Late Adulthood Movie Essay

Late Adulthood The movie that I chose to watch for Late Adulthood was The Notebook. The Notebook depicts the love story that an old man reads to his wife with Dementia to get her to remember who he is. The stage of development present in this movie is late adulthood because the main characters in the “present” time are both in old age. The movie was realistic in portraying late adulthood by showing a character with Dementia, a character with health issues , creating a life review, and a deep connection between life-long partners. As people reach late adulthood, their physical and mental health starts to decline. For Noah, this was present in the multiple heart attacks he experienced and his slowness to get around. Older people experience

There are a few scenes depicting Noah’s cup full of medications that are likely prescribed to manage his heart attacks and other maladies he might have. Allie also experienced a somewhat common health decline among elders, developing a neurocognitive disorder. Although only affecting approximately 8% of the population, neurocognitive disorders, like dementia, affect people in late adulthood and can heavily impact their day-to-day lives and it is common for those suffering from late-stage disorders to move into group living facilities. Second, the entire plotline is based on the life review that Allie wrote chronicling her love story with Noah. Life reviews have grown in popularity among elderly adults to help them deal with end of life-hood depression and anxiety. In this case, the life review was created by Allie while her dementia was still in its early stages to assuage some of her fears about loosing her memory and forgetting Noah and her family. Finally, this film was accurate in showing late adulthood by showing an incredibly deep, intimate relationship that has persisted over many years. As people enter late adulthood with a spouse,

Although there is some research of a spouse passing away from a broken heart shortly after a partner’s passing, timing when to die the way that it was illustrated in the movie is unrealistic of late adulthood. Passing away at the same time means that Allie and Noah did not have to deal with the grief of losing a partner, however, Noah did experience grief over the loss of Allie’s memory and the person that he used to know. The grief that Noah experiences is not specifically a unique challenge to someone his age; as mentioned earlier, many older adults experience neurocognitive disorders, requiring their partners to both take care of them and mourn the person they once were. The way that Noah copes with and avoids the intense grief of Allie forgetting who he is, is through the notebook and reading to her every day to get to spend a few minutes with her whole self. This is a unique way of dealing with the challenge that partners of elderly adults’ face. Noah was also facing the conflict between staying with Allie in the nursing home and losing out on the chance to spend time with his children/grandchildren or leaving Allie alone without her memory in the nursing home. This would be an incredibly hard challenge for most people, some might think that Allie would be a loss; she doesn’t even remember Noah, so he would probably be better off spending time with his