Late Adulthood: My Human Growth and Development, Physical, Cognitive and Social Changes, Empirical studies

Late adulthood
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Late adulthood
1.0 My Human Growth and Development
1.1 Introduction
Late adulthood is believed to be the period after 65years of age. During this period, many changes are bound to happen in an individual's life. Most of these changes are determined by how an individual conducts their life before this period as well as during this period. Personal choices throughout an individual's life can be a great determiner of how the late adulthood life will end up CITATION Sal08 \l 1033 (Salthouse, 2008). These choices influence the emotional, social, spiritual as well as their financial situations in the late adulthood stage of their lives.
1.2 Physical, cognitive and social changes
Some of the most notable changes in late adulthood include loss of elasticity of the skin, the time taken for a reaction slows subsequently and there is marked muscle strength decrease. There is also marked decrease of hearing and sight abilitiesCITATION Den \l 1033 (Denburg, 2002). The eyes develop cloudy areas, otherwise known as cataracts that end up in vision loss in most cases. Taste, touch, and smell senses also diminish significantly and the immune system becomes weaker making the individual susceptible to a hoard of diseases. Respiratory and cardiovascular diseases are particularly common at this age. Loss of balance as well as decreased mobility is also common and can lead to falls and hence injuries. We are going to look in depth some of this changes in depth CITATION Pel00 \l 1033 (Peled, 2000).
2.0 Empirical studies
2.1 Spirituality in late adulthood
Religious participation during the late adulthood is the most preferred source of spiritual growth during this period. This is because it is known to prompt positive health outcomes. It is also a good source of most individuals seeking spiritual perspectives especially face with the matters of physical illness, loss as well as mortality CITATION Hel10 \l 1033 (Lavrestky, 2010). For this reason, spirituality increases significantly during the late adulthood stage of life. Not only does it have it have numerous health benefits, it also results to a creation of positive relationships with varying measures of life satisfaction as well as physical and mental psychological health. It also serves as a source of answers regarding the meaning and purpose in life. Spirituality and the increase of it thereof during the late adulthood stage have proven to have great benefits when it comes to health outcomes, psychological health as well as improving general wellbeing.
2.2 Care givers on spirituality
Most institutions involved in taking care of elderly members of the society tend to lean heavily on activity related strategies in the quest to achieve better physical and mental wellbeing CITATION LAl95 \l 1033 (Allan, 1995). They place very little emphasis or attention to spiritual growth and the benefits it offers the elderly especially in dealing various questions that arise during this final stage of life. Medical personnel have stressed the importance of spiritual education to medical attendants to help elderly get in touch with their spiritual life even more at this trying stage of their lives. This is becaus...