ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 24, 1996 TAG: 9602260008
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-8 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS STAFF WRITER
MEMO: NOTE: Also ran in March 7, 1996 Neighbors.
Several years ago, when Janet L. Ramsey was considering re-entering college for a doctorate degree, she wondered if she were too old to be starting a new career in her late 40s.
Her mother-in-law, Jessie Ramsey, told her: "If you don't do this now, in three more years, you'll still be 50. Better go ahead."
That spirit that sees aging as a time for new achievements characterizes many senior adults today, said Ramsey, who took her mother-in-law's advice and earned her doctorate in family and child development from Virginia Tech.
Ramsey, a former Lutheran pastor, recently joined the Center for Family Counseling and has a special interest in geriatric counseling. She wants to work with people 50 and older, especially those whose religious faith is important to their well-being.
Ramsey says working with older people is a natural step in her own spiritual journey that started in an Allentown, Pa., parsonage. Her faith was nurtured by her father, a Lutheran pastor, and her mother, who nursed the elderly.
In addition to serving as pastor for a small Vinton congregation, Ramsey has taught and been a nursing home chaplain. She, her psychiatrist husband and three small children moved to Roanoke in 1980. Ramsey went to work as the first chaplain at the Virginia Synod Lutheran Home, part of Brandon Oaks Retirement Center.
At St. Timothy Church in Vinton, she found she enjoyed sharing the lives of older members. She decided to go back to school to become a professional in the counseling field.
"I really don't have a new career," she said. "What I'm doing now is a kind of merging of all I have been and am becoming."
Reflecting on one's life is an important part of her care for troubled senior adults who often are referred to her by a younger family member. Ramsey said she has found that people who were born 60 or more years ago are slower than their younger counterparts to consult a counselor.
"Some were brought up to turn to family for help, rather than to an outsider; or they consider it a character weakness not to be able to handle worries by themselves," Ramsey said.
As she has learned some of the characteristics of older patients, Ramsey sees them as anything but the stereotype of frail, timid and dependent. Senior citizens have more time to pursue their interests, and today many use their extra time to assert their individuality.
Many who are somewhat unhappy can be improved by specific attention from a counselor if he or she knows the differences in working with those of retirement age, Ramsey said.
"Severe depression - the kind that causes many old men to commit suicide - is relatively rare," she said. Seniors' depression is more likely to be caused by a combination of the deaths of loved ones, lack of satisfying work, financial or family worries, or chronic pain.
As an example, Ramsey made up a character, Mary. At 78, widowed for several years, she sought help at the urging of a son who worried about his mother's loss of weight and energy. Mary's main need, the counselor said, was several sessions of careful listening and sorting out of an accumulation of anxieties. Warmth and reassurance and the knowledge that she was not losing her mind and health gave Mary some new interests. She got a fresh perspective on family issues when the counselor suggested some younger relatives join in the talk sessions.
As with many older people, relationship to God was important to Mary, Ramsey said. The counselor had some prayers with her but only after several sessions in which Mary brought up religion herself.
"I am not one to impose my religious opinions on anyone," Ramsey emphasized. "I want to get to know a person first."
But if her patient takes the lead, she is there to listen. Good counseling, she said, also involves being in close touch with a senior's physician to be sure prescription drugs are not contributing to emotional upset. And, if the patient wants it, Ramsey also will bring the patient's minister into the team.
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: The Rev. Janet L. Ramsey, a licensed professionalby CNBcounselor at the Center for Family Counseling on Starkey Road in
Roanoke, specializes in the needs of the elderly, especially those
with a religious background. At 50, she sees her new work as the
climax of many years work with older people.