Sample essay on cognitive health education for the elderly

Cognitive health education for the elderly has never been a one-way output of "instilling brain-protecting knowledge points in the elderly", but a systematic work that takes into account the laws of physiological degeneration, psychological needs characteristics, and family support capabilities of the elderly. Currently, there is no one-size-fits-all standardized plan in the academic world and in the field of practice. "One person, one policy" that fits the real life scenarios of the elderly is the truly effective core logic.

The 72-year-old Aunt Zhang who just completed the follow-up last month is the most typical example. Previously, her son bought her a stack of cognitive training manuals and signed up for an online brain function training class. However, the old lady turned over two pages, stuffed the manual into the stove and burned it, saying, "It's all full of ghost symbols. I can't even recognize all the characters, so why should I do the questions?" She opened the online class and fell asleep after listening to it for five minutes. Later, we came to check out the situation and found out that the old lady had no other hobbies in her life. She just loved to play Sichuan Long Card with her old sisters. Every time she played cards, she could settle accounts faster than anyone else. We greeted her poker partner and deliberately added a small rule every time we played cards: the winner must report what cards he played in the three rounds just now and how many points he won. If he cannot report, it is not considered a win. Don't tell me, with just such a small change, the old lady played more energetically than anyone else. She took a digit span test half a month later and her score rose from the original 4 to 6. Now she even takes the initiative to ask us if there are any other "new rules for playing cards" that we can add.

To be honest, I didn’t understand this when I first entered the industry. At that time, I gave group lectures based on the courseware given by my superiors, printed hundreds of colorful cognitive health manuals, emphasized the dangers of Alzheimer’s disease, and listed ten “brain protection guidelines” for the elderly to memorize. As a result, within a week after the lecture, a family member came over and said that since the 76-year-old Uncle Li had listened to the lecture, he would sit at home and cry whenever he forgot where to put his keys or the groceries his wife asked him to buy, saying that he was going to suffer from dementia and would become a burden to his family. We spent almost a month chatting with him at home, showing him the memory test data of elderly people of the same age, telling him that it is normal for him to occasionally forget things at his age, and that it is not a problem as long as it does not affect his normal life, so that he can get rid of his anxiety. Oh, by the way, we later dug out more than half of the manual we printed in the utility room of the community activity room, and the old man used it to cover soy sauce bottles and chessboards.

It was only after I stepped into this pit that I went through a lot of information and discovered that there are currently two completely different views on cognitive health education for the elderly in the academic community: one is the "standardized training school", which advocates using unified brain function training tools, such as digital memory questions, reaction tests, spatial perception games, etc., to provide systematic training for the elderly. The data supports that standardized training for more than 6 months can delay cognitive decline by about 35% on average.； The other school is the "life integration school", which opposes all deliberate training and advocates that cognitive exercises should be fully embedded in the daily activities of the elderly, such as memorizing the prices of vegetables when buying groceries, memorizing steps when cooking, and reciting nursery rhymes when raising grandchildren. They believe that in this way, the elderly will have no resistance, have higher compliance, and have better long-term effects.

My own feeling over the past few years is that both factions are right, and neither is right. The key depends on the old man you are dealing with. For example, the elderly people who used to be teachers or work in government agencies in the community are particularly fond of standardized training. They feel that doing the training questions is like going back to work. They sit down and do it for 20 minutes at a fixed time every day. Many people persist for a year or two, and the results are indeed good. ； But if you face an old man who has been working as a farmer all his life and has not studied for a few years, and you ask him to sit down and do the questions, he will feel that you are treating him like a fool and will not cooperate at all. Instead, you will embed the exercises into daily activities such as taking care of your grandchildren, shopping for groceries, and playing cards. He will do it without knowing it, and the effect will be better.

Oh, and also, in the past, many people only focused on the elderly themselves when doing cognitive education. My biggest feeling in the past few years is that the role of family members is more important than anything else. Last year, we conducted a controlled follow-up of 20 elderly people with mild cognitive impairment who had similar cognitive levels. Ten of them were accompanied by their children at least three times a week, playing games such as remembering names and calculating grocery money. The other 10 were only elderly people who followed community training. Over the past year, the cognitive scale scores of the former group dropped by an average of 0.8 points, and that of the latter group dropped by an average of 2.7 points, a difference of more than three times. To put it bluntly, many children buy a lot of health care products for the elderly and sign up for expensive training classes, but they are not willing to spend an hour a week chatting with the elderly and calculating the family's grocery bills. So any training is useless.

There are still many organizations on the market that boast to the world, saying that "persisting in cognitive training for three months can completely prevent Alzheimer's disease." To be honest, this is just deceiving people. The current global academic consensus is that cognitive intervention can only slow down the rate of decline, but cannot completely prevent the onset of Alzheimer's disease. If someone assures you that it can completely prevent it, they are definitely trying to make money from you.

Now, every time I meet young social workers who have just entered the industry and ask me if I have any general work skills, or family members ask me if I have any general tips for protecting their brains, I tell them that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. When doing cognitive education for the elderly, to put it bluntly, we should first treat the elderly as a living person, see what he usually likes, habits, and family situations, and then follow his circumstances. Don't always try to stuff your knowledge into him. Just like when you plant crops, different fields require different watering and applying different fertilizers. How can you use one method to plant all the fields?