For decades, researchers have discovered much about how humans automatically categorize others in social perception. Some categorizations—race, gender, and age—are so automatic that they are termed “primitive categories.” As we categorize, we often develop stereotypes about the categories. Researchers know much about racism and sexism, but comparatively little about prejudicing and stereotyping based on age. The articles in this issue highlight the current empirical and theoretical work by researchers in gerontology, psychology, communication, and related fields on understanding the origins and consequences of stereotyping and prejudicing against older adults. With the aging baby boomer demographic, it is especially timely for researchers to work to understand how society can shed its institutionalized ageism and promote respect for elders.

/pdf/ageism-prejudice-against-our-feared-future-self-34135fy4qr.pdf

Ageism: Prejudice Against Our Feared Future Self

The measurement of age, age structuring, and the life course has become more problematic as the study of human lives has moved toward more detailed analyses and explanations. As we seek to better understand the course of human lives in contemporary and changing societies, the effective empirical measurement of its key concepts simultaneously becomes more pressing and more complicated. We first review the critical concepts of, and measurement strategies associated with, age and age structuring—including a discussion of different types of age, subjective age identification, age norms and age expectations, critical life events, life phases, and life review. We then discuss state-of-the-art methods for measuring the life course, especially through life history and event matrices, and we close the chapter with some comments on the organization, analysis, and modeling of data.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2952551.pdf

The Measurement of Age, Age Structuring, and the Life Course

Loneliness and social isolation, particularly in the older adult, have been shown to influence psychosocial well-being. Loneliness has been related to chronic illness and self-rated health in older adults, and researchers suggest there is an important relationship between loneliness and psychological well-being in older adults particularly in the area of depression. This study investigated relationships between loneliness, health, and depression in 217 older men (> 65 years). Participants completed self-report measures of loneliness, social support, depression, and physical health. Regression analysis showed that a diagnosis of illness or disability was unrelated to depression, however self-reported health was associated with depression, with those reporting poorer health experiencing greater depression. Social support variables were unrelated to depression. The most significant relationship to depression was that of loneliness, with lonelier men reporting higher scores on the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). Although research suggests that depression is often a response to declining health and functional impairment in the older adult, the present findings suggest that social isolation may also influence the experience of depression. Age-related losses such as loss of professional identity, physical mobility and the inevitable loss of family and friends can affect a person's ability to maintain relationships and independence, which in turn may lead to a higher incidence of depressive symptoms.

Loneliness, health and depression in older males.

Compared the effects of 2 psychotherapies based on divergent conceptualizations of depression in later life. Seventy-five older adults diagnosed with major depressive disorder were assigned randomly to problem-solving therapy (PST), reminiscence therapy (RT), or a waiting-list control (WLC) condition. Participants in PST and RT were provided with 12 weekly sessions of group treatment. Dependent measures, taken at baseline, posttreatment, and 3-month follow-up, included self-report and observer-based assessments of depressive symptomatology. At posttreatment, both the PST and the RT conditions produced significant reductions in depressive symptoms, compared with the WLC group, and PST participants experienced significantly less depression than RT subjects. Moreover, a significantly greater proportion of participants in PST versus RT demonstrated sufficient positive change to warrant classification of their depression as improved or in remission at the posttreatment and follow-up evaluations.

/pdf/comparative-effectiveness-of-social-problem-solving-therapy-1mog9jqxy7.pdf

Comparative Effectiveness of Social Problem-Solving Therapy and Reminiscence Therapy as Treatments for Depression in Older Adults

