Definition
Validation therapy is a person-centered therapeutic intervention that is used for older adults who are disoriented, typically those with dementia (Feil 1993; Neal and Wright 2003). Validation therapy accepts and validates an individual’s experiences and feelings while listening to reminiscences without attempting to impart insight.
Overview
Validation therapy emerged in the 1960s and was designed by Naomi Feil, a social worker employed at an assisted living facility. She was motivated to develop an interpersonal method for working with residents as a means to counter other therapeutic approaches that focused on insight-oriented techniques that were being used at this time (Jones 1997). Feil noticed residents became withdrawn and hostile during approaches that focused on orienting them to reality (e.g., your husband is deceased). This prompted Feil to develop a new approach that allowed individuals to exist within their own...
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References
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Belser-Ehrlich, J., Bowers, D. (2019). Validation Therapy. In: Gu, D., Dupre, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_718-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_718-1
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