Healthy Aging, Healthy Treatment: The Impact of Telling Stories

(Hardback)

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Human stories are the core of identity and meaning. This book is an invitation to the engaging and reforming power of telling stories. It is also an invitation to heal the story of health care for older adults by improving the communication between professionals in medicine, psychology, and religion. At any age the process of genuinely listening and expressing hopes and fears is an intimacy rarely matched in human interaction. Life stories can be told, revised, and rewritten through psychotherapy and improved by a health care which integrates the best of medicine, religion, and psychology. This book invites health care reform by renewing old principles. Through clinical experience, research, and listening to seniors and their families, life stories can be retold to promote healthy treatment and healthy aging. This book will be of interest to students and professionals in psychology, medicine, nursing, religion, and social work.

Reviews

"A sensitive and sophisticated perspective from a researcher and practitioner who has lived in and listened well to his teachers--the clients-patients whom he has served....[This book is a] compelling plea for the integration of the physical, psychological and spiritual dimensions of health and healing, along with approaches to prevention and treatment which recognize the realities of the current health care scene."-Dr. Richard Houskamp Former Director of Outpatient Services and Mission Effectiveness Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services
"Dr. Peake has made an important contribution to the examination of some critical issues in aging. He approaches in a fascinating way the area of healthy aging and healthy treatment. He makes us aware of the engaging and reforming power of telling stories, reminiscence and narrative....The book has useful information about reducing the health care cost and maintaining the informed yet humane treatment in a managed care milieu....Peake has made a pioneering contribution in this field."-Dr. J. L. Khanna Professor of Psychiatry University of Tennessee, Memphis
"I found the book to be stimulating and creative....The honest (at times brutally honest) view of the current systems of care and their flaws was illuminating and inspiring. The call for change and development in our approach to the elderly was clear and timely, and a challenge to all in the helping professions."-Dr. Jay Chrostowski University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School
"Peake...offers new themes and models for balancing ethical, caring, and scientifically-informed treatment within a health care system with limited resources. The author accomplishes this task by an ambitious exploration of the innate power of storytelling, reminiscence and narrative. Peake strongly advocates for a multidimensional approach to health, aging, and health care for older adults ('third agers'), arguing persuasively for the critical necessity of an integration of our medical, psychological, and spiritual cultures. These carefully crafted themes are given depth, warmth, humor, and poignancy in this concise volume. This is a wonderful resource for all health professionals!"-Dr. Jerry H. Morewitz Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Eastern Virginia Medical School
"Peake's compassionate, insightful, and pragmatic approach presents disease not as an isolated process, but as an experience; an experience shaped and reacted to through personal narrative tales....[This book] also elaborates upon important considerations in working with older adults...[and it also] recognizes and demonstrates that problems often associated with aging are multidimensional (physical, psychological, and spiritual) and multisystemic (individual, family, community, cultural, and political)....[Finally] an overabidding value of this book is that it offers current and future policymakers and healthcare providers...views and concepts from which newer models for helping the aged can evolve."-Dr. Larry W. Dupree Department of Aging and Mental Health The Florida Mental Health Institute University of South Florida
"This is a book of gentle humanity and warm compassion. [It is] easy to read and full of wisdom in the form of quotations and stories from clinical experiences. Any one working with the third stage can be enriched by the messages in this book."-Dr. Stuart Lieberman Vice-Chair, Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice
"With insights born of clinical experience, theological reflection and medical education, the author shares the wisdom and vision of a balanced, integrative approach which honors body, mind and spirit...[This book] is a healthy alternative to the barren hopelessness of a purely secular, scientific and individualistic approach to the problem of accumulating years. The fundamental transformation of human narrative speaks to the creative spirit necessary to accommodate the limits and uncertainties of extended life. Those who care for and those who care about third agers will find this a valuable resource."-William C. Hedrick, D. Min. Diplomat, American Association of Pastoral Counselors Clinical Member, American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists
The book is well referenced and easy to read....Most applicable to professionals in the psychological sciences.-CHOICE Sept. 1998, Science and Technology
This is a thoughtful and compassionate book about the well-being of older persons.....The strengths of the book include its many references and great number of pithy quotations that sparked the reviewer's interest.....The book is almost of value solely for the many quotations that focus attention the human side of existence.....By reading the book we will certainly think and act more humanely, if not more constructively, about what we surmise goes on within the health care system in the care of elderly persons.-Contemporary Gerontology
"The book is well referenced and easy to read....Most applicable to professionals in the psychological sciences."-CHOICE Sept. 1998, Science and Technology
"This is a thoughtful and compassionate book about the well-being of older persons.....The strengths of the book include its many references and great number of pithy quotations that sparked the reviewer's interest.....The book is almost of value solely for the many quotations that focus attention the human side of existence.....By reading the book we will certainly think and act more humanely, if not more constructively, about what we surmise goes on within the health care system in the care of elderly persons."-Contemporary Gerontology

Author Bio

THOMAS H. PEAKE is Professor of Psychology at Florida Tech and an adjunct professor at the Florida Mental Health Institute. Licensed in three states and England, he has trained health professionals and practiced clinical psychology for over 20 years. His publication and practice areas include books and articles in psychotherapy, clinical training, medical psychology, couples therapy and healthy aging.