Category: General
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Are You Still Working?
Though a newcomer to the blogosphere, Over 65 has already attracted media attention. A few weeks ago, a network news staffer contacted The Hastings Center trying to find a woman over 65 who is still working for an interview the following day. Susan Gilbert, Hastings public affairs and communications manager, contacted me that night and…
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Living Will, Dying Well
I glanced at the chart. New patient, female, age 72. I have adopted the practice with new patients of quickly scanning the medication list before opening the door to greet them. In the old days patients hand wrote their medications on a paper intake form prior to the office visit. Now I click the “medications”…
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After Retirement: One Path
After a 40-year career as a clinical psychologist, I retired from active practice in 2006. I had been cutting back gradually but my decision to do so completely wasn’t easy.
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Avoiding Unneeded Tests
In my previous post, I talked about medical tests and how “normal” and “abnormal” results do not always correlate to healthy or sick. The bottom line from that discussion is that while tests are essential to diagnosing illness, they are fallible. Put another way, if you do enough testing on anyone, some tests are bound…
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What Patients Should Know About Medical Testing
The next two posts are about medical testing, something to which we are more and more subject as we get older. It seems rare these days to visit a doctor’s office and not come away with a handful of requisitions for some kind of medical test. This is especially true as we get older.
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Does Self-Deceit Increase Happiness in Old Age?
Do old people have a “positivity bias” so that they self-deceptively ignore negative information? Yes, says evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers in his provocative book, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life. Trivers tells us that preliminary experiments show older adults preferring positive faces, ignoring negative stimuli and generally focusing…
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Retiring and Rechilding
“You’re not a psychiatrist anymore,” my wife has told me over and over since I retired from clinical practice on June 30, 2012, our 44th wedding anniversary. For a while, I kept protesting that conclusion. Wasn’t I writing as a psychiatrist more and more? Still presenting papers? Still serving on professional boards? Surely, not seeing…
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Accountable Care Sprints Ahead
A recent report from the Oliver Wyman consulting firm – The ACO Surprise – argues that accountable care organizations are on the verge of triggering a major transformation of the U.S. health system. I hope this prediction comes true.
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Do Boomers Threaten Young Workers’ Jobs?
As life expectancy increases and the retirement income system contracts, households face an enormous challenge in ensuring a secure retirement. Working longer is the best way to increase retirement incomes. But some suggest that more work by older persons reduces the job opportunities for younger persons.
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Parents Forever
For many of my class reunions, lengthy questionnaires were sent out to get some idea of what everyone was doing and how their lives were turning out. There were questions about politics, marital status and fidelity, income, job satisfaction, health status, and a few others. The one category always missing was one of intense interest…