The Changing Nature of Friendship Through Age

,

We all rely on friends for so many things: social engagement, support during a difficult time, encouragement when we try something new, feedback for new ideas and so much more. You, like so many others, require at least one friendship to feel emotionally happy, connected to caring people, and socially fulfilled. For the last 10 years Friendship Month – highlighting the importance of friends and celebrating what friendship brings to our lives – has been celebrated throughout September.

Friendship Month is something you can acknowledge by spending more time with friends or connecting with people with whom you have lost touch. We’re never too old to make new friends. For the senior or infirm, maintaining, reviving or establishing friendships can be challenging. Fortunately, 21st century tools – Facebook, facetime, skype, texting – can ease the lack of live interaction. Yet, for some, more signs of friendship are necessary, even when not immediately appreciated. The friendship you deliver to the beloved seniors in your life will most likely take new forms of expression; at their stage of life, new priorities take center stage and while they can be difficult, there are ways your friendship will become even more precious.

During the last quarter of the year, we commonly start a planning process on behalf of declared goals; you and your family may want to engage this process for the seniors in your life on behalf of their physical, financial, emotional and mental health as well as helping them shift into many changing situations. Patience will be a strong way to express friendship for the senior whose life is changing so quickly.

Friendship can be expressed through advocacy. Taking on the role of fiduciary, power of attorney, or guardian may come as your loved one’s ability to manage their own care and funds declines. However, much earlier, you may wish to communicate with their physicians, attending appointments when possible. Seniors, older than boomers, have been raised to respect authorities, such as doctors, and may not bring the questions that need to be raised on their behalf:

  • Why are they on this medication?
  • Are you aware of another doctor’s prescriptions?
  • What family member has been describing mom’s changing behaviors?

Sometimes, as a friend to your loved one, you need to make difficult decisions. Being able to determine when forgetfulness has drifted into the beginnings of dementia can be most painful. Or, convincing an older adult s/he is no longer capable of driving or handling their affairs. Added stress to this, making your role as friend even more critical, is when your loved one is resistant to having you take over; it’s a loss of their independence and a huge life change. Here’s a simple way you can assist with their desire to continue participating in their life decisions as you gradually get more involved: place a large bowl where all mail – bills, bank statements, advertisements, reminder notices, etc. – will be collected by the senior. During your visits you’ll review them all for the necessary actions. Be a friend by continuing to respect their need to express their dominion over their own life until they gradually come to see you as a capable partner rather than a bulldozer.

And, even if others have been assigned legal roles for your loved one, they may not have the time to manage some of the day to day needs – shopping, preparing meals, handling laundry – so you might pick up that role as ‘team leader’ among those who’ve stepped up to handle the varied and necessary tasks of a continued life of quality.

Speaking of new roles, as a friend to your senior you may need to decide to bringing in a member of a growing profession, the Aging Life Care Professional or Manager. Often known as Geriatric Professionals, the size of our current aging population has brought this profession to the forefront of care. And, whether minor issue or crisis, this profession is capable to help in a range of needs: it’s a holistic approach that provides answers for worried families, healthcare management, guidance to make choices that will reduce time needed away from working. Often, at an advanced stage of life the senior might have married more than once and has a blended family where priorities and stresses make clear decisions difficult and fraught with conflict. The Aging Life Care Professional is an objective and unemotional voice to help make the difficult choices easier.

Perhaps the most involved form of expressing friendship for your aging parent is when you decide to have them live with you, bringing into your family nucleus a new set of problems and needs which may overwhelm your love for your parent and bring conflict to your own siblings or other involved family. How can you best handle this?

Margaret “Peggy” Graham is an elder law attorney who firmly believes that families should get their agreements about their parent’s care in writing. Typically, family caregivers run into problems because they don’t know what their parent needs now, what they will need down the road, or what their parent or other family caregivers expect them to do.

It is best to have open and honest talks about this, even though it is often an uncomfortable subject. To start, have a transparent meeting where you seek to understand what your parent will actually need, depending on their conditions and cognitive ability. Discuss how your expectations, your parent’s expectations, and other family members’ expectations match up to those needs.

Once you have that understanding, you can start to make a plan that will suit everyone, or at least your parent and the family members who will act as caregivers. Don’t shy away from the financial aspects of this discussion. Talk about if and how the caregiver will be compensated for their time.  Then discuss how mom or dad’s money will be managed.

Ideally, getting these details in writing ahead of time will mean that you avoid family conflict, resentment, and financial stress down the line.

