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In this practical and accessible book, leading exponents of reminiscence work describe the purposes and techniques of reminiscence and set out detailed guidelines on how to implement and conduct a wide range of reminiscence activities with different types of client.

Focuses on the multidisciplinary integration of work on cognitive aging, thus bringing together the widest possible range of perspectives. Examines limitations of the extant literature, particularly with respect to research design and measurement, and offers new suggestions to guide future research. Draws contributing authors at the forefront of cognitive aging who are experts in their respective areas and well versed in summarizing what we know and where the work in their areas is moving. Highlights the broad scope of the field with topics ranging from demography to development to neuroscience, offering the most complete coverage available on cognitive aging. Guided by a common set of questions posed to contributing authors for developing their individual chapters to help provide a degree of unity across chapters.

Middle adulthood is a critical period of the life course. How we develop in middle age-the central period of our lives-can influence how well we cope in our later years. Middle Adulthood: A Lifespan Perspective explores these issues by bringing together a distinguished group of international contributors associated with a range of prestigious longitudinal studies.

Why do people age differently? Gerontological research has indicated that there are large individual differences in personality, cognitive functioning, physical health, psychological well-being and quality of life in old age. This book explores this variability. Following an overview of family, adoption and twin studies of genetic and environmental influences on ageing, the author examines such topics as: longevity and health research; cognitive functioning, personality and psychopathology; and social support, life events and family environment measures. The book concludes with a summary of finding from gerontological behavioural genetics.

Spiritual Resiliency In Older Women records the narratives of spiritually resilient older German and American women. The authors suggest how persons of all ages can gain maturity and spiritual coping by participating in communities based on faith, which acknowledge the emotion of spiritual experiences and integrate faith and close human relationships.

Rapid population aging, once associated with only a select group of modern industrialized nations, has now become a topic of increasing global concern. This volume reframes aging on a global scale by illustrating the multiple ways it is embedded within individual, social, and cultural life courses. It presents a broad range of ethnographic work, introducing a variety of conceptual and methodological approaches to studying life-course transitions in conjunction with broader sociocultural transformations. Through detailed accounts, in such diverse settings as nursing homes in Sri Lanka, a factory in Massachusetts, cemeteries in Japan and clinics in Mexico, the authors explore not simply our understandings of growing older, but the interweaving of individual maturity and intergenerational relationships, social and economic institutions, and intimate experiences of gender, identity, and the body.

The mission of UN Decade of Healthy Ageing (2020–2030) is to improve the lives of older people, their families and their communities. In this paper, we create a conceptual framework and research agenda for researchers to knowledge to address the Decade action items. The framework builds on the main components of healthy ageing: Environments (highlighting society and community) across life courses (of work and family) toward wellbeing (of individuals, family members and communities). Knowledge gaps are identified within each area as priority research actions. Within societal environments, interrogating beliefs about ageism and about familism are proposed as a way to illustrate how macro approaches to older people influence their experiences. We need to interrogate the extent to which communities are good places to grow old; and whether they have sufficient resources to be supportive to older residents. Further articulation of trajectories and turning points across the full span of work and of family life courses is proposed to better understand their diversities and the extent to which they lead to adequate financial and social resources in later life. Components of wellbeing are proposed to monitor improvement in the lives of older people, their families and communities. Researcher priorities can be informed by regional and national strategies reflecting Decade actions.

Views on ageing (VoA) have special relevance for the ageing process by influencing health, well-being, and longevity. Although VoA form early in life, so far, most research has concentrated on how VoA affect later middle-aged and older adults. In this theoretical article, we argue that a lifespan approach is needed in order to more fully understand the origins of VoA, how they change over ontogenetic time, and how they shape development across the full breadth of the lifespan. We begin by explicitly linking VoA to fundamental principles of lifespan development. We review existing theories of VoA and discuss their respective contributions and limitations. We then outline a lifespan approach to VoA that integrates existing theories and addresses some of their limitations. We elaborate on three core propositions of a lifespan approach to VoA: (1) VoA develop as the result of a dynamic, ongoing, and complex interaction between biological-evolutionary, psychological, and social-contextual factors; however, the relative importance of different sources changes across the lifespan; (2) VoA impact development across the whole lifespan; however, different outcomes, mechanisms, and time frames need to be considered in order to describe and understand their effects; and (3) VoA are multidimensional, multidirectional, and multifunctional throughout life, but their complexity, meaning, and adaptivity change across the lifespan. We conclude with recommendations for future lifespan research on VoA.

Social frailty is a rather unexplored concept. In this paper, the concept of social frailty among older people is explored utilizing a scoping review. In the first stage, 42 studies related to social frailty of older people were compiled from scientific databases and analyzed. In the second stage, the findings of this literature were structured using the social needs concept of Social Production Function theory. As a result, it was concluded that social frailty can be defined as a continuum of being at risk of losing, or having lost, resources that are important for fulfilling one or more basic social needs during the life span. Moreover, the results of this scoping review indicate that not only the (threat of) absence of social resources to fulfill basic social needs should be a component of the concept of social frailty, but also the (threat of) absence of social behaviors and social activities, as well as (threat of) the absence of self-management abilities. This conception of social frailty provides opportunities for future research, and guidelines for practice and policy.

Intersectionality has received an increasing amount of attention in health inequalities research in recent years. It suggests that treating social characteristics separately—mainly age, gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic position—does not match the reality that people simultaneously embody multiple characteristics and are therefore potentially subject to multiple forms of discrimination. Yet the intersectionality literature has paid very little attention to the nature of ageing or the life course, and gerontology has rarely incorporated insights from intersectionality. In this paper, we aim to illustrate how intersectionality might be synthesised with a life course perspective to deliver novel insights into unequal ageing, especially with respect to health. First we provide an overview of how intersectionality can be used in research on inequality, focusing on intersectional subgroups, discrimination, categorisation, and individual heterogeneity. We cover two key approaches—the use of interaction terms in conventional models and multilevel models which are particularly focussed on granular subgroup differences. In advancing a conceptual dialogue with the life course perspective, we discuss the concepts of roles, life stages, transitions, age/cohort, cumulative disadvantage/advantage, and trajectories. We conclude that the synergies between intersectionality and the life course hold exciting opportunities to bring new insights to unequal ageing and its attendant health inequalities.