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Meeting the psychosocial needs of the disabled elderly individual in a long-term care institution is as vital to his health as meeting his physical needs. In order to ensure his physical and emotional well being and any sense of meaningful existence within an institution, an individual must have available to him the means by which he can express his sense of territory and personal space. Although institutions in themselves tend to violate self-identity, the proper use of space in such an environment can be made more therapeutic by increased staff awareness regarding the value of space and spatial arrangements, and by architectural design allowing him to express his sense of territory and personal space.
According to Leon Pastalan,1 territoriality is defined as a delimited space used by individuals or groups, involves psychological identification with the area, and is symbolized by attitudes of possessiveness and arrangement of objects in that area.
Moreover Pastalan further explains that individual territory is physical or geographical nature that is visible and has a larger, more stable area; whereas personal space is more psychological because it is carried around with the individual and is not visible. A person will accurately draw out the boundaries of his territory with a variety of environmental props, both stationary and mobile, so they are visible to others. The boundaries of personal space are invisible though they may sometimes be inferred from self-markers such as, facial expressions, body movements, gestures, pitch or tone of one's voice, and visual contact.
Margaret Pluckhan3 explains personal space as "room to move about in and room to put our bodies in.,, Space as it pertains to an elderly individual is significant because man's sense of space is closely related to his sense of self.4
Since personal space is so related to one's identity of self, it has considerable behavioral implications both in terms of understanding or forseeing one's own spatial relations and one's relationships with others. Pluckhan notes that "everyone has an interior space plan that determines his spatial tolerance".3
Experiencing too little or too much space affects an individual both physically and psychologically. For example, an extreme case of a person experiencing too little space is one who suffers from claustrophobia, a fear of closed spaces. Obviously such an...