Eden Alternative Tip of the Week: The Three Plagues of Loneliness, Helplessness & Boredom

Principle #1: The Three Plagues of loneliness, helplessness and boredom account for the bulk of suffering among our Elders.

The key word here is "bulk." This is a strong statement. It says that on a day-to-day basis, people in nursing homes suffer more from these plagues of the spirit than they do from their medical illnesses.

And that's a problem. It's a problem because we have created a model of care that primarily sees and treats medical illness. This model does not have an answer for these plagues; in fact it often contributes to them.

All of these plagues are painful, and they are all deadly. The first task of Eden is to recognize these plagues: know what they look like and how they manifest in medical illness, behavioral expressions and loss of well-being. Then we must create a new model of care - an alternative - to the model we have embraced for so many decades.

You can't do this halfway. Ever since Eden set the bar twenty years ago, organizations have been trying to tweak the medical model to accomplish true change - and have failed.

When an Edenizing organization comes to any critical decision point, it's like a Chutes and Ladders game. The culture change way is the ladder. We don't always feel like we have the energy to climb it. It's so much easier to "hop on the slide" that the old, institutional path offers us. But the slide takes us back toward the place where we started. Only the ladder - the hard road - will get us to our goal of eliminating the Three Plagues.

Don't pretend they don't exist in your home. Work to eliminate them. It's the best work we can do.

By Dr. Allen Power, Eden Mentor, St. John's Home, Rochester, N.Y.,
Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Rochester