An ongoing project is being conducted in San Francisco, California to study the social and psychological factors among the elderly which influence their utilization of outpatient health services. A preliminary study of the project explored associations between the informal support network and the formal social support system as they converged in…

Case management has become a core component in the delivery of long term care services. It is widely viewed as a mechanism for linking and coordinating segments of a service delivery system (within a single agency or involving several providers) to ensure the most comprehensive program for meeting an individual client's needs for care. Although…

Research has found that approximately 80 percent of the care received by elderly people living at home is provided by family members. Although assistance provided by informal supports can be important in sustaining the functionally disabled elderly at home, caregiving can have important negative effects on the informal providers. To examine the…

As part of a Geriatric Education and Health Management program, a model nurse-managed free clinic has been established at an urban senior center by faculty and students of the University of New Mexico College of Nursing. Funded by a 3-year grant from the Department of Health and Human Services, the weekly clinic is based on Orem's self-care theory…

Interest in the health care needs and medical care use patterns of older persons has steadily increased in recent years. The major goals of this study were to describe the variability of health services use by older persons and examine the extent to which specific factors moderate the relationship between life stress exposure and subsequent use of…

The Adult Day Care Program (ADC) in the Province of Manitoba is a health and social service program providing socialization and recreation in a supportive environment to those who, without this intervention, might deteriorate in physical or mental health function. To examine the impact of adult day care on the utilization of other health care…

This paper focuses on three issues: (1) gender seems to structure life chances so that women and men end up with quite different fates in later life; (2) maintaining a sense of adequate masculinity seems to remain very important to men until the end of life, and most women also seem to need to experience themselves as feminine, but are less…

There are 16.4 million women over age 65 in this country, compared to 11 million men. The 41 percent of this population who live alone are the poorest of the poor in this country, with an annual median income of just over $3,000 for white women and little more than $2,000 for black women. This abject poverty affects the ability of these women to…

This article describes a unique health care delivery system, the Mental Health of the Rural Elderly Outreach Program. The project in designed to identify and provide mental health services to an underserved population, the rural elderly, who are suffering from severe and disabling mental illness. Delivery of mental health services to the rural…

This document contains 22 information briefs from the 1981 White House Conference on Aging. Four of the briefs provide data on health, available services, income, and employment from a report comparing the well-being of older people in three rural and urban locations. National estimates are provided about the need for meals for older people, and…

The introduction to this Technical Committee Report describes the committee's procedures, provides an overview of long-term care, and enumerates assumptions and values identified by the committee as important factors in the formation of recommendations. Four major findings and seven key issues of the committee are also listed. Eight…

For the vast majority of persons of all ages who suffer from major depression, it is recurrent. A traditional wisdom has been that elderly persons respond more poorly to treatment for serious depression than younger persons. The psychiatric status of 127 elderly persons hospitalized for an episode of major depression was systematically assessed…

This study examined the underlying influence of the social context, as measured by selected structural characteristics, on the resources available to the elderly in 99 counties across Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico, and Arkansas. These four states were chosen because each reflected national patterns for age concentrations and for the historical…

The association of life events and mental health impairment in a community population of older adults (N=986) was investigated. Data, collected in 1972 and analyzed during 1979, examined the relationship between the two variables while controlling for age, sex, race, social resources (a measure of social support), economlc resources, and physical…

The first section of this Technical Committee Report provides a brief summary of the major health problems of the elderly. Problems are categorized under the general headings of health maintenance, chronic illness, mental illness, multiple impairments, demographic characteristics, manpower (geriatric medicine, nursing, and other health…