Spirituality, Religion, and Aging: Illuminations for Therapeutic Practice by Holly Nelson-Becker is a highly integrative book written for students, professionals in aging, ministers, and older adults themselves. Readers will gain the knowledge and skills they need to assess, engage, and address the spiritual and religious needs of older persons. Taking a fresh approach that breaks new ground in the field, the author discusses eight major world religions and covers values and ethics, theories, interventions, health and caregiving, depression and anxiety, dementia, and the end of life. Meditations and exercises throughout the book allow readers to expand and explore their personal understanding of spirituality. Referencing the latest research, the book includes assessments and skill-based tools designed to help practitioners enhance the mental health of older people.

Explore the spiritual dimensions of aging through science, theory, and practice! During the later years of life, many people devote energy to a process of spiritual awakening and self-discovery. Yet their family, friends, clergy, and the helping professionals who work with them are not always prepared to understand or deal with the spiritual concerns of their clients. Aging and Spirituality provides a unique, far-reaching overview of this long-neglected field. Divided into four independent but interwoven sections, this landmark book covers the spiritual realm with scientific rigor and deep human understanding. Aging and Spirituality comprehensively surveys the issues of spirituality, from the groundwork of basic definitions to detailed assessments of the role spirituality plays in the lives of the elderly and suggested directions for further research. This book's unique approach combines scholarly research and practical nuts-and-bolts suggestions for service delivery. By drawing from many disciplines and professions, it offers fresh perspectives to even those practitioners already familiar with the most effective spiritual techniques their own field can offer. Aging and Spirituality answers such common questions as: What are the spiritual needs of people later in life? Is there any solid evidence that prayer changes things? How is spirituality related to physical and mental health? Does spirituality matter when people know they are dying? How can we measure spiritual wellness and assess the outcomes of activities intended to enhance it? Will attention to spirituality aggravate or alleviate the losses--of friends, family, health, youth--that so often occur during old age? Aging and Spirituality provides a much-needed resource for health care professionals, clergy, social workers, and counselors working with geriatric clients. By integrating spiritual issues into the theoretical framework of social gerontology, Aging and Spirituality will help you understand the scientific foundations, practical applications, and public policy implications of spirituality for older adults.

Book attempts to demonstrate how spirituality and religion can improve an older person's quality of life.

Offers a Buddhist perspective on aging well, with anecdotes of the author's experiences with illness, aging, and transformation, and guided meditations.

This book examines the ways religion and spirituality are experienced by aging persons within an aging society. An eminent group of contributors from a variety of disciplines explores this new terrain of an emerging interdisciplinary field. The result is a volume that will be the standard reference work on the relationship between religion and the experience of aging.

Separating spirituality from religion--something few books on this topic do--Spirituality and Aging offers a plan for incorporating spirituality into gerontological scholarship, research, education, and practice.

Bianchi's wide-ranging book draws together insights from the social sciences, the humanities, and religion to establish a holistic framework for a spirituality of aging. He argues that middle life and late adulthood present opportunities for turning inward for a deeper contemplative life within the context of active, worldly endeavors. This can also augur a reform of social relationships--beyond individual development alone--toward the creation of a more cooperative, just society. In this way, physical decline is countered by a spiritual ascent. He summons aging persons, fortified with universal values and concerns gained from age and experience, to return to the centers of decision making. Throughout, the author ponders such questions as personal power, identity, fear, freedom, contemplation, sexuality, the church, faith, suffering, and hope. In candid interviews, older religious leaders reflect on their early value formation, personal traumas, choice of careers, midlife transitions, experiences of old age, and the prospect of death. In dwelling mainly on human spiritual dilemmas of the aging cycle, Bianchi offers a strong, clear message of hope--one that stands against the tide of our culture which tends to shunt older people to the outer eddies of life's stream. Aging as a Spiritual Journey is immensely valuable to all laypersons and those in the helping professions who are concerned about the quality of the aging process.

A growing number of studies indicate that older people in the church form social ties that have a significant positive impact on their physical and mental health. In Aging in the Church, Neal Krause comprehensively assesses the various relationships that stem from church involvement. Among the many types of relationships Krause explores are close companion friendships, social-support structures (such as assistance provided by fellow church members during difficult times), and interactions that arise from Bible study and prayer groups. Through his thorough investigation of the underlying links between these relationships and the ways they relate to attributes like forgiveness, hope, gratitude, and altruism, the author hopes to explain why older adults who are involved in religious activities tend to enjoy better physical and mental health than those who are not engaged in religious communities. Going beyond merely reviewing the existing research on this subject, Aging in the Church provides a blueprint for taking research on church-based social relationships and health to the next level by identifying conceptual and methodological issues that investigators will confront as they delve more deeply into these connections. Though these are complex issues, readers will find plain language and literature drawn from a wide array of disciplines, including sociology, psychology, public health, medicine, psychiatry, nursing, social work, gerontology, and theology. Literature, poetry, philosophy, and ethical ideas supplement the insights from these diverse fields. As a result, Aging in the Church takes on a genuinely interdisciplinary focus that will appeal to various scholars, researchers, and students.

Spirituality and Ageing presents the experience of ageing as an opportunity for spiritual reflection and affirmation of life. The contributors are religious and spiritual leaders and ethical thinkers from a range of different backgrounds. They define 'spirituality' not just as a religious concept but as the fulfilment of the universal human need for purpose, values and relationships - a sense of wholeness in life. This spiritual dimension helps people face the emotional and psychological challenges of growing older, such as memory loss, dementia, bereavement and fear of death. Existing systems of social care often focus on the material and physical needs of older people; this collection proposes that the spiritual needs of older people are as vital a consideration for their welfare. Through their spirituality, older people can attain a fuller appreciation and understanding of life, which can also inform and enrich the lives of others.Spirituality and Ageing will be an invaluable resource to carers looking for a holistic and more reflective approach to work with older people.