Michael Ferraina, CEO of JEV’s Care at Home in Philadelphia advises that families should be patient and take time to get comfortable with one another. Schedules take time to get right, too.  He argues that the demands of home care expand as people age. Typically, family caregivers don’t know what they don’t know, which means there are areas of their loved one’s health that they could better support, but recognizing the gap is a challenge. To address this, you should reach out to resources available in your community; examples are:

  • Home care agencies: They should be able to answer questions and give referrals to other experts, too. Home care agencies may help you get the right medical equipment, or even help you handle insurance claims.
  • Doctor: Your parent’s doctor can help, especially if they are a geriatric doctor.
  • Other family: Not only can they provide moral support; family members can step in with unique perspectives to help your parent.
  • Medicaid: Through Medicaid there are programs that can help manage your parent’s care.
  • Veteran’s Affairs: Veteran benefits include some support for elders in home care.

Before any of this, you obviously must have a conversation with your parent, one that will be extremely difficult. Yet, with the goal of maintaining or expanding your friendship, you’ll need to call on skill: patience, direct language, planned remarks, prepared for a difficult response. Whether it’s about giving up the car, moving from their home, turning their legal and financial affairs over to another, there’s so much underlying emotion here, for you both. You’ll want to express your concern for them, the risks you believe they’re now likely to experience. ‘Ammunition’ that will assist making your case will be observed evidence, doctor’s notes, mistakes in their recent banking, decline in the state of their home or personal appearance. If the most difficult of decisions – to move your parent from her/his home – is what’s necessary, it makes good sense to have that discussion before their decline puts them in a crisis mode; a professional residence with healthcare will be better able to provide ongoing care if they have a history with you and a patient and got to know them in a healthier or more tranquil state.

Friendships come in so many expressions; yours on behalf of a beloved senior as they approach end of life may be the most difficult and most heroic at the same time. There are, as mentioned throughout this article, many resources available for you. Perhaps the easiest way to access them and learn of others, relevant for your situation, will be a phone call to our office.

DECADES: the 40’s

During World War II many seniors came out of retirement to help with the war effort. Their employment income probably kept many of them off the welfare rolls during the war, but they had to retire once again when servicemen returned home and needed jobs. The war also added to the size of the disabled population who needed long term care, and created many new widows and orphans who needed financial assistance. In 1939, the Social Security Act had been expanded to include survivors and dependents benefits, and the war greatly increased the number of people covered under the system. After the war, the Veterans Administration added new benefits for newly-disabled veterans or surviving spouses.

The size of the elderly and disabled population was growing, and many of them were now eligible for government payments of one kind or another, including veterans benefits, old-age assistance, Social Security, and unemployment assistance. Many of those payments could be used to pay for nursing home care, further encouraging the development of care facilities. In fact, Old Age Assistance benefits doubled to over $400/month by 1947.

Resources:

Catherine F. Rowlands, MBA, NHA, CMC, FL-RG, MT

Sue Fernandez, Community Educator for the Alzheimer’s Association

Liz Barlowe, MA, CMC, former president, the Board of the Aging Life Care Ass’n

Michael Ferraina, CEO JEV’s Care at Home

Margaret Gram, elder law attorney

Library of Congress

 

 

 

/0 Comments/by

National Senior Citizens Day

,

Resources:

Pew Research
Daily Caring
Forbes Magazine
Journal of Gerontology
Aging Life Network podcast

 

In 1988 then President Ronald Reagan, himself a senior, signed Proclamation 5847 marking August 21 as National Senior Citizens Day. The largest slice of the American population – nearly 72 million boomers – are nearly all senior citizens, pursuing a variety of endeavors (the youngest boomer will become a senior citizen in 2024). And, as has been typical throughout their recognition as a unique generation, boomers continue to shift expectations and norms.

For example: 55% stated that they are willing to work longer hours than other generations and are considered the second most productive generation after Gen X. Because, while 10,000 boomers are turning 65 daily, that same number is not retiring daily. In an AARP survey, 40% planned to ‘work until I drop.” Those who continue to work – both women and men – tend to be college educated, non-Hispanic white and living in a metropolitan area. This has increased overall economic growth in the U.S. as well as increased retirement income for the longer employed boomer.

And, of course, the Covid pandemic has shifted boomers’ spending and priorities; cruises, typically popular among seniors, are off many lists due to the frightening reality of Covid-related deaths reported in ships’ crowded environments. And time with family, completely shut down in 2020, has now become a greater priority, likely having an impact on retirement relocations.

