Aging in place

Neuroscience & Psychology

Many of us probably still have our old parents or grandparents alive. We enjoy having them next to us and so they do, but it is not always like this for every old people. Many of old people can’t stay in their own house for whole their life so they can’t experience aging-in-place. Once elderly people face serious and unresolvable disabilities and health problems, they usually need 24 h care supports. Almost half of houses in urban areas of Iran are apartments and this portion is even more when it comes to major cities like Tehran, in where four out of five houses are apartments (VPSPS, 2016), where older people with physical disabilities can’t easily live without others’ assistance.

Aging in-place is probably a good scenario for many of older people, but sometimes because of some limitations it can’t happen and they need to move to nursing homes to get the required cares. Despite of theirwilling, older people will be taken to a new environment, what would have negative eوٴects on their quality of life.Based on my observations of many nursing homes in Iran and also elderly people’s opinion, who live there, traditional model of nursing homes in Iran does not provide elderly people a good quality of life. If we accept having nursing homes in a society, they need to be changedin order to make older people have a better experience of life in these environments. Elderly people need to live in a place, in which they maintain good quality of life.

Ð?ere is a link between successful aging and spirituality, as a source of well-being in later life, which older people need in nursing homes. Architects can give “spirituality” as a gift to older people, who live in residential care environments. In order to approach this goal, at very early stage concept of “successful aging” should be defined for Iranian old people and then investigate on relationship between successful aging and spirituality for them.It is common in societies that older people’s death is more expected than younger generations, then easier to deal with.

We all have seen this generational inequity at funerals; if a young person dies, people at his funeral would probably show regret and call his death “unfair”. A child’s death would raise emotions the most and even if someone dies at his 60s, people would say he still had time to live, but when an old person dies, his death is by far easier accepted. I believe, every single moment of life has an equal importance to be lived with life satisfaction. It does not matter if you are young or old. At least, as long as you are conscious about environment, you deserve a happy life because you are living in moment and you want to not only be “happy about life”, but also be “happy in life”. However, there is a controversial belief that considering the limits, health care of older people should have a lower priority than of younger people

John George Posted on: Aug 16, 2021