scholarly journals ’Successful Ageing’ in Practice: Reflections on Health, Activity and Normality in Old Age in Sweden

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 481-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Åsa Alftberg ◽  
Susanne Lundin
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Successful Ageing ◽  
Old People ◽  
Active Lifestyle ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
Health Promoting

This article aims to contribute to the critical examination of the notions of health and activity, and to discuss how these cultural and social constructs have impact on elderly people’s lives. An ethnographic perspective gives fruitful inputs to explore how old people deal with the image of old age as one of decay and decline, while they simultaneously relate to the normative idea of so-called successful ageing. The focus is thus on how elderly people create meaning, and how they manage and make use of the contradictory cultural beliefs that are both understood as normality: old age as a passive period of life involving decline and disease, and activity as an individual responsibility in order to stay healthy. The study sample is created with two different methods, qualitative interviews and two different questionnaires, and the majority of the respondents are 65+ years old. The article demonstrates the intersection between old age and a health-promoting active lifestyle. The notion of activity includes moral values, which shape the beliefs and narratives of being old. This forms part of the concept of self-care management, which in old age is also called successful ageing. The idea that activities are health promoting is the framework in which activities are performed, but significance and meaning are rather created from practice.

scholarly journals Older workers imagining retirement: the collapse of agency, or freedom at last?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Anne Skevik Grødem ◽  
Ragni Hege Kitterød
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Older Workers ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Active Engagement ◽  
Work Patterns ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Retirement Decisions ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract Images of what retirement is and ought to be are changing. Older workers are being encouraged to work for longer, at the same time, older adults increasingly voice expectations of a ‘third age’ of active engagement and new life prospects. In this article, we draw on the literature on older workers’ work patterns and retirement transitions (noting push/pull/stay/stuck/jump factors), and on scholarship on the changing social meaning of old age, most importantly the notions of a ‘third’ and ‘fourth’ age. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with 28 employees in the private sector in Norway, aged between 55 and 66 years. Based on the interviews, we propose three ideal-typical approaches to the work–retirement transition: ‘the logic of deadline’, ‘the logic of negotiation’ and ‘the logic of averting retirement’. The ideal-types are defined by the degree to which informants assume agency in the workplace, their orientation towards work versus retirement and the degree to which they expect to exercise agency in retirement. We emphasise how retirement decisions are informed by notions of the meaning of ageing, while also embedded in relationships with employers and partners.

scholarly journals ‘A sense of purpose’: Older prisoners’ experiences of successful ageing behind bars

2021 ◽  
pp. 147737082199514
Author(s):  
Hila Avieli
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
Older Men ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Successful Ageing ◽  
Older Prisoners ◽  
Unified Process ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
Better Than

There is growing interest in ageing offenders and their lives in prison. However, this subject is often studied from a deprivation perspective, focusing on issues such as lack of medical care and proper environmental conditions. This article highlights experiences of wellbeing while ageing in confinement, using the conceptual framework of successful ageing. An interpretive phenomenological analysis perspective was used to analyse the narratives of 18 older prisoners. The narratives revealed four themes: ‘Like all other older men’: comparing ageing in prison with ageing within the community; ‘Better than what I have outside’: prison as an escape from a life of loneliness, poverty and delinquency; ‘Here I get some respect’: the older prisoner as a mentor; and ‘I feel accomplished’: experiences of growth and self-discovery as a means for successful ageing in prison. The findings suggest that ageing in prison may not be perceived as a single, unified process, but as a personal and individual phenomenon, and that old age may facilitate positive changes in the lives of ageing offenders in prison.

Old Age Mental Disorders in Newcastle upon Tyne

1964 ◽  
Vol 110 (468) ◽  
pp. 668-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. W. K. Kay ◽  
P. Beamish ◽  
Martin Roth
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Functional Disorders ◽  
Old People ◽  
Social Contacts ◽  
Medical Status ◽  
Organic Brain ◽  
Domestic Support ◽  
Newcastle Upon Tyne

In a previous paper (Kay, Beamish and Roth, 1963) we studied the prevalence of various kinds of psychiatric disorder in a random sample of old people living at home in Newcastle upon Tyne. During the interviews, special attention was paid to the collection of social data. For, as Townsend (1957a) pointed out, old age is an epoch of diminishing social contacts and domestic support, and isolated old people make disproportionately heavy demands on the institutions of the Health and Welfare Services. By comparing the medical status and social circumstances of subjects with organic brain syndromes, those with functional disorders, and those without psychiatric abnormality, we have attempted to explore further the relative importance of these factors in the two main groups of mental disorders in old age.

scholarly journals Successful ageing and multi-dimensional poverty: the case of Peru

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (8) ◽  
pp. 1690-1714 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAVIER OLIVERA ◽  
ISABELLE TOURNIER
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Emotional Health ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Mental Disability ◽  
Successful Ageing ◽  
Economic Literature ◽  
Public Intervention ◽  
Nutrition Quality ◽  
Counting Approach ◽  
Health Functioning

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the determinants of Successful Ageing (SA) in a sample of 4,151 Peruvians aged between 65 and 80 years and living in poverty. A key contribution of this study is to combine the conceptual appeal of SA to measure wellbeing in old age with the multi-dimensional poverty counting approach developed in the economic literature. This setting allows for moving beyond the dichotomy of successful and usual ageing to take advantage of the full distribution of success along a set of dimensions of wellbeing. The data are drawn from the Encuesta de Salud y Bienestar del Adulto Mayor (ESBAM) survey, which is the baseline to evaluate the non-contributory public pension programme Pension 65. Nine indicators of SA have been used to assess the dimensions of physical health, functioning, cognition, emotional health and life satisfaction. The variables associated with a higher number of satisfied indicators were male gender, younger old age, literate, employed, low food insecurity, good nutritional status, normal blood pressure, absence of disabilities, non-smoker, empowerment, good self-esteem, absence of mental disability and less frequent contact with a social network. From a policy perspective, the results of this study report a remarkably stable effect of three variables affecting SA that can be relatively easy to measure, monitor and influence by public intervention. These variables are food security, nutrition quality and self-esteem.