Another Covid impact has been the horrifying vision of nursing home and hospital deaths, without access to loved ones in last moments. As a result, aging at home has taken on new significance. This will be a boon to the already fast-growing Care Management profession, as more healthcare needs will be met by visiting professionals rather than a relocation to assisted living or nursing home locations.

Boomers, along with the fastest growing group of seniors in the 90+ category, will need services that address aging at home.  For example, in addition to your yard guy, housekeeper and handyman, you will now need to plan for someone to drive you places, cook for you, remind you to take your medications and help you get in and out of your tub.  For many, these costs will be more than the monthly income they worked so hard to create when doing their retirement planning.

Yet, very significantly, in the U.S., where 80% of the wealth is owned by boomers, this population continues to increase its value to the economy, not only by continuing to work beyond 65, but also by using its stored wealth to spend. And, that spending, plus Covid isolation, has increased seniors’ use of technology which, in itself, increases cognitive skills, staving off some of the traditional memory or thinking losses associated with old age.

Moreover, the boomers’ well-known preference for independence led to a huge growth in business ownership, interest in self-actualization, prosperity, change and a clear orientation towards goal achievement.

Yet, not all seniors are in this vaunted category. Many boomers rely entirely on their Social Security benefit to support them. And the prevalence of obesity among this generation has increased their rates of chronic diseases such as hypertension, high cholesterol and diabetes. This leads to limitations of daily living – bathing, eating, dressing, walking – again, as noted above, leading to a greater need for in-home care.

Ironically, about 20% of boomers, themselves facing greater concerns for healthcare, are also providing healthcare for their aging parents for whom isolation becomes a large issue; this sad aspect to life has been tragically showcased through the many lonely deaths in hospitals and nursing homes resulting from Covid. Yet, even without the severity of the pandemic, boomers who are care givers put additional strains on their health as the relationship of parent/child begins to shift when the child becomes the authority over the parent, often an unwilling partner to this severe change in their life.

And perhaps most insidiously, according to Forbes, $2.9 billion is taken from seniors in scams yearly. Though you may think of your parent (or yourself) as a wise and skeptical person, aging tends to dull everyone’s ability to protect themselves from fraud. We become more trusting and rely on those around us more. This is why it’s smart to take steps to protect your parent or loved one before they fall victim to financial abuse. And frankly, this list may be a guide for yourself; please – don’t be embarrassed by taking advantage of healthy, smart support. Here are ten things you can do and, if you believe any or all of these are necessary or beyond your skill set to maintain, consider enacting a power of attorney with a trusted associate, advisor or family member:

  1. Keep an Eye on  Accounts

You may have to switch your parent to online banking to keep a close eye on their bank account, but it’s worth the fuss. Most elderly people have predictable spending habits, so you can spot problems right away. This will also be a great convenience for you with continued Covid concerns. Speak with your account manager about protections your bank has put in place.

Only share access to your or your senior’s account with the most trustworthy family members and not those who have borrowed money from the senior before or who are having financial difficulties. There are third party companies, like EverSafe and the American Association of Daily Money Managers that can help you keep an eye on your parent.

  1. Know What to Look For

When you’re monitoring your parent’s bank account, what should you look for? Sudden payments or withdrawals to places you don’t recognize are most common. Also look for:

  • ATM withdrawals
  • Other cash withdrawals
  • Check purchases
  • New accounts
  • Unusual savings withdrawals
  • Doubled payments
  • New people authorized on the account

  1. Put the Checkbook Away

These days everything can be paid with a credit card or through e-transfer, even rent. Checks are more dangerous because there’s no safe guard for fraud. If your parent pays into a scam with their credit card, you can usually recuperate this money. With checks or a debit card, you’re out of luck. It may be wise to lock up your parent’s other payment methods in a safe, and have him or her use them only when you’re around.

  1. Choose Care givers Carefully

While there are online and telephone scams, 34 percent of elder abuse is actually committed by someone close to the senior. This may include family, caregivers, friends, or neighbors. Appalling to consider yet necessary to acknowledge.

In order to prevent caregiver fraud, ensure that you’ve hired a caregiver from a reputable agency. You may set up a nanny cam or other recording equipment if you suspect abuse – financial, physical or emotional. Be sure that you’re the one paying the caregiver directly and not your parent, so that the caregiver is less likely to demand fraudulent second payment for their “services” from your parent.

