The Older Age: The Challenges Of Older Adults

The lifespan stage I would find most difficult to work with in a health and human services setting would be older adulthood. Older adults have been born and developed within a different generation which means it can be hard for someone like me to connect with their beliefs, language and culture. Older adults often have a lot of experience which can be intimidating. Their levels of experience could then lead to them not valuing my opinion and service that I am providing. Most times that I talk to older adults I am listening as I attempt to absorb as much of their wealth of knowledge on life that I can. Older people often have stereotypes of being ‘the angry old man’ or ‘the angry old woman’ who continues to be angry no matter the situation. Older people are often vulnerable to memory loss but also behaviour changes which could impact my

Bad behaviour habits start to take their toll on people as they start to become an older adult. Older adults have often built regimes throughout their life. This means as a future Exercise Scientist, if this regime doesn’t contain Physical activity, it will be very tricky for me to attempt to get them participating. Often older people won’t take advice from younger people as they believe they have more knowledge and experience. In some cultures it is often considered to be disrespectful for young people to give advice to older people. With the multi-cultured basis of Australia, it could be difficult if I face an older citizen who follows this culture. Attempting to ask this older adult to completely change his regime of life to be able to fit in exercise could be a hard process because of how the older adult interprets my request. Personally, I won’t be able to relate because I haven’t been able to go through being an ‘older adult’ until I’m actually at that age so the ability to relate becomes quite difficult and creates a barrier between the patient and