The Effects of the Holocaust: Psychiatric, Behavioral, and Survivor Perspectives

In this paper the authors review perspectives related to Holocaust victims, limitations of Holocaust studies are discussed, and suggestions for viewing the long-range post-traumatic effects of the Holocaust upon its victims from social and behavioral science perspectives are advanced. The views of survivors toward post-war adjustment, drawn from interviews with Holocaust victims, are also presented

Evaluating the Feasibility of a Future Care Planning Program with Older Adults

Despite potential health care needs, many older adults do not make concrete plans about future care in late life. Prior community programs have not addressed this need via Cooperative Extension systems. To address these gaps, we developed and evaluated the pilot study program, Future Care Planning, designed to help older adults plan for their own personal, health, and environmental care. The Plan Ahead program (Plan Ahead) consists of two sessions implemented over two weeks to teach older adults to plan for their future care across multiple domains, including health communication, aging in place, and end-of-life discussion. Iowa State University Human Science Extension and Outreach specialists delivered the program to a sample of 161 community-residing older adults. We evaluated 1) the feasibility of the Plan Ahead program, 2) the acceptability of the program, and 3) participants’ intention to change their future care planning. Participants reported that the program was useful and relatively easy to implement. They also reported being satisfied with the content and willing to attend other relevant programs in the future. Overall, the findings suggest that Plan Ahead is feasible as an educational program to help older adults prepare for future care planning

Defining Successful Aging: A Tangible or Elusive Concept?

Purpose of the Study: Everyone wants to age successfully; however, the definition and criteria of successful aging remain vague for laypersons, researchers, and policymakers in spite of decades of research on the topic. This paper highlights work of scholars who made significant theoretical contributions to the topic. Design and Methods: A thorough review and evaluation of the literature on successful aging was undertaken. Results: Our review includes early gerontological definitions of successful aging and related concepts. Historical perspectives reach back to philosophical and religious texts, and more recent approaches have focused on both process- and outcome-oriented models of successful aging. We elaborate on Baltes and Baltes’ theory of selective optimization with compensation [Baltes, P. B., & Baltes, M. M. (1990a). Psychological perspectives on successful aging: The model of selective optimization with compensation. In P. B. Baltes & M. M. Baltes (Eds.), Successful aging: Perspectives from the behavioral sciences (pp. 1–34). United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press], Kahana and Kahana’s preventive and corrective proactivity model [Kahana, E., & Kahana, B. (1996). Conceptual and empirical advances in understanding aging well through proactive adaptation. In V. Bengtson (Ed.), Adulthood and aging: Research on continuities and discontinuities (pp. 18–40). New York: Springer], and Rowe and Kahn’s model of successful aging [Rowe, J. W., & Kahn, R. L. (1998). Successful aging. New York: Pantheon Books], outlining their commonalities and differences. Additional views on successful aging emphasize subjective versus objective perceptions of successful aging and relate successful aging to studies on healthy and exceptional longevity. Implications: Additional theoretical work is needed to better understand successful aging, including the way it can encompass disability and death and dying. The extent of rapid social and technological change influencing views on successful aging also deserves more consideration

Evaluating the Feasibility of a Future Care Planning Program with Older Adults

Despite potential health care needs, many older adults do not make concrete plans about future care in late life. Prior community programs have not addressed this need via Cooperative Extension systems. To address these gaps, we developed and evaluated the pilot study program, Future Care Planning, designed to help older adults plan for their own personal, health, and environmental care. The Plan Ahead program (Plan Ahead) consists of two sessions implemented over two weeks to teach older adults to plan for their future care across multiple domains, including health communication, aging in place, and end-of-life discussion. Iowa State University Human Science Extension and Outreach specialists delivered the program to a sample of 161 community-residing older adults. We evaluated 1) the feasibility of the Plan Ahead program, 2) the acceptability of the program, and 3) participants’ intention to change their future care planning. Participants reported that the program was useful and relatively easy to implement. They also reported being satisfied with the content and willing to attend other relevant programs in the future. Overall, the findings suggest that Plan Ahead is feasible as an educational program to help older adults prepare for future care planning.This article is published as Lee, J. E., Kim, D., Kahana, E., & Kahana, B. (2021). Evaluating the Feasibility of a Future Care Planning Program with Older Adults. Journal of Human Sciences and Extension, 9(3);154-164. Retrieved from https://www.jhseonline.com/article/view/895. Posted with permission. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License Creative Commons Attribution License</a

The Role of Goal and Meaning in Life for Older Adults Facing Interpersonal Stress

Interpersonal stressful events (ISE) have been shown to be potent predictors of major depressive symptoms among older adults. This study examines the relationships between recent ISE and depressive symptoms in late life and explores whether having coping cognitive resource (e.g. finding meaning and goal in life) can buffer the effects of ISE on depressive symptoms for older adults. We utilized a sample of residents in Florida retirement communities (N = 588) who participated in a long-term-panel study using yearly assessments for six years. Additionally, we modeled within-person differences in ISE and depressive symptoms simultaneously with multilevel modeling. Then, we tested the moderating effect of coping resource (i.e. meaning in life and goal in life) in the association between ISE and depressive symptoms. We found that the mean level of ISE is associated with higher depressive symptoms and lower life satisfaction. In addition, higher levels of within-person meaning and goal buffered the negative effect of ISE on depressive symptoms for older adults. Similarly, within-person meaning and goal also attenuated the negative effect of ISE on life satisfaction