Much has been written about working with the dying. Few, if any, controlled studies have examined the application of principles set forth. The authors evaluate the effectiveness of working with dying cancer patients by assessing changes in quality of life, physical functioning, and survival. One-hundred twenty men with end-stage cancer were randomly assigned to experimental or control groups; the 62 experimental group patients were seen regularly by a counselor. Patients were assessed before random assignment and at one, three, six, nine, and 12 months on quality of live and functional status. Experimental group patients improved significantly more than the control group on quality of life within three months. Functional status and survival did not differ between groups. A subsample of lung cancer patients provided cross-validation of findings. Although survival was not expected to differ, it was predicted that functioning would be enhanced if quality of life improved. One interpretation is that little can be done to alter physical function and survival when intervention occurs late in the progression of a fatal disease. This in no way reduces the value of improving overall quality of life, since enhancing the quality of survival for end-stage cancer patients is a high priority medical goal.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/1097-0142%2819820301%2949%3A5%3C1048%3A%3AAID-CNCR2820490534%3E3.0.CO%3B2-G

Effects of counseling for late stage cancer patients

Designed for professionals working with the elderly, this text provides comprehensive coverage of the ageing process and its effects on mental health. It sets out the nature and problems of old age, including the problems of older people in their families, and explores some of the common emotional problems and psychiatric disorders which can affect the elderly. It also outlines the evaluation, treatment and prevention of some common effects of ageing. There is specific coverage of race, ethnicity, gender, crime, alcoholism and physical disabilities, including deafness and blindness.

Aging & mental health: Positive psychosocial and biomedical approaches

This new resource represents the first Canadian publication in the field of gerontological nursing. The author focuses on the healthy elderly in the community as well as primary health care, health promotion, and the role of the family. Current Canadian demographic data on the elderly along with relevant, up-to-date statistics make this book an invaluable source for the study of aging.

Aging and mental health: Positive psychosocial approaches

There are eleven million women in this country who are sixty-five years of age and older. Yet they are being ignored by the women’s liberation movement. Neither the truly oppressed condition of old women nor their potential political and economic strength is firing the otherwise active imagination of the women’s movement. The issues of women’s liberation have been the issues of the young and middle-aged-day-care centers, abortion reform, educational discrimination, etc. Obviously these are not the most immediate problems for old women who have been discriminated against all their lives and as a result are frequently poverty-stricken, socially isolated, and culturally obsolete. The newly formed National Women’s Political Caucus which first met in Washington, D. C., in July 1971 formed a policy council which included no women members over sixty-five years of age. Interestingly only one member was under thirty-five years and the younger women immediately rallied to protest discrimination against youth. But there was no such protest from old women. Why is a socially sensitive movement like women’s liberation neglecting its older sisters,” leaving them to fend for themselves? Why aren’t old women raising vehement protestations? The answer to such questions requires a look at a newly defined but very familiar prejudice called “ageism.” Ageism can be described as a process of systematic stereotyping of and discrimination against people because they are old, just as racism and sexism accomplish this with skin color and gender. Old people are categorized as senile, rigid in thought and manner, old-fashioned in morality and skills. Ageism allows all of us to see old people as “different” from those of us who are younger. We subtly cease to identify with them as humans and thus we can feel more comfortable about their frequently severe social and economic plight. We can avoid the notion that our productivity-minded society really has no use for the nonproducers-in this case, those who have reached retirement age. There is an added factor in ageism: unlike the racists and sexists who never need fear becoming black or female, ageists are all too aware that if they live long enough they will end up being “old” and thus the object of their own prejudice. Ageism is a thinly disguised attempt to avoid the personal reality of human aging and death. The traditional buffers of religious beliefs are in a process of challenge and change. No general ethical or philosophical system has yet evolved to deal with human life and death as a whole. The individual fills the frightening vacuum with a self-protective prejudice, and old people are the victims. As is often the case with prejudice, the victims tend to believe the negative definition of themselves. Old people in this country are still silently accepting the treatment meted out to them. They have not yet reached the point of moral outrage and outcry but there are increasing glimmers of demand for “senior power.” For females, ageism has a special bitterness, combined as it is with the cultural denigration of the female. Little girls quickly are taught that in this society it will be “

Myrna I. Lewis

Papers

Aging & mental health: Positive psychosocial and biomedical approaches

Aging and mental health: Positive psychosocial approaches

Why is Women's LIB Ignoring Old Women?:

Sex after Sixty

Sex After Sixty: A Guide for Men and Women for Their Later Years