Regression, Stress, and Readjustment in Aging: A Structured, Bio-Psychosocial Perspective on Coping and Professional Support

by Zeev Ben-Sira

Overview

This volume develops a comprehensive multivariate paradigm of the process of aging, delineating the factors underlying age-related degeneration. The model is aimed at understanding the conditions under which age sets into motion a process of degeneration. Accumulating evidence suggests that age per se is not the decisive factor in age-related regression—leading scholars to distinguish between chronological and functional age. The process of degeneration is evidently due to the combined impact of deleterious biophysiological, psychological, and socio-cultural factors and the interaction among them.

Based on this evidence, Zeev Ben-Sira shows how age-related degeneration can be viewed as a product of a damaging cycle of reciprocally activating stimuli from the person's internal and external environment. Consequently, aging is conceptualized as a process of bio-psychosocial regression. The paradigm outlined in this volume identifies factors that are likely to accelerate or decelerate the process of aging.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275940782
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/30/1991
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	1480L (what's this?)

About the Author

ZEEV BEN-SIRA is Professor and Director of the School of Social Work at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has served as a Central Committee member of the Israeli Sociological Association, and is the author of Stress, Disease, and Primary Medical Care (1986) and Politics and Primary Medical Care: Dehumanization and Overutilization (1988), as well as numerous articles in jourbanals and books.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: Aging: A Bio-Psychosocial Regression
Stress and Aging: A General Overview
Aging: Demands, Stressors and Readjustment
Aging and Coping
Aging and Resources
The Requisites for Interrupting the Damaging Cycle
Aging and the Medical Profession
Aging and Social Work
Conclusion: Interrupting the Damaging Cycle: A Cost-Benefit Viewpoint
Appendixes
Bibliography
Index