Question Answered step-by-step Your client is in her 80s and she has just survived an earthquake….Your client is in her 80s and she has just survived an earthquake. She is widowed, lives alone, and has a very limited income. She has lost her home and many of her worldly possessions. She has been taken in by some individuals in her church who are working with her to help her find resources to survive her significant losses. These individuals have brought her to you because in the past few weeks since the earthquake, she has increasingly talked in a despondent fashion about life, and this is very unusual for her (e.g., “What is the point of trying to make things better since I have lost everything that matters to me?”). As you talk with her, you realize that she is not suicidal, but she is grieving the loss of her husband who died four years ago, and that her significant losses in the earthquake were the collection of spoons he gathered for her in all his professional traveling over the years and the letters he wrote her daily. She is sending you verbal messages (“How can you understand in your youthfulness what I am going through?”) and nonverbal messages during your initial contact that are communicating a significant lack of trust in your ability to be helpful to her. Please, do not message back saying missing reference. The reference is the scenario above. 1. What information about working with older adults would be helpful to you in developing a trusting relationship with her? 2. How would you use the information about her grief to help her through this crisis?3. What aspects of yourself, personally and professionally, might limit your understanding of her crisis, and how would you address this in your session with her?” Social Science Psychology PSY 374
