Gerontology: Theory of Aging - Term Paper Example

Gerontology: Theory of Aging The purpose of this paper is to present to the reader my grasp of some essential concepts of gerontology. A questionnaire has been prepared to gain a comprehensive understanding of aging from the point of view of the subjects. Once the general profile of an older adult in my community is drawn, some of the prevailing health conditions of the subject is studied in the context of a few aging theories. This is followed by a comparative analysis between my interpretation and the views of scholars. And finally, I conclude the paper by stating how this particular research experience had made an impression on me. Successful completion of all the above tasks, I hope, would indicate my profound understanding of the subject and my fulfillment of course objectives. 2. Mr. R.K is an elderly gentleman, whom I see regularly in Sunday church congregations. When I approached him for the interview, he readily consented for an interview session. R.K. is seventy eight years old. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and was a college professor during his active days. He retired from his professorship about ten years ago. Since his retirement, he has been living alone in an apartment down the street. R.K. is an Italian American, whose parents fled from political persecution in their homeland Italy, under the dictatorship of Mussolini. R.K. was a five year old boy then. Having reached the shores of New England with barely a cent in their hands, the family set about in pursuit of their American Dream. R.K. recalls with much poignancy, the grinding poverty and insecurity of the early years. Having completed high school, R.K. wanted to go to college. But the sudden demise of his father from an unexpected cardiac arrest compelled him to seek employment instead. Just when his dreams of scholarly accomplishment were fading away, he received a scholarship from a college in Boston. He recalls this day with much rejoicing and nostalgia. He classifies this day and the day of publication of his first book as the two most significant days in his life. Once in academia, R.K.’s career graph rose fast, leading to a professorship offer even before he turned 40. His drive for financial security and scholarly accomplishment was so intense that he turned out to be a poor father and a cynical husband. His lack of availability for his family was the reason behind both his divorces, as he himself admits. He nevertheless was very religious and seldom missed a Sunday mass. Given his unrelenting pursuit of wealth and recognition, it was no surprise that he has had a few nervous breakdowns and depressive episodes in the past. The first of the breakdowns followed his heavy losses in stock investments. The nervous breakdown coincided with a heart-attack. There were recurrent episodes following each of the divorces. His only son (from his first wife), is hardly of any assistance emotionally or financially to R.K. now. Of course, finances have never been an issue for R.K., what with his abnormal zest for wealth. He may not receive warmth and affection from anyone right now, but he does receive a heavy monthly return on his pension fund. His relationship with his brothers is also tepid. Looking at his life in retrospective, he now feels that he’s had his priorities wrong. Though officially retired from work, he contributes articles to scholarly journals even at this age. But the task is proving to grow in difficulty with each passing day. He himself acknowledges the decline in his mental acuity. He says he misses the intellectual stimulus offered by an academic environment. Being an arthritic, he needs to exercise his knee joints regularly. So, when not at his desk reading or writing, he can be seen taking walks in the neighborhood. His propensity for clinical depression had increased since his retirement and so is on anti-depressants for a few years now. He also takes medications to alleviate his high blood pressure, anxiety and other cardiac problems. R.K. believes his best days were behind him and expects only pain and suffering as a result of diminishing faculties. The latest addition to his long list of ailments is generalized amnesia. On the whole, R.K. is a man who is lost, disillusioned and pessimistic about his remaining days. 3a. The two psychosocial theories chosen for discussion are: 1) Person-Environment theory of aging and 2) Maslow’s theory of aging. Gene Regulation theory is the chosen biological theory. 3b.The Person-Environment (P-E) fit theory essentially states that the alignment between characteristics of people and their environments can influence their health outcomes. This theory extends from Lewin’s proposition “that behavior is a function of the person and the environment”. In other words, the P-E fit of an individual is the integration of their Person-Job (P-J) fit, Person-Group (P-G) fit, Person-Organization (P-O) fit, Person-Vocation (P-V) fit, etc. It can also be viewed as the compatibility between a person’s abilities and the demands of this environment. Maslow’s theory on the other hand, states that an individual’s psychological and emotional development goes through five phases of needs. The emotional well-being of the individual at any point in time depends on the success they meet in trying to satisfy those needs. Successful aging results from successful negotiation of life’s challenges in pursuit of fulfillment of these needs. Maslow ranks the list of needs in