Project management: Prof. Dr. Anne Lützenkirchen
Funded by: R&D funds of HS Fulda
Duration: 1/2009 - 12/2010

Project description:
Old people are largely excluded from specific addiction support programmes, as these are conceptually and financially predominantly oriented as rehabilitation programmes and aim at reintegration into working life. They are aimed at younger and middle-aged groups. In addition, there is the general problem of allocating resources in the health system, which tends to overlook the elderly as a target group for addiction treatment. Psychotherapy also usually relegates this age group to the margins of the care system, as these patients are no longer considered capable of therapy and not a worthwhile target group. In the health care system, too, the socio-cultural image of old age is still determined by ideas of deficits.

Social work professionals are increasingly dealing with old people in all fields of work due to demographic change. With the increase in the proportion of old people in the population and the increasing psychosocial burden of old people, the number of addicts in old age is growing without specific social therapeutic care concepts being sufficiently established. This R&D project aims to close this gap at the interface of social and health care. The focus is on the questions of how old people can be recognised as addicts and brought into the care system, which age-specific care concepts they need and how care by social work must be designed to ensure health and quality of life for old people with addiction problems.

Publications:
Lützenkirchen, Anne (2010): Addiction in old age. Social work with alcohol-dependent people aged 60 and over. Lage, Jacobs Verlag.

Scientific collaboration: Annegret Böss, Silke Hochberger, Gabriele Moll, Annika Wittig