What Nursing Home Residents Talk About With Their Therapists

© Imelda Maurer, cdp September 29, 2009
The following is taken from a blog: http://www.mybetternursinghome.blogspot.com/ and was posted on September 10, 2009. The blogger is a psychotherapist.

What struck me about these topics shared with a therapist is that these topics are the stuff of ordinary life. Do nursing home residents need a therapist because they have no one else to talk with? Is there any intent anywhere within the nursing home organizational structure to create community? Carter Catlett Williams, noted advocate and social worker, tells us in her book “The Red Book”: relationships are not only the heart of long-term care, they are the heart of life. And life ought to continue, wherever we live.

Directly from the article:
Have you ever wondered what nursing home residents discuss with their shrinks behind closed doors? Here I solve the mystery, revealing the types of conversations I've had with residents over the years.

-- Feelings about leaving home and being ill.

-- Issues around loss of control and being dependent on other people, with a focus on gaining control     over what they can.

-- Ways to work with the staff to get their needs met.

-- Roommates, and how to cope with them.

-- The reaction of family members to their placement and illness, including ways to help adult            children understand that Mom or Dad can't be there for them in the same way because Mom or Dad    is sick and needs help themselves, and ways to help adult children understand that just because      Mom or Dad is sick, it doesn't mean they can't go off campus every once in a while.

-- Issues around dying, including concerns about the afterlife and worries about how the family will    get along without them.

-- Ways of making the most of the time they have left, including getting more involved in nursing    home activities and the life of the nursing home community.

-- Their lives, choices, accomplishments, and regrets.

-- Stuff that interests them that they don't get to talk about with anyone else, just to be their regular   selves again instead of being a patient.

Personal P.S.
Words reflect our concepts and form our concepts.  In the case of this author, the use of the word "patient" to describe elders living in nursing homes. Defining a person as a patient, defines him/her solely in terms of physical illness or limitation. If physical needs are the only concerns being dealt with in a nursing home, it will be a dreadful experience for the resident and for the staff.