Please look at the work done by Drs. Laurie Mallery & Paige Moorehouse. They have a program called Palliative & Therapeutic Harmonization (PaTH). 

Palliative and therapeutic harmonization: a model for appropriate decision-making in frail older adults. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. 2012;60:2326-2332. PMID:23110462

You check out more of their work at pathclinic.ca

Http://www.pathclinic.ca

Hi Abiola,

Here are some thoughts that might be relevant:

1. the term vulnerability has it roots in the Greek term for vulnerability, "diathesis".

Psychiatrists and Psychologists have used the "diathesis-stress model" to refer to the recognized pattern of interactions of stressors with vulnerabilities. Suppose you want to predict current depression or even future depression. One way to greatly increase your accuracy is to not only know one's current situational stressors/life circumstances, but to also know their previous history of depression. Great candidates for variables that will moderate and/or increase the prediction of current psychosocial distress (anxiety, depression, anger) include genetics, factors that may have disrupted fetal function, early trauma (death of a parent before the age of 12 or so), and early environment that could lead someone to view the world in ways that makes her/him susceptible to distress from stress.

2. I have used the D-S stress model extensively to predict medical student distress and in spouses married to someone with AD. The latter is very appropriate to aging. If you examine the major factors that influence older adults, you will see they include:

a. changes in physiology and physical health

b. losses of various kinds (friends, lifelong vocations, loved ones), which includes bereavement.

c. caregiving

d. philosophical/existential issues about one's expectations about growing older and what it means for lost dreams, etc.

If you are studying aging, then the diathesis model is perfect to explain additional variance.

3. Our work shows that spouse caregivers are at much higher risk for physiological disregulation when they are not only cgs, but also have or have had a disease that is relevant to that disease. It is like mixing oil and fire. We did this for co-morbidities such as cancer hx, chd, and hypertension. We also did this for a history of depression.

All of these papers should be on the site here.

Good luck.

Search on title only with this in the search: "Elderly vulnerability."  According to APA6, "elderly" should not be used, as it has been replaced with "older adult."  See page 72, APA6 manual.  However, it is often seen in the titles so I suggest narrowing the search and see if that yields some documents. 

Thanks Jan.

I wonder how long the pejorative term "elderly" is going to last? In my lab, we stopped using the term more than 17 years ago. In addition to being rude, it separates older adults from the continuum of aging......"infants, children, adolescents, young adults, middle-aged adults, old adults, centenarians". 

Hi Peter, I am astonished that "professionals" are still using this term.  One of my pet peeves!  "Elderly" is the equivalent of using "crippled" and "retarded."  Those terms are instantly recognized as pejorative and have been replaced with more humane nomenclature.  We are on the same wavelength here! 

thank you every one for your contribution. it really helped my work. kindly view my recent question if it is your area of interest.