  1. Watch New Friends and Relatives

Elders may trust new people in their life too quickly, sometimes lending them money or making them an authority on their accounts. Elders can be manipulated into situations that don’t make sense, like opening up new accounts or taking out loans, to help these “friends.” Keep an eye on any new friends or even recently renewed acquaintances with family members.

  1. Avoid In-Person Scams

Ask your parent to alert you if someone comes by their house unexpectedly. Often scammers pretend to be financial advisers, contractors doing repairs, or landscapers. They offer home services or financial advice but actually target and steal from the elderly. A front door security camera like Nest can help you keep track of unusual visitors to your parent’s home.

  1. Educate Your Parent

If your parent still has a strong memory and understanding of tech enough that you can introduce them to new types of scams committed through technology, you should. Focus especially on scams that target the elderly. While you can’t expect this knowledge to be their only safeguard from financial abuse, it may help them avoid the most serious scams.

  1. Get Regular Credit Reports

Even if you have access to your parent’s account you may miss things. Getting a credit report on them once every few months will ensure you don’t miss it if they open a new credit card or take on some kind of loan, which they could then use to participate in a scam. Frankly, this is good advice for anyone!

  1. Let Your Parent Know You’re There for Them

Elders are less likely to take action against the criminal even when they know they’ve been scammed. Perhaps it increases their fear that they are becoming too dependent on others or they’re embarrassed about being duped. If your parent knows that you’re there to help, and won’t think less of them for falling prey to a scam, they may be more likely to reach out for help if they think they’ve been scammed.

  1. Report Suspected Abuse

If you suspect that your parent has been scammed, it is wise to report the person to the police, or to speak with them directly about it (if they are a friend or family member) right away. Elderly people may be surprisingly trusting and can fall for the same scam twice. Plus, by reporting the scam, you can protect more vulnerable elders like your parent and prevent more financial abuse from happening to others.

Any one of these circumstances is an indicator that a higher level of support is needed, and, the best time to enact it is before they crop up. Power of attorney conferred on a trusted relative or associate is a strong, protective legal instrument to put in place.

DECADES: 1950’s

By the 1950’s a consensus was building that facilities for the aged should focus on providing medical care, as well as residential care, and legislators decided to actively promote the development of skilled nursing homes. In 1954 the Hill-Burton Act was amended to provide funds to nonprofit organizations for the construction of skilled nursing facilities that met certain hospital-like building standards, if built “in conjunction with a hospital”.

The Hill-Burton amendments created a number of precedents. The changes represented the first time that legislation specifically included nursing homes as part of the health care system rather than the welfare system, and created an expectation that the physical design of nursing homes would be based on hospital design. The Hill-Burton regulations placed nursing homes under the jurisdiction of the National Health Service, ensuring that future regulatory oversight would be medical in nature, and they represented the first time that federal funding for nursing homes was tied to standards for construction and design, staffing patterns, and other medically-oriented concepts.

 

/0 Comments/by

LGBTQ-care

, ,

The needs of an aging LGBTQ population is a topic that is so often not discussed yet the unique risks endured by these diverse Americans – depression, poverty, isolation, fear of authenticity, less willingness to approach institutional resources – make it an important one. One of the unique challenges is that the LGBTQ population is very much aging single; more likely to be single, without children, dependent on friends for care giving needs who, themselves, are aging at the same rate.

When older adults need care, they typically turn to a child, spouse, or other relative for assistance. LGBTQ older adults are 4 times less likely to have children and twice as likely to be single as their non-LGBTQ peers. They may also be estranged from their biological or legal family members if those people do not accept their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.

And, all the while, this diverse population has endured institutionalized discrimination and ignorance, smaller communities than the hetero-normalized adults, and fearing persecution. In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as a mental disorder and it was only very recently, in 2019, that the World Health Organization no longer classified transgender identity as a mental health issue.

So, we have LGBTQ individuals who’ve lived the vast majority of their lives in isolation, fear, legalized persecution; stigmas that have transferred to today and have created a great deal of difficulty as they age.

