Dr. Carolyn Aldwin is Chair of the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Prior to that, she was Professor of Human and Community Development at the University of California, Davis. She received her doctorate from the University of California at San Francisco, was a post-doctoral fellow in the Program in Social Ecology at the University of California at Irvine, and spent five years at the Veterans Administration Normative Aging Study in Boston. She still collaborates with investigators on this study, and directs the Davis Longitudinal Study. She is currently co-editor for Psychology and Health, and was associate editor for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Her research on health and aging has been funded by the National Institute of Aging. She is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, as well as the American Psychological Association in Divisions 20 (Adult Development and Aging) and 38 (Health Psychology). She is an avid cyclist and hiker.
This book undertakes the difficult task of assembling an objective and holistic picture of human aging, including the physical aspects of aging, chronic disease, and health promotion in the later years, for students and professionals. The authors provide comprehensive, multi-disciplinary coverage of the demography of the aging population, theories of aging, and physical aging, including normal age-related changes, disease-related processes, and promotion of optimal aging. They also cover psychosocial aspects of aging, including mental health, stress and coping, and spirituality, as well as care giving in later years. Features: - a comprehensive approach, with coverage of psychosocial factors that affect physical health in addition to biological aspects of aging, thus providing integrated coverage of information from the fields of biology, psychology, and the social sciences - coverage of issues in healthcare systems - case studies in each chapter to augment student understanding with real-life examples - discussions of methodological issues in some of the research presented to help students become more critical consumers of research and data.
