This book prepares clinicians to provide sensitive, high-quality, culturally competent care to geriatric patients from diverse backgrounds and will prove indispensable as patient demographics continue to change.

One of the greatest challenges facing mental health care is the need for competent assessment and treatment of the growing numbers of older adults, particularly “minority” elders. The aging of the population and the increasing diversity of older adults, coupled with increasing limited healthcare resources, has resulted in the need for appropriate research as well as effective mental health services. This chapter provides an overview of the mental disorders in diverse older adults, as well as issues relevant to research and clinical issues. As with any population, it is important to remember that there is often as much diversity within groups as between groups, whether on the grounds of age, gender, social class, or culture. Effective treatment must address not only mental disorders, but also the factors influencing differences across ethnically and culturally diverse groups of older adults.

Today, nearly one of every eight Americans is 65 or older, and by 2030, over 20% of the population will be in this age group. Are you prepared to work with this vastly diverse—and rapidly growing—population? This single source is designed to help social service professionals provide effective services to America’s vastly diverse and rapidly growing elderly population. Diversity and Aging in the Social Environment explores the impact of race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and geographic location on elders’ strengths, challenges, needs, and resources to provide you with a more complete understanding of the issues elders face. In order to be more responsive to older adults, social workers and other human service professionals need to enhance their knowledge of the aging population and the factors that impact the way seniors interact with society, organizations, community resources, neighborhoods, support networks, kinship groups, family, and friends. Diversity and Aging in the Social Environment examines differences in race, ethnicity, geographical location, sexual orientation, religion, and health status to help current and future human service professionals provide culturally competent services to the diverse range of elderly people they serve. In addition, it addresses the wide disparity that exists for older Americans in terms of income and assets, number of chronic conditions, functional and cognitive impairment, housing arrangements, and access to health care. This book provides a context for the examination of diversity issues among older adults by describing and discussing several theoretical perspectives on aging that highlight important aspects of diversity. Next, you’ll find thoughtful examinations of: issues and challenges faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender elders—and the strengths they bring into later life the impact of gender, race, and sexual orientation on prevalence rates, risk factors, methods of disease contraction, and mortality rates among older adults with HIV/AIDS—along with a discussion of the psychosocial issues they face diverse characteristics of custodial grandparents—and the influence of the caregivers’ gender, race, age, and geographic location on methods of care and available caregiver support differences in caregiver characteristics, service utilization, caregiver strain, and coping mechanisms among several racial/ethnic groups of adults who care for elderly, disabled, and ill persons cultural/religious factors that influence interactions between health care personnel and Japanese-American elders the relationship between acculturation and depressive symptoms among Mexican-American couples life challenges facing Jewish and African-American elders—with a look at each group’s coping mechanisms differences in religious/spiritual coping skills among Native American, African-American, and white elders psychological well-being and religiosity among a diverse group of rural elders

Collection development is a cornerstone of librarianship; and with the rapid pace that library materials are produced, a thorough knowledge of collection development is more important than ever before. However, with the myriad of choices available, creating a meaningful collection can be a daunting task. Building and maintaining a health sciences library collection can be a challenge, especially in scenarios where there is no dedicated collection services department or collection development librarian. Often in library school curriculum, collection development strategies are discussed, but specific examples of bibliographic sources may not be covered in detail, particularly for health sciences resources. Many collection development books often discuss the creation of policies, budgeting practices, and usability. This book is a comprehensive reference guide for those who will be creating and curating their library health sciences collections. Moving beyond a traditional list of titles, this guide will focus on several formats and areas. It features specific bibliographic information for top resources for a variety of subject areas and in a variety of formats. This book is designed for all librarians, whether new or experienced. Each chapter of this title does a deep dive into an area of health sciences library collection building, as well as covering how to maintain a current collection. This book is designed to provide readers with a resource to lean on in determining the best bets in providing their users with health sciences resources to support curriculum, practice, and other user needs. Readers who are interested in gleaning techniques for maintaining their health sciences library collection will also benefit from this how-to guide as it details the deselection process. Every health sciences librarian, no matter their experience, can benefit from this reference guide.

Mental health problems exist in ethnically and sexually diverse middle-aged and older adults, however, formal mental health services remain underutilized. Multiple factors, including acculturation and stigma prevent an individual from seeking professional help and in some cases encourage support seeking from informal sources such as family and friends. Despite the common concerns, research is limited among individuals with multiple cultural identities. The purpose of this study is to examine whether cultural factors including ethnicity, sexual orientation, and the intersection between these two cultural identities, affect mental help-seeking behaviors in the middle-aged and older adult population. As part of a larger internet and mail-in survey study, two hundred and thirty five ethnically and sexually diverse middle-aged and older adults from the United States participated in this dissertation. Questionnaires assessing level of acculturation, attitudes towards professional mental health, and perceived level of friend and family support were completed. Results suggest a significant positive relationship between level of acculturation and attitudes towards professional mental health help. Ethnically and sexually diverse participants did not demonstrate differences in attitudes towards support from professionals or from family and friends. Those with intersecting identities also did not result in significant findings for informal and formal types of help. Lack of significant results in this study may be attributed to several limitations, including having a non-clinical sample and restriction of geographical range in participants. Additional research should be performed to examine the growing number of older adults with intersecting identities. Integrating knowledge of mental health services with informal support systems may generate increased use of mental health services.

The WASP Textbook on Social Psychiatry aims to review the history and current state of the field of social psychiatry. With topics ranging from adolescence to aging, gender, immigrant and other displaced statuses, religion, and more, this ambitious book tackles the wide spectrum of social factors that impact an individual's mental health.

Recent events have revealed that many healthcare workers are subject to very high levels of occupational stress, which has become particularly salient during the COVID-19 crisis. Recent research indicates that, due to a variety of occupational stressors, healthcare workers are at risk for a number of mental and physical ailments. Unfortunately, the literature on this topic is widely dispersed among numerous fields and must be accumulated to provide a thorough examination of the wellness of healthcare workers. Mental Health and Wellness in Healthcare Workers: Identifying Risks, Prevention, and Treatment draws attention to the emerging issue of stress-related illness in healthcare and assembles state-of-the-art research from various fields in order to understand the extent of our knowledge of specific risks, preventions, and treatments of stress-related illnesses. This book seeks to reduce negative outcomes for healthcare workers by assisting administrators in stress management techniques. Covering topics such as burnout and occupational stress, this reference work is ideal for clinicians, nurses, healthcare workers, researchers, administrators, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students in fields that include clinical psychology, organizational psychology, and occupational health.