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<span style="font-weight: bold">Lindsay Goldwert / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS</span>
<span style="font-style: italic">Boldings added....</span>
<span style="color: #000099">Senior citizens in nursing homes -- if you want to get intimate, be prepared to get treated like a naughty teenager.
While you may have been freewheeling and sexually active when you lived independently, once you enter an elder care residence, the rules change.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Sexual relations are a no-no for many competent and healthy elderly people in senior facilities, according to researchers at the Australian Centre for Evidence Based Aged Care.
Seniors who want to get up close and personal are often denied privacy or separated from potential partners due to staff concerns for their safety,</span> Medical News Today has reported.
Nursing home workers receive little training on the health needs and sex lives of the elderly, focusing primarily on their ability to make decisions and provide consent.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Staff members also worry about the response from residents’ family members, once they discover that an elderly relative has begun a sexual relationship.</span>
Many nursing-home workers simply don’t look at the elderly as mature adults, but as children who must be policed out of fear of legal or medical reprocussion.
“It has been well established that sexuality and intimacy continue to be important in later life and are central to an individual's health and well-being,” the researchers stated. “The lack of attention paid by aged care facilities to residents' sexual needs is concerning."
<span style="font-weight: bold">Workers also voice concern that residents may become emotionally injured if a relationship were to end — although they admit that some are distraught when they are separated from the object of their affection.</span>
The researchers believe that there needs to be a more effective means to determine whether a person is competent or if they truly need “protection” against sexual activity.
Even a person with mild dementia, for example, has the right to experience a sexual relationship.
"We should not confuse a bad or unwise decision with incompetence,” the researchers concluded. “Seeking to 'protect' individuals with dementia by not allowing them to express their sexual needs, thereby stifling their autonomy and personhood, is a far greater failure of duty of care.”
In fact, rising rates of STDs in nursing homes, is just another reason workers need to be realistic about the sexual needs of their residents.
More nursing homes are introducing sexual education and safe sex counseling to residents.</span>
SOURCE
I am with the advocates. Religous attitudes aside, nursing home residents, who are cognitively and physically able to, should have the "right" and privacy for consensual "safe" sex.
<span style="font-style: italic">Boldings added....</span>
<span style="color: #000099">Senior citizens in nursing homes -- if you want to get intimate, be prepared to get treated like a naughty teenager.
While you may have been freewheeling and sexually active when you lived independently, once you enter an elder care residence, the rules change.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Sexual relations are a no-no for many competent and healthy elderly people in senior facilities, according to researchers at the Australian Centre for Evidence Based Aged Care.
Seniors who want to get up close and personal are often denied privacy or separated from potential partners due to staff concerns for their safety,</span> Medical News Today has reported.
Nursing home workers receive little training on the health needs and sex lives of the elderly, focusing primarily on their ability to make decisions and provide consent.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Staff members also worry about the response from residents’ family members, once they discover that an elderly relative has begun a sexual relationship.</span>
Many nursing-home workers simply don’t look at the elderly as mature adults, but as children who must be policed out of fear of legal or medical reprocussion.
“It has been well established that sexuality and intimacy continue to be important in later life and are central to an individual's health and well-being,” the researchers stated. “The lack of attention paid by aged care facilities to residents' sexual needs is concerning."
<span style="font-weight: bold">Workers also voice concern that residents may become emotionally injured if a relationship were to end — although they admit that some are distraught when they are separated from the object of their affection.</span>
The researchers believe that there needs to be a more effective means to determine whether a person is competent or if they truly need “protection” against sexual activity.
Even a person with mild dementia, for example, has the right to experience a sexual relationship.
"We should not confuse a bad or unwise decision with incompetence,” the researchers concluded. “Seeking to 'protect' individuals with dementia by not allowing them to express their sexual needs, thereby stifling their autonomy and personhood, is a far greater failure of duty of care.”
In fact, rising rates of STDs in nursing homes, is just another reason workers need to be realistic about the sexual needs of their residents.
More nursing homes are introducing sexual education and safe sex counseling to residents.</span>
SOURCE
I am with the advocates. Religous attitudes aside, nursing home residents, who are cognitively and physically able to, should have the "right" and privacy for consensual "safe" sex.
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