Loving Others: The Impact of Compassionate Love on Later-Life Psychological Well-being

Objectives: Existing scholarship in social gerontology has paid relatively little attention to broader loving emotions, such as compassionate and altruistic love, as potentially meaningful mechanisms for improving later-life psychological well-being outside a family framework. Method: Drawing from a 3-wave longitudinal survey of community-dwelling older residents (n = 334) of Miami, Florida, we utilized generalized estimating equation models to examine the influence of changes in compassionate love (i.e., feeling love toward other persons and experiencing love from others) on depressive symptoms over time. We also explored cross-sectional relationship between compassionate love and positive and negative affects. Results: An increase in the feeling of being loved (beta = -0.77, p \u3c .001) and feeling love for others (beta = -0.78, p \u3c .001) led to a decline in odds of reporting greater levels of depressive symptoms over time. The odds of reporting higher level of positive affect were significantly greater for older adults who reported feeling loved by others (beta = .63, p \u3c .001) and expressed love for other people (beta = 0.43, p \u3c .05). Older adults who felt loved and expressed love for other people, respectively, had 0.71 and 0.54-point lower ordered log odds of reporting higher negative affect than those who reported lower levels of love. The statistically significant impact of feeling loved on all well-being outcomes was maintained even after adjustment for altruistic attitudes and emotional support. Except for depressive symptoms, such adjustments explained the positive influence of love for others on well-being outcomes. Discussion: Our findings underscore the powerful influence of both receiving and giving loving emotions for the maintenance of later-life psychological well-being

Future Care Planning Intervention with Rural older Adults

To address their needs for proactive self-care and end of life planning, we implemented a community based educational program that promotes future care planning (FCP) for community residing older adults. Extension specialists from Iowa State University implemented two brief FCP program sessions with older adults. Topics included both short-term and long-term future care planning activities and strategies. Baseline and post program surveys were completed by 216 community dwelling older adults (M=78.21). The program was successful in getting older Iowans in the rural area start end of life care preparation as well as helping them to make changes in their health care decisions. The majority of participants (89.6 %) reported high satisfaction with the programs. We also found a high rate of change (62%) in opinion regarding future care. The implication of future care planning for is discussed with recommendations for future research.This article is published as Jeong Eun Lee, Dahee L Kim, Louise Peitz, Eva Kahana, Boaz Kahana, FUTURE CARE PLANNING INTERVENTION WITH RURAL OLDER ADULTS, Innovation in Aging, Volume 3, Issue Supplement_1, November 2019, Page S425, https://doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igz038.1587. Posted with permission. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.<br

Defining Successful Aging: A Tangible or Elusive Concept?

Purpose of the Study: Everyone wants to age successfully; however, the definition and criteria of successful aging remain vague for laypersons, researchers, and policymakers in spite of decades of research on the topic. This paper highlights work of scholars who made significant theoretical contributions to the topic. Design and Methods: A thorough review and evaluation of the literature on successful aging was undertaken. Results: Our review includes early gerontological definitions of successful aging and related concepts. Historical perspectives reach back to philosophical and religious texts, and more recent approaches have focused on both process- and outcome-oriented models of successful aging. We elaborate on Baltes and Baltes’ theory of selective optimization with compensation [Baltes, P. B., & Baltes, M. M. (1990a). Psychological perspectives on successful aging: The model of selective optimization with compensation. In P. B. Baltes & M. M. Baltes (Eds.), Successful aging: Perspectives from the behavioral sciences (pp. 1–34). United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press], Kahana and Kahana’s preventive and corrective proactivity model [Kahana, E., & Kahana, B. (1996). Conceptual and empirical advances in understanding aging well through proactive adaptation. In V. Bengtson (Ed.), Adulthood and aging: Research on continuities and discontinuities (pp. 18–40). New York: Springer], and Rowe and Kahn’s model of successful aging [Rowe, J. W., & Kahn, R. L. (1998). Successful aging. New York: Pantheon Books], outlining their commonalities and differences. Additional views on successful aging emphasize subjective versus objective perceptions of successful aging and relate successful aging to studies on healthy and exceptional longevity. Implications: Additional theoretical work is needed to better understand successful aging, including the way it can encompass disability and death and dying. The extent of rapid social and technological change influencing views on successful aging also deserves more consideration.This is an accepted manuscript published as Martin, Peter, Norene Kelly, Boaz Kahana, Eva Kahana, Bradley J. Willcox, D. Craig Willcox, and Leonard W. Poon. "Defining successful aging: A tangible or elusive concept?." The Gerontologist 55, no. 1 (2014): 14-25. doi: 10.1093/geront/gnu044. Posted with permission.</p