Abstract
IN a paper on this subject read before the Section on Care of the Aged, Welfare Council, New York City (Mental Health, 23, 257; 1939), Dr. George Lawton, psychological adviser to the Andrew Freed-man Home, New York City, maintains.that there is no group of persons whose mental welfare is more neglected than that of old people. This indifference, he declares, is world-wide even in countries with advanced social services. Although there has been for many years a guidance clinic for the aged in San Francisco, no definite steps have been taken for establishing a similar one in New York. Dr. Lawton asserts that what little knowledge we have of old people is based on pathological material, while we possess very little information about non-psychotic old persons. He suggests that the psychological difficulties presented by aged people should be classified as follows: (1) the problems of neurotic, borderline psychotic, psychotic, feeble-minded, and deterioriated individuals; (2) the minor mal-adjustments of fairly adequate old people caused by excessive economic pressures and inhibitory social attitudes; (3) the stresses and strains of persons undergoing normal mental and emotional decline. According to Dr. Lawton, the management of the problem of senescence should include the following measures, among others: (1) intensive, systematic studies over long periods of time, of the mental abilities, interests, recreations, emotions and personalities of larger groups of men and women in town and country in each decade from forty to sixty, (2) when such facts have been collected, guidance clinics should be set up to function in a similar manner to child guidance clinics; (3) courses in geriatrics should be established in the medical schools to give future physicians a better understanding of the effects of mental attitudes on the bodily ailments of the aged.
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Mental Hygiene in Old Age. Nature 144, 902 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144902b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144902b0