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Challenged but not threatened: Managing health in advanced age
- Source :
- Social Science & Medicine. 227:104-110
- Publication Year :
- 2019
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2019.
-
Abstract
- In this paper we reflect on discussions with people of advanced age in Āotearoa New Zealand, and draw on theoretical frameworks of resilience and place in old age, to explore insights about the ways older people maintain quality of life and health. Twenty community-dwelling people of advanced age (85+) were recruited in 2015–16 from a large multidisciplinary longitudinal study of advanced age. These twenty participated in interviews about health in advanced age, impact of illnesses, interactions with clinicians, access to information, support for managing health, and perceptions of primary care, medications, and other forms of assistance. We use a positioning theory framework drawing on thematic and narrative analysis to understand the dynamic ways people in advanced age position themselves and the ways they age well through speech acts and storylines. People in advanced age saw themselves as challenged, rather than threatened, by adversities, and positioned themselves as able to draw on a lifetime of experience and resourcefulness and collaborations with supporters to deal with challenges. Key strategies include downplaying illness and resisting biomedical discourses of complexity, positioning embodied selves as having agency, and creative adaptation in the face of loss. People in advanced age exhibit resilience, maintaining wellbeing, autonomy and good physical and mental quality of life even while living with challenges such as functional decline and multi-morbidities. These findings have significance for supporters of older people, emphasising the need to move away from a narrow focus on problems to working together WITH people in advanced age to offer a more holistic approach that encourages and enhances adaptation and flexibility, rather than rigid and counterproductive coping patterns.
- Subjects :
- Male
Aging
Coping (psychology)
Longitudinal study
Health (social science)
media_common.quotation_subject
Narrative inquiry
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
History and Philosophy of Science
Multidisciplinary approach
Perception
Adaptation, Psychological
Humans
Longitudinal Studies
030212 general & internal medicine
Qualitative Research
media_common
Aged, 80 and over
business.industry
030503 health policy & services
Resilience, Psychological
Public relations
Embodied cognition
Threatened species
Female
0305 other medical science
Psychology
business
Autonomy
New Zealand
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 02779536
- Volume :
- 227
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Social Science & Medicine
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....f6373fbd181d82a810a06f06f4c4c2e5