DEMYSTIFYING ASSISTED LIVING FOR OLDER ADULTS
What comes to your mind when you think of assisted living? Typically, when you think of senior living, you think of old age homes, an institutionalized care facility where the elderly are dejected and alone, or at least that is the stigma attached to these institutionalized care facilities for older adults. There are several negative connotations attached to elderly institutionalized care. There is a feeling of leaving behind your home and your loved ones. Well, if you look beyond this, the experience at these facilities is quite different from what one might expect.
There is ample evidence that the elderly population experiences an increase in age-related diseases such as dementia and poor mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and suicide, which lead to serious constraints on the quality of life among elderly individuals. We are currently undergoing a phase of demographic transition, rapid industrialization and urbanization, and westernization, which has led to the disintegration of joint or extended family structures into nuclear ones, leaving the older population even more vulnerable to social, economic, and emotional alienation and isolation.