Some fear their connections to their family of origin; their careers, finances, and opportunity to save for retirement are likely to be less secure. And because of all the stigma of the past, thinking or being treated as ill, members of this population fear government agencies, healthcare providers and the likelihood of less than relevant treatment they’ll experience when they do reach out to available services. This can lead to a delay in care, premature institutionalization, and even premature death

The result is vastly higher risks for illness and many older LGBTQ are concerned about their healthcare and access to resources as they age; here are some alarming statistics:

 

  • Forty percent of LGBTQ adults in their 60s and 70s, as well as 43% of single, older LGBTQ individualsaged 45 to 75 years, state that their healthcare providers are not aware of their sexual orientations.
  • 65% of transgender adults aged 45 to 75 years believe that there will be limited access to healthcare as they grow older.
  • In a different survey of LGBTQ adults aged 50 to 95 years, 21% reported not disclosing their sexual or gender identity to their physicians

 

As providers and as members of a society that’s aging overall, we need to understand these obstacles, the history of a lifetime. As a result, LGBTQ individuals, who largely go into their senior years as single adults, are at higher risk for physical and mental health challenges – depression, anxiety, poverty, poor coping skills, while, at the same time, they fear accessing the resources and established systems that could mitigate these severe problems.

And it’s obvious why: History of prejudice has led to high levels of LGBTQ distrust for mental and physical health providers, social services, meal services. And, if they have to access these services, they fear expressing their needs, culture and personal history, thus living inauthentic lives with declining abilities and resources when they’re needed most.

We should all have the confidence to know we can access available resources with dignity yet to age as an LGBTQ individual is typically to deny this sense of entitlement after a lifetime of contributing to society. The result is a unique burden on this population and, in fact, a larger burden on an overall aging American society to find ways to address it.

Younger LGBTQ people are less cautious and benefit from changing laws and acceptability in growing swaths of the population. Yet, those who lived through the 1950’s- 70’s with violence and tremendous trauma found their careers were stunted, they were shunned. In fact, as I pointed out above, a large percentage have never shared their gay identity with their doctors and this alone diminishes some relevant aspect of their health care.

It’s hard for younger people who’ve seen an opening in acceptance and equality to understand the life experience of older LGBTQ Americans. And, for an aging population we need to change the focus in care communities and facilities to incorporate gender and preference inclusivity. We need to acknowledge the status of partners and caregivers of choice who may not have the traditional legal status to make choices on behalf of their companions and friends.

As a professional member of the health or caring communities, if you have not yet worked with older LGBT communities, it is recommended that you implement some best practices to make your agency generally welcoming to LGBT older adults before you move on to specific programs.

  • Improve your organization’s knowledge of LGBTQ issues
  • Consider going through formalized LGBTQ cultural competency training in order to best understand the history, language, and social and political context of the community.
  • If your organization could use a refresher, if you have never had a formal LGBTQ cultural competency training, or if you would like to learn more specifically about LGBTQ aging, request a visit the National Resource Center on LGBTQ Aging to find resources.
  • Promote inclusivity in your hiring and training policies.

On the other side of the aging population, LGBTQ caregivers make up 9% of the 34.2 million Americans caring for adults over age 50. Interestingly, LGBTQ people also become caregivers at a slightly higher rate than their non-LGBTQ peers: 1 in 5 LGBTQ people is providing care for another adult, compared to 1 in 6 non-LGBTQ people.

LGBTQ caregivers come from a variety of different backgrounds and provide care in a variety of different relationship structures, but there are some common themes in the unique needs and experiences of most LGBTQ caregivers, as well as those who are caring for LGBTQ older adults but may not be LGBTQ-identified themselves.

LGBTQ older adults, caregivers themselves, are more likely to be caring for one another in isolation, without other people involved to share the burden. Only about half of all caregivers have another unpaid caregiver to help them, and about 2/3 of family of choice caregivers, many of whom identify as LGBTQ, provide sole care (43%) or are the primary caregiver (25%).  Having just one caregiver means that the person receiving care lacks a safety net, and that the caregiver is likely to experience an increased burden, both of which could ultimately jeopardize the care recipient’s ability to age in place.

For many LGBTQ people, families of choice are the cornerstones of caregiving. These chosen families provide social, emotional and physical support, and often serve as advocates when medical needs arise. However, most families of choice are not afforded any legal recognition or protection, and service providers may not think to inquire about or include these people in their work. It is important to recognize these relationships, and to provide support in completing paperwork that ensures the wishes of the care recipient are recognized.

As you can see, special circumstances and historical discrimination have placed enormous burdens on the LGBTQ population that will continue through old age. Here are a sampling of legal aids to utilize; Decades Group can assist you with all.

The CARE Act:

In 40 states plus the District of Columbia Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, some version of the Caregiver Advice, Record and Enable Act is in effect. While varying from state to state, its basic premise is that hospitals are required to ask patients at admission whether they’d like to designate a caregiver.

