Perspectives of pedagogic approaches to rehabilitation in the psychosocial care of the elderly

: Rehabilitative pedagogics deal with the entirety of "educational", or "pedagogical", approaches and activities that seek to diminish the physical, mental and/or psychosocial handicaps faced by disabled people, or to develop alternatives enabling them to compensate for existing disabilities Specific difficulties are present in the care and treatment of older persons, which--despite a lack of empirical substantiation--have entailed a widespread assumption that there is only very limited benefit in rehabilitating older people. This view is critically discussed, and perspectives for "worthwhile" rehabilitative-educational approaches in the psychosocial and psychosomatic care of elderly people are presented.