Ideal home-like environment
Residents at homes for the elderly must be helped to boost their morale and adapt to their new surroundings
The word ‘home’ generally evokes happy connotations as it conjures up an image of togetherness among the persons living within its confines. What binds these persons together is often a highly sentimental feeling based on blood relationship and affinity, which are both capable of generating the highest possible level of reciprocity and mutual respect.
Through the intimacy and intensity of relationships the spouses and offsprings living at home assume the role of significant others who, through their deeper and authentic connections, can positively contribute to the well-being and self-development of the individual.
By disentangling itself from the shackles of inhibitions that often give rise to fixed rules and rigid roles, the home environment acts as a shelter from the pangs of the faceless and impersonal relationships that might have become cultural artefacts in modern society.
The individuals become fully aware of these characteristics when circumstances force them to settle in surroundings outside the confines of their home. Typical cases of persons being subjected to such a force majeure are old adults who are forced by circumstances to leave home and settle in an institutionalised residential home for the elderly.
Given the demographic trends of modern society, which point to the hefty and consistent increase of the elderly cohort, the number of these homes have mushroomed. A desk research reveals that, besides the government service for the elderly provided at St Vincent de Paul Long Term Care Facility, there are over 30 homes all over the island which are run either by the Church or private entrepreneurs.
Anecdotal evidence confirms that these homes make a genuine effort to optimise opportunities for health, participation and security aimed at enhancing the quality of life of the older adults under their care.
These homes are governed by socially regulated standards aimed at ensuring quality care and helping the residents make a smooth transition from the cosiness of their natural home to the residential care home. Guidelines are spelled out to the staff members and personnel who, in their chores, have to interact or connect with these residents who might still be yearning for the cosiness of what they feel was their natural home.
These guidelines are aimed at transforming the social behaviour and humane interrelationships into a personalised care, well suited towards the psychological and physical needs of each of these residents.
In other words, bureaucratic and rigid procedures, where possible, should give way to ethics. It is highly unethical and immoral to treat human beings, whatever their age and dispositions, as mere objects.
Ethical action in this case calls for the highest possible level of empathy. In an environment like that of a home for the elderly, empathy should be considered as an ethical prerequisite. A precondition to empathy is a disposition that is geared towards fostering sensitivity to the feelings of the other person with whom one is interacting.
It is highly unethical and immoral to treat human beings, whatever their age, as mere objects- Saviour Rizzo
In their endeavour to enhance their empathic skills, the members of the staff must gain some inside knowledge about the residents. Such personalised knowledge could serve to make the daily interactions between employees and residents more meaningful and the face-to-face interrelationship more humane.
In spite of the attempts made to make life in these residences as home-like as possible, the persistent feeling of a cloistered life may persist. Indeed, homes are sometimes criticised for falling short of the ideals of a home-like environment. This can be explained in part by the fact that the designations of these homes might have been construed on a medical model incorporating features of a hospital.
The new realities ingrained in the make-up of these institutions may instil among these older adults a feeling of being cut off from society at large. The timetable with one activity leading to another at a scheduled time entails a resocialisation process which might be the cause of a depression.
Given the challenges which old adults are forced to face and overcome, fillips are needed to boost their morale and help them adapt seamlessly to the imperatives of the new social order. These fillips may simply take the form of tête-à-tête conversations or creating opportunities aimed at making the residents unwind and express their feelings.
During such conversations, the older adults may succumb to nostalgic feelings that invoke them to relive the past in highly romanticised ways. The medical profession does not point to any harm associated with these trips down memory lane. Helping individuals unwind to bring back memories of the past can indeed have a positive therapeutic effect on the psyche of the individuals.
Happiness should not be perceived as something out of reach. We have to learn to be open. The door has not yet been slammed. It is still possible to unlock it.
Saviour Rizzo is a former director of the Centre for Labour Studies at the University of Malta.