The major themes that I chose to explore from chapter six were successful aging and mental health issues. Personality and aging is a field that has gained a lot of momentum of the years with more and more research being dedicated to continuing to learn more. But for me the most important issues were learning that successful aging did not simply mean avoiding disease, but rather more of a whole life experience. While it is possible to age somewhat successfully while suffering from a chronic condition, mostly it involves physical and mental health, as well as maintaining cognitive capacity and also being involved with our communities and society as a whole. Mental health issues are extremely important, we are learning more about diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia everyday but we are still a lifetime away from completely understanding them.
If you ask me this is one of the most interesting chapters in our whole book. It completely shocked me to learn about the sexual lives of elders. However, there are a number of issues that concern me as well. Elders are exploited everyday in their living arrangements and rarely is anything done about it. Also, although pregnancy is out of the question for elders, STD's are still a real threat to those who remain sexually active. We also need to educate the workers of elderly communities so they can recognize the needs of sexually active elders. It was refreshing to learn that in general, for those who stay sexually active in some form, studies show they end up living longer than their counterparts. We also need to continue to advocate for the LGBT elders because they are just as important as any other group of elders.
Some of the most important aspects of Social Gerontology have to deal with aging productively and retirement. It is crucial that we try to prolong our working lives and not start collecting Social Security and dipping into Pension programs. We are seeing shortages in these areas more and more frequently not only the U.S. but abroad as well. We have fewer people in the younger generation who contribute to these programs and if we continue to use them up at the current pace will leave our children and their children in a world of hurt.
Social Gerontology is an ever-expanding field and is one that had gained great steam over the past couple of decades. We are dedicating more time and resources to trying to learn about the ways in which we age and how that affects our society and world as a whole.
