For my last college course, Qualitative Research Methods, my group and I have chosen to research and perform within a Jewish elderly community/retirement home. We intend to investigate a wide array of topics including but not limited to: social dynamics, mental health, quality of life, and religious faith. For the purposes of this blog, I have chosen to focus on mental health within elders and elderly communities. I intend to gather as much information as I possibly can and present it here. Here is a basic outline of a few ideas I intend to research:
-How do rest homes/elderly communities care for patients that have specific mental health issues?
-Is there any truth to the notion that many elderly communities overly drug their mentally ill residents in order to make life easier on the orderlies?
-What mental health diseases are more likely to strike in later years? What can be done to avoid them?
- How are mentally ill elders treated by their peers and the orderlies within the confines of a elderly community? Are they ostracized or treated differently from a social stance?
- Research and analyze the progression of Alzheimer's disease.
It is my hope that through studying, researching, and presenting mental health information on this blog that I will be able to better tackle my group project and more intelligently comprehend what it is to be a mentally ill elder in a retirement community.
