Sections
Working With Families of Older Adults: Introduction | Family Care for Older Adults With Dementia | Goals in Working With Families of Older Adults | Interdisciplinary Partnerships | The Family as Information Seeker | Diagnostic Office Visits | Initial Communication With Older Adults and Their
Families | Family Expectations of Psychiatrists | Assessing the Family of an Older Adult | Selecting Interventions for Families of Older Adults | Educational Strategies With Families of Older Adults | Responding to Families Over the Course of Progressive
Impairment | Helping Families Assess Capacity of Older Adults | Conclusion | Key Points | References | Suggested Readings
Excerpt
No single model exists for working with families
of older adults. Clinicians need to provide patients and families
with individualized family assessment and treatment, taking into
account issues of diversity and heterogeneity. Despite
the need for family-specific treatment, there are patterns of family
issues that consistently emerge, based on trajectories of psychiatric
illness. Perhaps the most specific guidance in the literature comes
from meta-analyses of clinical research on families of older adults
with progressive degenerative dementias (Gallagher-Thompson and Coon 2007; Pinquart and Sorenson 2006b; Sorensen et al. 2002).