THE OLDER ADULTS AND TRANSITION

Running head: OLDER ADULTS AND TRANSITION
OLDER ADULTS AND TRANSITION
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OLDER ADULTS AND TRANSITION1
There are various transitions that a human individual go through during the stages of
life and according to Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, there are certain
conflicts that arises as an individual advances through the age groups of life (French et al.,
2017).. For an elderly person whose age is more sixty-five years of age, the conflict arises in
between two emotions and constructs of personality that is integrity and despair. If the
fulfillment and feelings of security and belongingness is present in this stage of life, the
elderly person is generally satisfied and feels the integrity is intact in life. Other the other
hand when the integrity is disturbed through some trauma, neuropsychological conditions or
increased sense of dependency on others due to functional impairment (which is common
after reaching 65 years of age) or some post-traumatic stress that disrupts the normal physical
and mental functioning – the elderly is likely to feel despair than integrity. In the advanced
age, the prevalence of dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and various other
neurocognitive disorders increases thus affecting the emotion, mood and even personality
plus behavior of the individual and emotional derangement in the elderly can lead to
psychosocial disorders and even depression (Xiong et al., 2020). The chances of
cardiovascular accidents, cerebrovascular accidents and comorbid diseases are very much
higher in the elderly population and it is critical to note that in the elderly age, there is mild to
severe cognitive impairment that follows up with the advancing age. The changes of
complications developments in the clinical scenario is higher with the old patients and it is
difficult for an elderly person to adjust to the fast transitioning phases of life and illness that
further adds to the self-conflict between the integrity and the despair of the subject and it is
highly important that the conflicts are taken into considerations by the clinicians and the
families in order to assess the transitional changes with respect to the mood, thoughts,
feelings, beliefs and emotions of the old person, in an effective and critical manner. This
helps in the better planning of the treatments and the intervention strategies that is required

OLDER ADULTS AND TRANSITION2
for the better fulfillment of the subject and better plus effective addressing of his signs and
symptoms. When a transition happens, older adults face the psychosocial, existential, and
family ramifications and in this study, the experiences of an elderly person with transition in
relation to ‘dying and death’ are explored.
The feelings of grief and loss or the feelings of content, satisfaction, happiness and
profoundness actually arise from looking back at the long life that has been lived by the
individual. Reflections of the meaning of the life lived and the lived experiences of the
elderly person are the actual factors that contribute to the feelings of fulfillment and integrity
or to the feelings of loss and grief when one fails to find the congruency of the lived life with
the very meaning and purpose of it. These feelings of grief, loss due to materialistic or
emotional loss resulting from death and detachment from people of same or higher age or
from this arousal of the past traumas of younger years which has not been transformed and
has surfaced from the repressed memories – can lead to deterioration of health and well-being
of the elderly person through the transitional stages. In a case where a person is suffering
from terminal disease such as cancer in an advanced stage and due to acute illness plus
symptomatic deterioration- the subject has been put in acute care such as critical care
department. In the critical care department, he is been administered with the strong pain
killers and sedatives that is eventually producing a momentary relief but a long term
deterioration of endurance capacity. The pain person in the person is increasing gradually and
increasing doses of the medication is only affecting the health, comfort and well-being of the
subject in a very adverse manner (Powell et al., 2017). The subject, out of pain and agony,
feels his self-identity shifting as the fear of death sets in gradually. When the person decides
to shift to end of life care from this pain evoking ‘pain and palliative care’ which is not being
able to address his condition anyways and the patients along with his family, clinicians and
other carers have accepted the fact the person has not chance of recovery, there comes the