scholarly journals Afrontamiento de problemas de salud en personas muy mayores

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 1008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana B. Navarro ◽  
Belén Bueno
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Satisfaction With Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Health Problems ◽  
Old People ◽  
Very Old ◽  
Degree Of Satisfaction ◽  
The One ◽  
Performance Results

<p>This paper assesses the strategies for coping with health problems in advanced old age and their contribution in terms of several performance results. 159 people aged 75 or over and living at home identified their most recent health problem, the strategies used to deal with it, their perception of self-efficacy in handling the problem and their degree of satisfaction with life. The results confirm the use of a range of strategies, with the active-behavioural approach to solving the problem being the one most widely used. In addition, together with active coping strategies of both a cognitive and behavioural nature, correlational analyses indicate that very old people resort to passive and avoidance coping methods. Furthermore, multiple regression analyses highlight the fact that the use of direct and rational actions for solving health problems predicts self-efficacy in dealing with the problem and protects satisfaction with life at this stage. These results confirm that very old people retain the ability to deal effectively with their health problems and, at the same time, uphold their well-being, providing evidence of the adaptive role of coping in very old age.</p>

scholarly journals Avoidant Coping of the Decision-Making Process on the Location of Care in Old Age: A Possible Conspiracy of Silence?

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (24) ◽  
pp. 12940
Author(s):  
Gema Serrano-Gemes ◽  
Isabel Gil ◽  
Adriana Coelho ◽  
Rafael Serrano-del-Rosal
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Palliative Care ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Avoidant Coping ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Older Person ◽  
High Incidence ◽  
Conspiracy Of Silence

The conspiracy of silence is extremely important due to both its high incidence and its consequences. This process usually occurs in situations of palliative care, or death; however, this concept is also mentioned in the literature linked to other contexts. Therefore, our objective was to study whether the conspiracy of silence may be extrapolated to the context of decision-making on the location of care in old age. To this end, we first analyzed the in-depth semi structured qualitative interviews conducted with older people, caregivers, and professionals, about decision-making on the location of care in old age. Subsequently, a comparative analysis was performed between the basic elements of the conspiracy of silence and this decision-making. Our findings revealed an avoidance process developed by all three groups. Furthermore, this decision-making presents similarities with the conspiracy of silence in the process of avoidance coping and denial that is developed. However, there are significant differences, as information is not withheld from the older person, who has an active attitude in the process of avoidance. Decision-making on the location of care in old age does not exactly match the conspiracy of silence process, but it does seem to correspond to a pact of silence.

scholarly journals The Archaeology of Old Age

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-178
Author(s):  
Stig Welinder
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Burial Ground ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Old People ◽  
Complex Concept ◽  
Anthropological Theory ◽  
Burial Grounds ◽  
The Way

Prehistoric people sometimes died at an old age to judge by the longevity of life estimated from skeletal data. Anthropology, however, suggests that old age is a much more complex concept than that. The process of growing old that is stressed in the anthropological theory of old people may advantageously be discussed on the basis of prehistoric burial-ground data. Examples from Swedish burial-grounds hint at a cultural variation in the way in which prehistoric societies viewed old age.

scholarly journals A Comparative Study of Mental Health among Old People

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vandana N Solanki
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Old Age ◽  
T Test ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Old People ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
And Gender

The study was intended to examine the effect of mental health on old people. Aim: The aim was to estimate the prevalence of mental health in old people and to determine the association of mental health with types of family and gender. Sample: The sample consists of 120 old people from different old age home and family in Rajkot district area. The sample was selected from randomly. Design: 2*2research design was used the present study. Tools: Mental Health was measured through a questionnaire ‘Mental Health Inventory’was used. Test developed by Bhatt D & Gida G. in (1992).The data was analyzed by the t test. Results: There will be no significant difference between Gender and Types of Area in relation to their mental health. Conclusions: Our study demonstrates a higher prevalence of mental health in old people.

scholarly journals CURRENT CONCEPTUAL APPROACHES FOR ASSESSMENT OF THE PROCESS OF AGEING AND OLD AGE

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 722-727
Author(s):  
Vanina Mihaylova ◽  
Dimitar Shopov ◽  
Iliya Bivolarski ◽  
Adolf Alakidi ◽  
Kristina Kilova
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Positive Attitude ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Good Health ◽  
Old People ◽  
Active Approach ◽  
Quality Life ◽  
Long Life ◽  
Elderly And Old People

: Ageing should be considered not only as an increase in the number of elderly and old people in their absolute and relative numbers, but also as a unity of the transformations of the lifecycle, with an emphasis on: later retirement, prolonged period of good‑quality life, an active approach towards the process of retirement and differentiation of the category of “fourth age”. The general preparation for old age has earned a new appeal in the contemporary societies. Motivation of the old people for activity – both physical and intellectual – is of great importance for the better survival of the old age and long life in good health, supported by realized well-being and feeling of joy from life. In this aspect the study of both risk and protective factors for human health (in a salutogenetic perspective) becomes increasingly fundamental. The issue of population at an advanced age has definitely been considered as an independent subject since the beginning of the 21st century. Moreover, the society perceives it as an essential basis for further progress and flourishing of the mankind. In this sense the demographic strategies treating the problem need to address it in a new positive way, with different and positive attitude, accepting the population-related failures and anxiety and turning them into challenges and advantages.

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