critically ill patients, mainly older patients. This planning characteristically includes quite a few elements: documentation of patient preferences for care, name of a surrogate decision maker to endorse those preferences, and the conclusion of an advance directive. In spite of acceptance of advance care planning, and advance directives in the concern of older patients, a few percent of people, including those with persistent disease have advance directives (Yung, Walling, & Min, 2010). Advance care planning is not extremely successful because people are afraid of the initiative to care for their business. Examine various culture attitudes towards death and dying.
When people move toward the end of their lives, they and their families normally face tasks and decisions that include a extensive range of choices from easy to extremely multifaceted. They may be sensible, psychosocial, religious, lawful, existential, or medical in nature. For example, dying people and their families are faced with alternatives about what type of caregiver assistance they desire or require and whether to obtain care at home or in an institutional treatment location. Dying people may have to make preferences about the desired extent of family involvement in treatment and decision-making. They regularly make lawful decisions about wills, advanced directives, and durable powers of attorney. They may make decisions about how to apply their limited moment in time and power. Some may want to mirror on the meaning of life, and some may make a decision to do a finishing life assessment or to contract with psychologically incomplete business. Some may want to contribute in planning formal procedure before or after death.
According to American Psychological Association (2012), In some religious traditions, confession of sins, preparation to “meet one’s maker,” or asking forgiveness from those who may have been wronged can be part of end-of-life concerns. In other cultural traditions, planning or even discussing death is considered inappropriate, uncaring, and even dangerous, as it is viewed as inviting death (p.1). End-of-life decisions and medical decisions have multifaceted psychosocial components, consequences, and cost that have a important force on suffering and the eminence of living and dying. on the other hand, the medical end-of-life decisions are frequently the most demanding for terminally ill individuals, and those who worry about them. Every decision should preferably be well thought-out in terms of the reprieve of suffering, and the principles, and viewpoints of the dying person and his or her relatives. Additionally, any organization of medical care has its own principal standards that may perhaps or may not correspond with the principles of the individual (American Psychological Association 2012), According to American Psychological Association (2012),
For example, in most Western medical systems the principles of individual autonomy (though not to the exclusion of family members and intimates) and informed consent are primary. In contrast, many cultures eschew the principle of autonomy and the principle of interactive, community decision-making is thought to be the ideal. Therefore, well-intentioned presentations of treatment or care possibilities by health care providers may overlook a particular person’s wish not to discuss death (p. 1). Conclusion
Late adulthood poses many problems than any other phase of life. People in this stage experience their youthfulness from one stage to the next, and it dwindle down, and pass away. Late adulthood is time for obvious changes to take place and the chance for individuals to deal with serious issues of aging, and to make changes to live a longer healthier life until the end of life. Persons in late adulthood practice many changes because of the factors in aging in the area of physical and mental changes. Aging communicate to changes that a human body advance through, which deteriorate the body’s capability to restore making it vulnerable to illness and disease.
