Continuing Education
| Aging & Long-Term Care (10 hr) | ||||||||||||||||||||
This course provides an overview of the challenges therapists face when providing mental health services to older adults. Aging clients often encounter an unclear sense of purpose after retirement, declines in financial status and health, a sense of emptiness after children leave home, and grief as they begin to lose essential relationships like their spouses, siblings, or friends. Each situation carries within it the potential for transformation or a sense of hopelessness or helplessness. Participants in this course will learn to address some of the most common conditions facing aging clients, including adjustment and anxiety disorders, depression, psychosis and chemical dependence, with special attention given to ways to recognize elder abuse. Clinicians will learn how to differentiate normal age related changes in cognition, particularly short-term memory, from the changes that are features of disease, such as dementia. Psychotherapeutic strategies will aim to enhance collaboration between families and care providers and maximize quality of life for the elder client, whether in their own home or in a long-term care setting. This course meets the Aging & Long-Term Care pre-licensing requirement for psychologists, MFTs & LCSWs. Instructor Biography Randi Cowdery, PhD, received her doctorate from Loma Linda University's COAMFTE accredited marital and family therapy program. Her research and clinical interests focus on older adults, death, dying and bereavement, narrative approaches to grief, motherhood, and couples and gender equality. She also serves on the Board of Directors for AAMFT-CA. |
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