A 14 June 2009 NY Times article entitled ‘For Dementia’s Restless Minds, Therapy From Dusk to Dawn’ described a human service program at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale (NY, US). From the article:
The patients were on the loose again, moving their shrunken frames through the nursing home’s shadowy halls, chattering and giggling like children sneaking out of camp.
A study of the imagery and role communicators in that one sentence alone could make for an entire workshop on the social devaluation and vulnerability of elders within human services. The article makes points related to imagery, role communicators, programmatic and non-programmatic factors, child role, heightened vulnerability, power of expectations, stereotypes, segregation and congregation, sick and death imagery.