Alcolhol abuse in the elderly Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

Best Tool for Dysfunctional Family on Holidays- Hope

December 8, 2019

Hope is the Best Tool on the Holidays

During Christmas and Hannaka family caregivers, especially in the dysfunctional family can be drinking or numbing themselves from the pain of caregiving. They will ruin the holiday celebration one way or another. Maybe they are drugging themselves with the telly or abusing prescription drugs. Depression and anxiety ( rife among caregivers) are predictors of increased alcohol use. Social isolation, which is experienced by some caregivers, is also predictive of increased alcohol use.

How do you as a geriatric care manager change the script for these aging dysfunctional families – family caregivers and older members who are supposed to care for but can’t. How does a professional GCM make the characters transform?

It’s actually simple –but loaded with skill- give them hope. You need to and use yourself to give them hope that things will change. It’s the best tool a geriatric care manager toolbox- especially on and after the dreaded holidays.

Use of Self

The use of Self is perhaps the most powerful tool for geriatric care managers. The use of Self provides families with guarded optimism. GCM’s have to offer a vision of the future that is based not only on a desire for hopeful outcomes. This has come from our own clinical knowledge and belief that change to their nasty crippled, family system is indeed possible.

By being direct, empathetic, and nonjudgmental, we become a holding bay for stressed caregivers, creating a place of safety, confidentiality, consistency, and support. Finally, GCM’s offer our clients a model of perseverance. By not giving up on the possibility of positive change and by exploring all options, the GCM enables families to feel that, regardless of the outcome, they have done all that they can to support the older adult.

Be like Judy Garland on the holiday offering hope

Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
Let your heart be light
From now on
our troubles will be out of sight

Give the” Merry Christmas – next year

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Anxiety, Depression and Medication Abuse in Elders- How Do You Assess?

April 24, 2013

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Psychosocial and functional assessment of elders can reveal the presence of anxiety, depression and substance abuse. All of these which create giant, holes in an older person’s safety net. Substance abuse can be alcohol abuse or drugs. A physician many times prescribes multiple medication that can be abused by elders who suffer from depression and/or anxiety.Multiple physicians, can prescribe the same medications, if the older person is involved with what you call polypharmacy or getting the same prescription for from multiple doctors who do not know other doctors wrote the same prescriptions. Electronic medical records are a way to address this but not fail safe unless universal, as in true in the VA world wide.

Find out about assessment tools used by geriatric care managers and aging professional for assessing alcohol abuse, medication abuse, anxiety and depression on this segment of attorney Ramsey Bahwey who interviewed me recently on his You Tube show, You Money Your Life about elder issues. Remember this is a 2 minutes interview and brief snapshot of what it takes me multiple lectures to cover. To learn more about psychosocial assessment visit my GCM You Tube channel

Elderly Parents and Alcohol- Why Worry?

December 13, 2012

According to Paula’s Span ‘s New York Times blog New Old Age, about assisted living 70% of all older people in assisted living drink alcohol.

Does that surprise you? Over the holidays geriatric care managers and afmilies of people need to worry about alcohol.

Substance abuse or dependence, including alcohol use, drug misuse, and nicotine use, can have severe negative physical, cognitive, and psychological consequences for older adult. Geriatric Care manager screening for this is essential, not only to detect the problem, but to identify potentially harmful interactions with other physical and mental conditions that could lead to high blood pressure, falls, or memory loss. Improper substance use can increase comorbidities and interfere in the treatment process, and therefore increase medical complexity.

Having a clear definition of what constitutes problem drinking in the elderly is difficult,

With younger adults, clear criteria are defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, including disruption of role function, financial instability, and decreasing social networks. But these criteria can be present in the older adult population at large without a substance abuse problem. Additionally, substance abuse problems are masked by other problems associated with aging, including falls, injury, confusion, self-neglect, depression, emotional liability, memory loss, sleep disturbance, and adverse drug interactions. Furthermore, an elder’s tendency to use alcohol frequently or heavily is dismissed as “the only vice she has left” or “something to help him sleep.

So this holiday, if you spot alcohol problems call a geriatric care manager after your holiday

visit. You should locate one in the area where

Anxiety, Depression and Medication Abuse in Elders- How Do You Assess?

Elderly Parents and Alcohol- Why Worry?

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