How Meaningful Occupations Promote Successful Ageing

While completing the 'Contemporary Occupational Therapy Practice' paper I learnt alot about the importance of an older person ageing successfully. For a person to age successfully there is an  "avoidance of disease and disability , maintenance of cognitive function and sustained engagement in life" (Rowe & Kahn, 1997 as cited by Pizzi & Smith ,2010, p.457). Basically this means that the individual will age in a healthy way and not become ill as so many of the older population do. Meaningful occupation can be used with older people to help them age successfully as occupation can get the person physically and mentally active which many of the literature highlights is a key component of keeping older people healthy!

 Photo retrieved from: http://www.altergroup.com

Many studies done have shown that overall physical activity can improve happiness and prevent functional decline (Pizzi & Smith, 2010). Meaningful occupation can improve older peoples' participation in society and get them socializing more often and thus engaged with life. I have learnt so far that all occupations require some aspect of social, physical or mental input of the individual completing the occupation. All of these three things are important in keeping a person healthy and from studying this topic I can also see that for older people it is even more important. This is because as a person ages their particpation in society often decreases and if occupational therapists are able to work more with older people to get them involved in more occupations their physical, social and mental well- being can improve. I had not previously realised how benefcial occupations can be towards an older persons health before studying this topic. I can see the more active and involved older people are the more likely they are to remain healthy and happy and by using meaningful occupations older people can get involved while doing something they enjoy. As Robnett & Chop  (2010) state "involvement in enjoyable and productive activity is paramount to productive ageing" (p. 263).

Here are some useful links explaining successful ageing:

http://cas.umkc.edu/casww/sa/whatissa.htm

http://www.ec-online.net/knowledge/Articles/successfulaging.html

CASE STUDY:

While on a placement in my second year I was working on the wards of a hospital with patients who had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and Stroke. The majority of the clients I worked with were older people ranging fom 65 years old onwards. On my second week of placement my superviosr asked me to complete an intial interview with Jane. After reading her file I found out that Jane was a 72 year old woman who had been admitted to hospital after having a fall, but had also just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS).

As is common with MS Jane was physcially deteriorating and was finding it difficult to complete her ADL's (activities of daily living) due to muscle weakness. During the interview I gathered alot of information about Jane including:

• Jane had worked all her life as a gardener in the local community until she retired a few months ago
• Jane admitted feeling lonely and withdrawn since retiring 
• Jane didn't know what to do with herself now that she was retired.
• Jane was feeling lost and felt she was just watching the time go by rather then making the most of life
• Jane was a very social person and missed talking with her customers at work

From this I could see that Jane was experiencing some of the common things older people experience when they stop working. I discussed the idea of including some meaningful activities into her day that would give her something to do and make her feel less isolated. She was more than happy to work with me and identify occupations that she would like to do and also find out how we could get her involved in these occupations. After discussion with Jane it was clear she was still passionate about gardening so we decided we would work on incorporating this into her day.

On our next meeting I brought a newspaper in and Jane and I went through it to see if there were any gardening groups or something of the like advertised in there. After a good look through it we did find a small group which gathers three times per week to discuss gardening and do gardening activities. Jane described herself as a very social person and was very keen to partake in this group. On her discharge Jane thanked me for my help and stated that she now felt she wasn't just going home to sit around. She had a smile on her face and stated that it was good to know that she can still get out there and do things especially since I'm "no spring chicken anymore". Jane did continue to go to the gardening group each week and also stated it has helped her learn more about gardening in her own home. She is a great example of how an occupation can easily be incorporated into older peoples' lives to make their life more fulfilling.

References:

Pizzi, M. A., & Smith, T. M. (2010). Promoting succesful ageing through occupation. In M.E. Scaffa, S. M. Reitz & M. A. Pizzi (Eds.), Occupational therapy in the promotion of health and wellness (pp 454- 469). Philadelphia: F A Davis co.

Robnett, R. H., & Chop, W. C. (2010). Gerontology for the health care professional (2nd ed., pp. 263- 264). New York, IL: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.