Sociological aspects of behaviour change and treatment compliance in older people in different care contexts

Question 1

Define social gerontology?

Answer 1

Study of social aspects of ageing and ageing population

Question 2

Is ageing a unidimensional or multidimensional concept?

Answer 2

Ageing is a multidimensional concept

Question 3

Define chronological ageing?

Answer 3

How old person is in terms of time since birth

Question 4

Define biological ageing?

Answer 4

Changes in physical state that accompanies chronological ageing

Question 5

Define functional age?

Answer 5

Individual’s age as determined by measures of functional capability indexed by age-normed standards

Question 6

Define social ageing?

Answer 6

Social expectations about how people should behave/appear as they age

Question 7

Why should all ageing not be medicalised, when regarding sociological factors?

Answer 7

People experience ageing differently due to accumulating social and structural disadvantages, so non-pathological ageing shouldn’t always be medicalised

Question 8

Describe self-perception of age as people get older, and where mismatch commonly occurs?

Answer 8

Individual could feel mismatch between how old they feel and what age they are perceived to be

Question 9

How can functional age and self-perception of age cause clinical implications?

Answer 9

Individual feels different to their functional age, which can cause them to lack concordance and be reluctant to adhere to regimens

eg. refuse treatments, going to residential home

Question 10

What is meant by the ‘cult of youth’, in terms of self-perception of age?

Answer 10

Domain of successful people who don’t want to lose their success and be cheated of good things in life, so try to appear “forever young” on outside

Question 11

Describe common beliefs about cognitive change relative to old age?

Answer 11

older people incapable of learning new things due to increasing forgetfulness, intelligence decline

Question 12

How true are beliefs about cognitive change relative to old age, regarding intelligence decline?

Answer 12

Longitudinal studies show that there is actually only slight change decrease in intelligence

Beliefs include that intelligence declines as age increases, which is not true

Question 13

What is the common clinical implication of forgetfulness increasing as people get older?

Answer 13

Increasing forgetfulness has clinical implications as older people might take longer to remember info

Question 14

Describe 2 behavioural changes that commonly occur as age increases, and 2 common personality changes?

Answer 14

Agitation and anxiety both commonly increase with age and can cause noticeable personality changes, such as impulsive and reckless behaviour

Question 15

Discuss Kitwood’s (1997) theory about medicalising ageing and normal psychopathological events?

Answer 15

Process of medicalising ageing (eg. diagnoses like dementia) could be encourage people to behave in ‘challenging’ ways, but in reality this is normal brain ageing being misunderstood for a psychopathological event

Because the ‘symptoms’ are normal cognitive and behavioural changes

Question 16

Does self-perception of age have any biological effects?

Answer 16

Yes

Beliefs can affect way people are regarded, their interactions, self-perceptions of self-sufficiency and giving to others, which overall act biologically on brains