REINVENTING AGING THROUGH LISTENING: INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCE IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY WITH ELDERLY WOMEN SUPPORTED IN A NURSING HOME

Abstract

The work in question is a narrative about the experience lived during the supervised observation internship in social psychology, with institutionalized elderly people in a Nursing Home, in the Psychology course, in the Social Psychology Discipline. This experience took place in the year 2024, in a Private Institution for the Elderly, located in Curitiba, Paraná. During this period, the daily routine of coexistence with elderly females, aged between 72 and 92 years old, was observed, with the aim of highlighting the importance of developing a possible future intervention project, based on the creation of an Active Listening Psychotherapeutic Group, in order to provide a better quality of life in social relationships, notably in the aging process and ensuring a significant improvement in recent memory and in neurodegenerative diseases, as well as providing an environment of comfort and well-being among the residents of the place. The main focus of the work was to encourage the integration of the elderly women, in relation to their own clinical condition and their coexistence with other agents in the place, highlighting their relevance to the academic experience. Social Psychology is currently full of productive theories and methods, among them psychosocial intervention that can serve to improve the quality of life and build new subjectivities for the growing number of elderly people. The objective of this article is to seek to contribute to the improvement of the quality of life in old age. We planned our methodology so that discussion groups with rich interaction among the elderly could be designed. Seven meetings were organized to encourage reflection on different topics. As progressive results, there was better interpersonal interaction along with the denaturalization of beliefs/myths surrounding aging that impede the quality of life of the elderly women monitored, opening space for a “new” psychological practice. Thus, the intervention project, if implemented, is a rethinking and reinvention of psychological practices. The theoretical foundation was based on concepts related to the work of social psychology (Freud (1905/1996); Neri, 2008; Silva, 2006, Fernandez & Paniagua, 2007;), on the importance of experiences and interactions with the environment for development, with the necessary adaptations for elderly individuals with the disorders and diseases indicated. The observations made it possible to predict how the elderly women observed played active roles in group activities and active speech, and what difficulties they faced daily in their routines, resulting from their limitations, in comparison to the population that in general does not undergo such practices. Through the experiences offered, reflections and reports emerged about behaviors and concepts that have a favorable or unfavorable impact on the cognitive development of these individuals.