Psychosocial Development in Mental Health Counseling and Elderly Caregiving

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Psychosocial Development in Mental Health Counseling and Elderly Caregiving Survey of Research in Human Development for Professional Counselors Abstract Caregiving for an elderly parent can have implications of emotional, mental and social effects. Toni is taking the role of her mother’s primary caregiver. Toni’s psychosocial stage of life development seeks to understand the importance of receiving mental health counseling to go through the possibilities of an aging mother and how to balance family life. Maintaining wellness through the challenges and strength of caregiving for her mother and her family’s Indian culture has paved the way for resilience. Introduction The decline of a parent’s age and health, death of one parent often means that the other parent will need support socially and emotionally or services from family members. Some of the needs are helping with meals, cleaning, transportation or financial matters. Toni, like many adult children are confronted with increased interaction with her aged mother and decisions that will affect her life, immediate family’s life and her mother’s life. When the relationships are built on quality it makes decision making easy when it comes to the burden of caregiving. When the relationship between parents and adult children have been positive with each other over the years caring for, making changes and decisions of aging parents are easier to prepare for. For other adult children, unresolved issues from childhood, adolescence and life-long conflicts can bring a continuation conflicts in later life or reactivation of earlier conflicts and negative feelings. Erik Erikson spoke about conflicts not resolved in the early years would build through the stages of life and affect the later stages (Newman & Newman, 2012). Being called upon to provide support to an aging parent can be

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