this particular order: physiological, safety, love and belonging, self-esteem and finally self-actualization. The order of these phases is important. An individual cannot progress to satisfy higher needs without first fulfilling all the needs of the previous phase. For example, all human beings have the basic need to eat, sleep, excrete, etc. (physiological needs). Without fulfilling these basic needs, an individual cannot think about his safety (in the present or in the future). Similarly, one cannot love or be loved without a sense of security in the first place. Maslow also asserts that there is an ideal time-frame for resolving various needs. In other words, an individual belonging to a certain age group should ideally be pursuing select needs appropriate to his/her age-group. Those who lag behind are said to have aged unhealthily. As years pass on, the unfulfilled needs compound and grow, making the individual prone to emotional break-downs and other psychiatric conditions. A widely acknowledged biological theory of aging is the Gene Regulation Theory. It states that the process of aging is largely dependent on an individual’s genetic inheritance. For example, specific genes have been identified that regulate patterns of sleep. Genes were also implicated in the likely “fight/flight” response to stress and fear. The human genome project had shed more light on this relation. For instance, associations between particular sets of genes and particular medical conditions have been identified. Using such information, the propensity of a baby to develop illnesses in later-life could be predicted. This foreknowledge can then be used in taking necessary preventative measures (Jazwinski, 1996). 3c. The elderly adult interviewed for this research, R.K., mentioned how he found the retired life lacking in stimulus and excitement. Even the extroverted of the elders were prone to feel this way. Hence it is no surprise that the introverted and intellectual R.K., is suffering from the incongruence between the newly imposed environment and his own personality type. The sedentary and relatively passive life-style that is inevitable at this stage in his life is adding to his deprivation and boredom. Here we see incongruence between the newly imposed environment and the personality characteristics. Hence we can attribute our subject’s affectation to his misfit with the new post-retirement environment. It is known that adults create a sense of self from the relation they have to the rest of the world. In the case of R.K., he took pride in contributing his expertise to the society as part of a broader movement of progress and advancement. Essentially, his entire career revolved around this cherished value. When such a fundamental motivating factor is taken away, the sense of loss, deprivation and worthlessness had proved to be overwhelming. The fact that he is already battling the general decline associated with old age compounds the distress. This is one interpretation of R.K.’s health status from a P-E theory perspective. The prevailing conditions of R.K.’s health could be studied within Maslow’s theoretical framework as well. For instance, R.K. has been suffering from Depression and other mental frailties for a long time. Based on the answers given to the questionnaire, a clear pattern could be discerned linking early-life irregularities to late-life emotional problems. Hence, what we see in the older adult’s case is a manifestation of Maslow’s theory of aging. More particulars from the case study could be cited in support of Maslow’s theory. For instance, R.K. mentioned how his family’s financial circumstances compelled him to seek full-time employment even before he turned 18. The gravity of the situation at that time had made such a strong impression on the teenaged R.K., that the rest of his adult life was dictated by the need to stay prosperous. Even when he had earned more money than he could ever imagine spending, he could not stop to enjoy more meaningful things in life. He admitted to having interpersonal difficulties as a result of this over-drive. After the failure of his second marriage, he remained single; his relationship with his only son is strained and ambiguous to this day. His “unsatisfied need to feel financially secure” has haunted other phases of his life. As for the interviewed older adult R.K., there is clear evidence that factors beyond the “environment” were also at play in the aging process. While he had led an intellectually stimulating life and has had resources to consume healthy and nutritious food, he is now a man ascending the ladder of senility. Furthermore, both R.K. and his father have had heart-attacks at a relatively young age. While heart problems in older adults could be attributed to biological causes, the early onset of the problem in father and son is likely to be genetic. So gene regulation theory is also applicable to the case. 3d. So far, I have pointed to evidence of the chosen theories of aging from a careful study of R.K.’s life history. But it is based on “my understanding of the case studied”. To check the validity of my understanding of the concepts, I did a comparative analysis with published scholarly literature. The following passages represent some salient observations from the foray. In his 2001 research article for The Journal of Aging Studies, Westerhof provides an alternative explanation to how aging is perceived: “Our findings also make it necessary to reflect on the implicit cultural