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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Cure or contain?
— attachment theory as a baseline model to understand resistance to success - or why people don't want to get better | | Author(s) | Louisa J Shirley |
| Journal title | PSIGE Newsletter, no 97, January 2007 |
| Publisher | Psychologists' Special Interest Group in Elderly People - PSIGE, British Psychological Society, January 2007 |
| Pages | pp 22-27 |
| Source | http://www.psige.org.uk |
| Keywords | Psychogeriatric patients ; Personal relationships ; Theory ; Psychogeriatric units. |
| Annotation | Attachment theory is a useful model within which to begin to understand some clients' reluctance to be discharged from mental health services. In 'Attachment and loss', John Bowlby suggests that certain behaviours - such as proximity seeking or clinginess, designed to elicit or maintain involvement of an attachment figure - are likely to appear at times when a person feels under threat and/or perceives the absence of an attachment figure. In older adulthood, people often experience both the loss of attachment figures, and the perception of threat (to their physical self or to their identities), and we could expect to see the emergence of attachment-seeking behaviour during these crises. For a small number of older people, their early experiences might prompt more extreme or desperate attachment-eliciting behaviour. This article discusses the possibility that people with early attachment difficulties, who become part of mental health services, may form relationships with staff or with the unit that resemble attachment relationships, and which prompt attachment-seeking behaviour when the relationship is threatened by discharge from the service. It is suggested that we need to know more about the willingness or reluctance of staff to form meaningful relationships with older people in mental health services and how much relationships can be supported. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-070629203 A |
| Classmark | LF:E: DS: 4D: LDM |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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