Specific Issues
As we age, a lot of things happen. One of the most impacting may be the deterioration of mental health. There are a lot of things to consider here. Firstly, life itself compounds mental instability. Without a psychologically “stationary” place in the brain, people are more inclined to become lost in their own thinking. Let’s paint a hypothetical story to understand why.
Say you’re a woman who is ninety years old and widowed. You started life in 1929, with the Great Depression. You were in and out of school because you had to work for the family, fighting your way through sickness and poverty to adulthood. As a young woman, you married a hard man who wasn’t faithful but was rich and did insist on having children with you.
You were in a better place than poverty, so you stayed until the old man died, burying all these issues inside and taking joy in your children, who later grew up and forgot all about you until you found yourself seldom visited in a senior citizen center as your hearing and sight began to fail. What’s going to happen to your mind? Well, it’s going to do all kinds of things.
When someone’s going deaf, they’ll hear things that weren’t said, and won’t hear things that were said. Delusions and hallucinations are to be expected. The same is true with sight loss. Just like there’s phantom limb syndrome, psychological issues transpire from sensory deprivation over time.
Natural Mental Degradation Over Time
Additionally, you’ve got to take into account the prospect of senility. Alzheimer’s disease comes as a result of many factors, not least among them common stressful shocks administered throughout many decades. The hypothetical “story” told here isn’t one that’s very uncommon.
What can be done? Well, there are a number of things. Much of depression and psychological rot comes from sedentary behavior which allows the mind to eat itself, essentially. This is one of the reasons too much technology use is bad for your mental health. But the same effects can transpire from other activities that likewise isolate a person and leave them mentally flat.
It’s important for senior citizens to have some sense of a regular community. They need to have people around them just as young people do, but for different reasons. The older a person gets, the closer they get to that state of dependency which paradoxically mirrors the growing child. This is the state of life. The point is: the community does much to rectify mental illness.
Responding To Issues, And Understanding The Aging Process
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Something else that helps stimulate mental health is diet and exercise. When you eat the right foods and exercise on a regular basis, it relieves stress and gives your body the tools necessary to repair itself. In DNA there’s something called telomerase. Telomerase is contained in telomeres, which act sort of like tape at the end of your shoestring: the telomeres keep the DNA “strands” together.
As we age, telomerase diminishes. The “tape” falls away, and the DNA shoestring unravels. Stress erodes telomerase. One way to help seniors is to do your utmost to help eliminate stress. To that end, note their issues. Many are experiencing hearing loss, perhaps take them to a provider of hearing aids in Antelope Valley, or some specialist.
Setting Seniors Up To Succeed
Essentially, you’ve got to give the mind as much potential for success as you can. This is true for your mind, young minds, and senior citizens. Getting to that point involves recognizing the true issues of age advancement that the seniors in your life face, and what measures can be taken. Old age is not a death sentence, and elders are to be venerated—but life is hard, and its impacts must be respected.
