77355d24 bio

Lauren Taylor

Lauren Taylor, M.A., M.S., L.C.S.W., psychiatric social worker and oral historian, is an adjunct lecturer at the Columbia University School of Social Work, and, until recently, served as project coordinator of the Hartford Partnership Program on Aging Education. Ms. Taylor has been on staff since 1994 at the Service Program for Older People (SPOP), a mental health clinic for older adults, providing mental health services both in the clinic and, for the frail elderly, in their homes. Ms. Taylor has also served as a field advisor and field instructor for Columbia University social work students interning in a range of aging agencies. In addition to her clinical work, she has received a degree from Columbia University in oral history. 

Ms. Taylor gives seminars and workshops on a wide variety of mental health issues related to the aging process. In 2002, in conjunction with CUSSW, she made an educational film about sexuality and aging, funded by the Hartford Foundation and distributed by the New York Academy of Medicine. In 2005 Ms. Taylor created a second teaching film, in which she brought together young social work students and older women for a dialogue about the challenges facing women across the life span.

As an oral historian, Ms. Taylor has conducted dozens of life history interviews with older adults, both in the United States and abroad, and is studying the subjective experience of aging through the medium of narrative, in a cross-cultural context. Ms. Taylor has lectured and published on the therapeutic use of oral history and life review for an aging population.

Courses taught