Once named, regardless of that person’s relationship to the patient, the hospital is general required to record the name of that caregiver in medical records, inform the chosen caregiver when the patient is being discharged and give the caregiver adequate training on how to perform any medical tasks needed at home.

For our topic, it’s important to note that the Act makes no stipulations about who may be named as the caregiver – relative, friend, chosen family, etc – and the hospital must formally recognize that person as the caregiver. This link to AARP will take you to a wallet card you may wish to have with details of the Act in those states/territories where it’s been enacted.

Advance Directives

Advance directives allow an individual to ensure their wishes will be honored should they become unable to communicate or make decisions for themselves. While relevant for all adults, these are particularly important for people whose caregivers or closest loved ones are not legal relatives, often the case for LGBTQ people.

The following documents are recommended for anyone for whom their primary caregiver is not their legal next of kin (see more at Lambda Legal’s ‘Take the Power’ toolkit). Of course, Decades Group will assist and guide you with any and all these important documents:

  • Medical Power of Attorney (or Health Care Proxy)
  • Living Will
  • Hospital Visitation Directive
  • HIPAA Waiver
  • Financial Power of Attorney
  • Will
  • Written documentation of an individual’s wishes upon their death, i.e. funeral arrangements, disposition of remains, organ/tissue donation, obituary, etc.

Is it possible the current aging LGBTQ population will begin to shift attitudes and awareness when their chosen families can no longer act as care givers? Will their presence in typically hetero-normalized care facilities open awareness and attitudes? Awareness, acceptance and appropriate responsiveness to diverse populations with varied histories, cultures and needs can only serve to improve care for us all.

For more information about any of the varied forms of legal protections mentioned here, we welcome your call, no obligation is implied:
Santa Fe
505.983.7787
Albuquerque
505.345.5529

Celebrating Decades: The 70’s

June became Gay Pride Month after the Stonewall Riots, a series of violent confrontations between police and gay patrons of the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969. This began to build cohesive communities of LGBT New Yorkers, leading to similar organizations around the U.S.A. and the world. In June the following year, a first march for gay rights covered 51 blocks of New York City and, within 2 years, gay rights groups existed in every major American city as well as Canada, Australia and Western Europe. Throughout the ‘70’s gay activism had significant successes including the American Psychiatric Ass’n. invitation to activists to speak at the 1972 conference and the deletion of homosexuality as an illness by that group in 1973.

Celebrating 2 Decades of Service in the New Mexico Community

Resources Used:

Karen McPhail, BSN, MSN, CDP, Aging Life Network Podcast w/Nancy Oriola
Daniel B. Stewart, MSG and Alex Kent, MPA, “A Guide to Engaging and Supporting LGBT Caregivers through Programming”
Aliza R. Grossberg and George T. Grossberg, MD, “Aging LGBTQ Patients and Barriers to Care”

Jesus Ramirez-Valles, “Queer Aging”

AARP

https://psychiatryadvisor.com

/1 Comment/by

Advice for adult children: Recognizing the Warning Signs of an Acquired Brain Injury

, ,

Have you noticed that your parent or elder adult in your family is acting differently lately? In some cases, changes in behavior can mean that an elder loved one suffered an Acquired Brain Injury. Understanding and recognizing the warning signs can help ensure senior family members receive the care they need.

An Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) can happen in day-to-day life from:

  • Falls
  • Motor vehicle accidents
  • Motorcycle accidents
  • Heart attack-respiratory arrest
  • Stroke

More unusual causes of ABI can include gunshot or knife wounds, near drowning and anaphylactic shock (a serious allergic reaction). An ABI can effect an individual’s memory, ability to execute tasks, and can prevent them from taking appropriate initiative, like paying their taxes on time.

Early signs of behavioral changes include restlessness, tardiness, and increased confrontational or argumentative behavior. These warning signs can escalate to more dangerous behaviors including property destruction, pushing or shoving, increased use of alcohol and refusal to do normal tasks or activities.

If you notice these behaviors in a senior family member, it’s time to ask for help. There are many options available to families. One place to start is with a Decades professional geriatric consultation. Coordinated by a licensed professional, consultations can take place in the home or at the Decades office. Following the consultation, Decades will provide a detailed written report covering options, local resources and services that are most appropriate for the individual situation.

To learn more, read about our consultation services here, or contact us.

/0 Comments/by