Ebersole:toward healthy aging - dissertation example

Ebersole: Toward Healthy aging

Ebersole: Toward Healthy Aging,
1. Functions and importance of touch
Ebersole (2008) explains the function of touch as enhancing closeness and intimacy in old age couples. Through touch, a couple achieves increased courage and confidence in getting intimate. Touch according to Ebersole enhances sensory pleasure in both partners, further increasing the urge to get intimate in old age. It is thus a critical aspect in elderly couples.
2. Ebersole (2008) argues that while children below the age of 10 years are mostly touched, when cuddling them, touching is much limited above the age 66 years. Touching is also remarkable in post-adolescent age when people declare their affections to one another by holding hands, or by maintaining closeness.
3. Touching may result in several emotional responses as Ebersole (2008) explains. Touching may invoke sexual attraction between partners, and touching may lead to emotional healing and recovery when done with the compassion and concern required. Moreover, touching enhances the body awareness and movement, which is mostly attained through self-touch. McGlone et al (2007) moreover adds that traumatic emotional issues may arise form touching.
4. The four touch zones as Ebersole elaborates are the intimate, personal, public and social zones. Love making occurs at the intimate zone, while the personal zone refers to an arm’s length distance. The social zone refers to a case where formal relations are prevalent, while in public zone no physical contact occurs.
5. Self-adaptors amounts to an individual making a non-signaling gesture, which may entail a scratch on the body, massaging of the neck, among other non-signaling gestures which are made when making a speech. Such gestures can be used in defining personalities; such self-touch movements are aimed at enhancing personal reassurance and confidence when in a group of people.
6. Benefits of therapeutic touch include reducing stress, relieving pain, stimulating emotional and physical healing, and promoting relations among others (McGlone et al, 2007). Such touch has been proved to reduce anxiety in patients waiting for surgical operations.
7. According to a recent formulation of psychoanalytical theory, in later life, mothers will tend to deviate from relating with their sons and develop continuity and oneness with their daughters because they are from the same sex. The vice versa is also true to fathers and their sons.
8. The four components include sexuality, which is the totality of whom we are, what we believe, feel, and how we respond; intimacy, and relationships, which relates to interconnectedness; sensuality implying the enjoyment of one’s body and sexual identity (Ebersole, 2008)
9. Age variables include hormonal changes especially in women; hormonal shifts in menopause, sexual performance with age related to penile performance, availability of a partner, and physical satisfaction in a relationship.
10. Old gays and lesbians have over the time faced rejection and segregation; in most cases, most of them live in hibernation. The term coming up is used to define the process of identification as a gay or a lesbian (Brotman, Ryan & Cormier, 2003). The risks involved in coming out among the gays and lesbians in a hostile environment usually results in increased stress in the persons involved, which affects their health at old age. Consequently, due to rejection of gays and lesbians, there are no special recognition health needs of gays and lesbians or their families at old age, risking their health and wellbeing (Brotman, Ryan & Cormier, 2003).
11. The elderly risk factors in acquiring AIDS include involvement in homosexuality in secret due to fear of coming out, poor blood transfusions, hemophilia, and intravenous drug abuse, though on a lower scale compared to younger people (Brotma, Ryan & Cormiser, 2003).
12. By the age of 45, many men have in one time experienced erectile dysfunction. By 70 years of age, 15% of men have experienced this problem. However, 20% of men between 50 and 54 years, and 50% of men between 70 and 78 years experience the problem (Ebersole, 2008). Though not seen as a problem, it results in stress and emotional problems among the partners, with the man mostly affected. It is caused by worry, fear, anger, stress, depression, lacking interest in sex, injury to the groin, over abuse of drugs, among other causes. The problem can however be addressed when such an individual owns up, undergoes the required counseling lessons to reduce such fears and increase their sexual urge.
References
Brotman S., Ryan B., & Cormier R. (2007), The Health and Social Service Needs of Gay and Lesbian Elders and Their Families in Canada, The Gerontologist 43(2), 192–202
Ebersole, P., (2008). Toward Healthy Aging: Human Needs & Nursing Response 7th ed., Missouri, Mosby
McGlone F., Vallbo, A. B., Olausson H., Line, L., & Wessberg, J., (2007). Discriminative Touch and Emotional Touch, Canadian Journal of Experimentation Psychology, 61(3), 173-183.