Late Adulthood: Physical, Cognitive, and Psychosocial Development in Older Adults, Slides of Advanced Education

Download Late Adulthood: Physical, Cognitive, and Psychosocial Development in Older Adults and more Slides Advanced Education in PDF only on Docsity!

Module 7

LATE ADULTHOOD

"Click" or press "Enter" to advance between slides

Concept Review

Physical and Cognitive Development Psychosocial Development

Ageism

Ageism

● A form of prejudice in which people are categorized and judged solely on the basis of their chronological age.

● Considers people as part of a category and not as individuals

Elderspeak

● A condescending way of speaking to older adults that resembles baby talk, with simple and short sentences, exaggerated emphasis, repetition, and a slower rate and a higher pitch than normal speech.

Believing the Stereotypes About

Old Age

An Imagined Threat

● Stereotype threat ● Anxiety about the possibility that other people have prejudiced beliefs. ● Responses to stereotype threat include dyeing hair, undergoing plastic surgery, dressing in youthful clothes, and moving quickly to look agile (or spry).

The Elderly: Burden or Blessing?

A Pyramid Becomes a Square

● Population Pyramid ● A graphic representation of population as a series of stacked bars in which each age cohort is represented by one bar, with the youngest cohort at the bottom.

The Elderly: Burden or Blessing?

Three Reasons for the

Traditional Pyramidal Shape

● Far more children were born than the replacement rate

● Before modern sanitation and nutrition, about half of all children died before age 5

● Middle-aged people rarely survived adult diseases like cancer and heart attacks

● Square ● The demographic stacks in some industrialized nations already do not have a pyramidal shape and are almost square.

The Elderly: Burden or Blessing?

Caregivers or Care Receivers?

● Older people probably give more care than they receive.

● They are more likely than younger adults to vote, pray, participate in civic groups, and donate time and money to various causes as well as to their own descendants.

● Only the oldest-old need ongoing care: In the U.S. and Canada, only about 4% of the over-65 population are in nursing homes or hospitals.

A Short Time For Illness

Compression of Morbidity

● A shortening of the time a person spends ill or infirm before death; accomplished by postponing illness.

● Due to improvements in lifestyle, medicine, and technological aids.

● North Americans who live to be 95 are likely to be independent almost all of those years.

Ageism and the Aging Senses

● Technology and Sensory Deficits ● Technology can compensate for almost all sensory loss.

● Visual problems ● Brighter lights and bifocals or two pairs of glasses are needed. ● Cataracts, glaucoma, and macular degeneration can be avoided or mitigated if diagnosed early. ● Elaborate visual aids (canes that sense when an object is near, infrared lenses, service animals, computers that “speak” written words) allow even the legally blind to be independent.

Ageism and the Aging Senses

● Auditory problems ● Small and sensitive hearing aids are available but many people still hesitate to get aids. ● Missing out on bits of conversation cuts down on communication and precipitates many other social losses. ● Younger people tend to yell or use elderspeak, both of which are demeaning. ● Elderly people are less vulnerable to stereotype threat if they have positive interactions with the younger generations.

The Society and Sensory Loss

● A passive acceptance of sensory loss increases morbidity of all kinds.

● Problems ● It is often difficult to individualize available technology. ● Ageism is inherent in the design of everything from airplane seats to shoes. ● Many disabilities would disappear if the environment were better designed.

Cardiovascular Disease

The Cardiovascular Health Study

● Participants: More than 5,000 people over age 65 in the United States without coronary problems.

● Six years later, some participants had developed heart disease.

● The likelihood of CVD was strongly related to six risk factors (all more common with age): ● Diabetes ● Smoking ● Abdominal fat ● High blood pressure ● Lack of exercise ● High cholesterol

Facts about CVD

● CVD is considered secondary aging because not everyone develops it. ● No single factor (including age, hypertension, inactivity, and smoking) makes CVD inevitable. ● The links among aging, risk, and CVD are undeniable. ● A 90-year-old is 1,000 times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than is a 30-year-old, even if both have identical genes, social contexts, and health habits. ● Less than half those over age 65 have CVD, diabetes, or dementia but almost everyone has at least one of these three by age 90. ● Risk factors and diseases of the aged are not distributed randomly: If a person has one risk factor, it is likely that he or she has several.