Ageing is riskier than it looks

摘要

Much of the professional and popular writing about old people is biased in one of two ways. One approach concentrates on problems like illnesses, dementia, crimes, loneliness, poverty, and various other kinds of misery. The other offers an over-optimistic image of the ageing process, in increasingly healthy, affluent, mobile, and socially integrated old people. Both views have their implications and both are right in a way. We need to revise our perspectives and methodologies to achieve a more balanced picture. Geratologists have an interest in furthering the optimistic vision of ageing, and the last two decades have seen numerous studies to support it. Yet the message has not been readily received by the public. Staff in hospitals and in community care still hold in general a negative view of old age. Many old people themselves see their own present good health as fortuitous and perceive ageing in general in rather gloomy colours. This 'stereotype' is resistant to change; when confronted with geratologists' 'good news' many people show disbelief. I have come to think that there may be good reasons for this, which geratologists have failed to recognize. Indeed, these 'negative stereotypes' may better describe the real prospects of old age than more 'optimistic' versions of ageing.