Assisted Living: An Insider's View

One of the most promising retirement alternatives today is the Assisted Living Facility, a residence in which elderly people can live autonomously yet be provided with necessary services like food, housekeeping, on-premises medical attention and social activities. Most of the information available to prospective residents and their adult children comes from the brochures of these very enterprises and a handful of books on the subject. None of these publications were written by a resident of one of these facilities. Carol Netzer has been a resident in assisted living facilities for over four years. Her book is a unique combination of descriptions of day-to-day operations in assisted living, personal impressions, and observations of fellow-residents and how they interact. A trained psychologist, she is uniquely qualified to write about the difference between a successful and unsuccessful experience for the resident in assisted living.

Carol Netzer has practiced individual and family psychotherapy for over two decades and has published numerous articles and papers on family relationships. Her first book, Cutoffs, published by New Horizon Press, describes the symptoms of individuals who cut themselves off from their families and offers techniques for reconnection. She earned an Masters degree in Psychology from Boston University and a degree in family therapy from Bonx Psychiatric Center. She was in private practice for twenty five years and served as a clinical psychologist at South Beach Psychiatric Center, both in New York City. Ms. Netzer is an alumnus of the American Psychology Association. Ms. Netzer has been a resident of assisted living for the last four years, in two entirely different facilities: one in a suburban setting near Cambridge, Massachusetts, the other in New York City. In Assisted Living: An Insider's View, she brings a unique combination of perspectives to the topic of assisted living: an objective, clinical view and a personal, subjective response to living in such a facility herself. Her long history of observing human behavior enables her to understand others who are having the same experience.