4 Facts About Aging and the Elderly

Watch as Blanche from the hit show The Golden Girls, reacts to these facts about aging and the elderly:

1. In the United States, because of the advances in medicine and health care as  well as advances in technology, the population of older adults are beginning to live longer and longer, meaning that this “longevity revolution” will result in a heightened need to different resources such as increased social services and health care provisions. According to some reports, by 2030, the population of this country will be two times that of the population in the year 2000. That’s over half a billion people, and lot of them will be older and healthier citizens!!

2. There are several definitions of aging including:

1. Chronological Age: number of years the person has been alive)
2. Biological Age: change in bodily systems of person = physical, social, psychological functioning
3. Psychological Age: ability to understand and adapt to familiar and unfamiliar environments
4. Social Age: person’s ability to relate to others; person’s role in social structure

3. There is a very large disparity in income distribution among senior citizen populations, unfortunately meaning that many elderly people do end up being homeless at some point in their senior lives. This leads to little access to health care, food, shelter, and other basic resources needed for human survival.

4. Mental health problems amongst elderly populations are very common and a large problem faced by the population. A large concern that may be surprising to the public is that suicide rates for people 65 and over the highest for any other demographic of group in this country.

 

 

 

Source:

Class Lecture Notes from 4/26/2016 by John Vassello