Counseling Diverse Older Adults

 Counseling Diverse Older Adults
The process of counseling older adults poses many challenges to the target group and the
caregivers. Some of the changes include the use of audiologists and speech-language
pathologists. This paper will analyze the process of offering to counsel to older adults from
diverse cultures and regions. Apart from considering the age of the older adults being counseled,
the people involved in the process are required to consider the social and economic influences,
the effects of cognitive and physical aging, clinician experience, behaviors, and biases (Costa, &
McCrae, 2011). Dealing with older people is somehow difficult but with a proper understanding
of the people’s needs, the process becomes easier to handle.
In any process that involves more than one party, an effective communication system
must be in place to ensure that the passage of information from one person to another is
effective. The counseling process can be hindered by factors such as financial restrictions, a
smaller or reduced social network with the society members, sensory deficits, and some of the
older people may have chronic health problems. When the challenges are experienced to an older
adult, the communication skill reduces, and the counseling interactions with the specialists and
professional counselors do not run smoothly. The older adult might fail to understand or pay
attention to the speech of the counselor hence the services end up being paid but the
achievements not yet met. The process of counseling diverse older adults entails some rules. The
rules include communication style adjustment, evolving needs and concerns, accommodation of
the learning styles, the creation of a therapeutic partnership with the older adults, provision of
enough time, development and maintenance of trust, and learning about the individuals involved
in the counseling process.