This essay proposes some reflections on advisability and methodology of intervention in elderly mental troubles, starting by regarding old age like an expression and manner of human condition.
It compels us to pay attention and care also to feelings, experiences and point of views of professional people that take care of someone we can see like a patient, but also like a complex whole of representations about thinking and feeling elderly, belonging to every caregiver as a human being.
The C.G. Jung’s Analytical Psychology point of view can offer, like in our experience, a fruitful, prolific and, at the same time, pragmatic way to approach complexity of both giving ad receiving care in elderly time and circumstances. We can look upon that complexity as due to variable combination of personal story; clinical, environment and logistic factors; psychological, symbolical and relational factors; drugs employed; psychotherapeutic or relational support; welfare or other milieu-related support, as usual in psychiatric patient, but some therapist’s implication features can increase level of intervention complexity. Ethical considerations set up on this ground and change it in a dynamic manner: a review of observations on the therapist side, like way to face personal projections and relationship with elderly impairement, chronicity and death, is presented and discussed.
Therefore, as methodological remarks we can try to argue by symbols and images employed as a senex language complementary to an outlook on old age as impairment, disability and loss.
Maybe different basic condition of our patients needs different patterns of psychogeriatric intervention to achieve caring results appropriate to individual case. Maybe an integrated, complex approach, starting both from reliable clinical management and symbolic such as relational point of view, seems to be required to treat aged patients and it urge to provide for a suitable health workers training.
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