I was recently chatting with a special care nurse in an old age home, as well, as a nursing home administrator, and I asked, what can be done to uplift the spirit of the elderly? (who as one psychiatrist told me, are generally depressed in the nursing homes) They both remarkably said the same thing – it all is a matter of treating them with dignity – You see, we all see ourselves through the eyes of the people who we believe are providing for us – hence, it is not what, but HOW you speak to another, which conveys, if you believe they are valuable, and hence, which impacts how they consider their own self-worth