A description is given of the "Take Care of Yourself" program which is an interdiscplinary program designed to provide health education and dance/exercise for older adults as well as gerontology field experience for medical and dance/exercise science students. The program offers older adults an opportunity to maintain and regain an active, more…

When a woman defines herself as old is a complex phenomenon reflecting, among other variables, cultural attitudes, environmental constraints, and health status. In the later years, self-perceived age lags behind chronological age, but alters with the progressive contracting of life space, changes in health status, and decreases in perceived…

Although it has been estimated that over three-fourths of all older adults have living siblings, little information is available on the actual and potential supportive role siblings play for older persons. The sibling relationship has several unique and interesting characteristics and the intimate experiences of childhood may either bind or…

This paper is concerned with the problem that elderly persons do not seek or receive mental health services as frequently as their numbers or the incidence of mental health problems would indicate is appropriate. The report focuses on the identification of innovative mental health service delivery programs which have been designed to reach and to…

Although some researchers have distinguished the concepts of pain and suffering and despite the recent rise of many centers for pain management in the United States, medical educators and practitioners have given little attention to the topic of suffering. In the studies which have been conducted, patients differed in styles of coping with and…

The gender variable in adult child caregiving has not been clearly examined. Research often uses non-random participants, inappropriate caregiver definitions, non-differentiation of helping tasks, avoidance of daughter/son comparison, and the non-use of the elder's marital status as a control. A study was conducted to examine the gender variable…

Recent research has demonstrated that spatial memory in young and elderly adults depends upon the context in which items to be remembered are placed. Contexts in which cues to location are distinctive and heterogeneous have been found to be associated with better object location memory for both age groups. In this study, the relative contributions…

This document illustrates the development and presentation of a workshop given to the King County Alcohol Training Consortium in King County, Washington as a 4-hour training session. It is divided into five sections and a bibliography. The first section explains the purpose of the booklet. Section II concerns the Alcohol/Elderly Network and…

The Elderscholar program was initiated in Marietta, Ohio, in the spring of 1988 as a special noncredit program for learners over the age of 55. Ten courses (two at each of five time slots) were offered for 50-minute periods on six consecutive Fridays. Courses were offered in creative writing, religions of the world, modern literature,…

Self-control and self-efficacy have played a central role in recent behavioral medicine work on the control of chronic physical pain. Little work investigating the concepts of self-control and self-efficacy has been done with the elderly in spite of the fact that coping strategies in the elderly have been associated with a variety of health and…

Projections, based on current rates, are that 40% of recent marriages will end in divorce. To investigate the factors associated with long term marriage stability and satisfaction among elderly persons, 60 California older adults (30 married, 30 divorced) were interviewed about their perceptions of the role of companionship, alternatives to…

A problem with gerontology theory is that it focuses on a social view of the aged, ignoring individual and cultural variables. A person is judged to have aged successfully if he has adjusted to society's definition of an "elderly person." Similarly, most studies of programs and options for the aged reflect the view of the service…

For more than a quarter of a century, both human service agencies and religious organizations have provided for the needs of the elderly. In order to study the relationship between these groups, clergy from mainline Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish churches and synagogues (N=34) and social service agency administrators in a midwestern suburb were…

A study explored the relationship between body types and four attraction dimensions (physical, social, task, and communication) as perceived by older adults (mean age 68). Subjects, 35 males and 73 females in private residences and senior citizen centers, were shown three same-sex body silhouettes representing the older ectomorph, mesomorph, and…

This research examined the changing regional patterns of elderly migration, simultaneously examining both net migration and migration stream patterns. Four time periods were examined: 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1985. Migration is conventionally measured by recording the respondent's location of residence 5 years earlier. The 1985 data were obtained…