assumptions in gerontological theories. With regard to deficit theories of aging, our findings suggest that aging not only means losing ones health and autonomy. Indeed, in certain cultural contexts, aging can also mean to `cash in the credits of support one has built up in ones family and even to end ones life in a good way. In other words, what gerontologists have seen as losses or deficits are not always experienced in that way by all persons. In fact, the deficit theory of aging appears to rely on an American way of attributing meaning to aging by stressing the maintenance of health and autonomy as aspects of successful aging. Hence, it can be concluded that one should be careful in reproducing particular cultural constructions of a successful old age in gerontological theories.” (Westerhof, et. al., 2001) While I saw R.K.’s present struggles in light of the Person-Environment theory of aging, Westerhof provides an alternative explanation. Westerhof points to what is “unreasonable expectations of American older adults” as being primarily responsible for their plight. Westerhof substantiates this claim by comparing self-assessment data of adults above 70 from three different parts of the world – North America, India and Congo. His findings show that older adults in lesser developed countries of India and Congo perform on par with American septuagenarians in their overall well-being scale. So, why do American older adults under perform in spite of having more freedom and better choices? The answer is “heightened expectations”. The research work of Lithgow & Kirkwood similarly adds depth to our understanding of Maslow’s theory of aging. I attributed R.K.’s present state of despair to “unmet basic needs of safety and security” and his fixation with these needs. However, R.K. was seen pursuing “accomplishment and recognition” through his role as a college professor and scholar. A sense of accomplishment and recognition can only be achieved if the individual is contented with his life and feels comfortable within his own skin. R.K. could not ever feel contended as a result of his unreasonable sense of financial insecurity. In turn, this discontentedness had undermined his scholarly pursuits as well as interpersonal relationships. In the authors’ own words, “Esteem needs may be classified as internal or external. Internal esteem needs are those related to self-esteem such as self respect and achievement. External esteem needs are those such as social status and recognition. Esteem needs include: Self-respect, Achievement, Attention, Recognition and Reputation” (Lithgow & Kirkwood, 1996) While R.K. succeeded in satisfying external esteem needs of “attention, recognition and reputation”, he could never experience the internal esteem needs of achievement and self-respect. In his research work on premature aging syndromes, Dyer states the following: “Several rare conditions exist in man that exhibit certain phenotypic characteristics associated with senescence. Often referred to as `segmental progeroid syndromes, the most widely studied of these are Hutchinson-Gilford progeria, Werners syndrome and Cockaynes syndrome, but the group also includes Blooms syndrome, ataxia telangiectasia and Downs syndrome.” (Dyer, 1998) The research undertaken by Jazwinski leads to a similar conclusion as well: “The factors that affect aging are genetic, epigenetic, and environmental, and the limiting factors for longevity are metabolic capacity, efficiency of stress responses, and abnormal regulation”. (Jazwinski, 1996) Here, Jazwinski links efficiency of stress responses and abnormal regulation to genetic factors. To place it in context, R.K.’s cardiac problems are attributable to abnormal regulation & his episodes of depression and anxiety are attributable to inefficient stress responses. I earlier related R.K’s cardiac problems and his early entry into senility to gene regulation. Hence, there is consistency between my analysis and scholarship. 4. The time spent researching for this paper had strengthened my understanding of the core concepts related to aging. I have come to believe that the medical study of health and illness in old age give best results when both psychosocial and biological approaches are considered. The study that I undertook has given me useful insights about the way older adults feel and think. This was made possible by my first-hand observations of them from close quarters, as well as from interpreting their responses in light of the theories of aging. From this integrated bio-psychosocial approach, I learnt that psychophysical processes obtain meaning for older adults only through intentional mental processes in specific social and cultural living contexts. In short, this research experience has shown me how the practice of nursing can be made more effective with an understanding of aging and gerontology in terms of interrelations between body, mind, and society. References: Dyer, C A, & Sinclair, A J (Jan 1998). The premature ageing syndromes: insights into the ageing process. Age and Ageing, 27, n1. p.73(8).  Jazwinski, S. M. (July 5, 1996). Longevity, genes and aging. Science, 273, n5271. p.54(6). Lithgow, G J, & Kirkwood, T B (July 5, 1996). Mechanisms and evolution of aging. Science, 273, n5271. p.80(1). Westerhof, G J, Katzko, M W, Dittmann-Kohli, F., & Hayslip, B. (June 2001). Life contexts and health-related selves in old age Perspectives from the United States, India and Congo/Zaire. Journal of Aging Studies, 15, 2. p.105. Read More