Ageism

Arham Shamsi
 Intro
• The term Ageism was developed by gerontologist
Robert Butler in 1969. It is a terms that describes
a form of bigotry similar to racism and sexism.

• Ageism is unfairly limiting a persons access to

certain valued opportunities and rights based on
an irrelevant criteria i.e. Age. (“systematic
stereotyping and discrimination against people
because they are old,” )
 .
• Ageism(or commonly known as Age Discrimination) is
the discrimination of a group of people because of their
age.
• Most commonly known ageism remarks are to the
young and old.
• Making remarks to any age group makes you an Ageist.
• Ageism is like racism in nature due to its discrimination
against a certain group of people.
• Ageism first got its name in 1967 during the ADEA
(Age Discrimination in Employment Act).
 How Ageism Affects
• Millions of people were fired due to their age alone.

• Due to the millions of people losing their jobs, an

Age Discrimination in Employment Act(also known
as ADEA) was established in 1967 to prevent people
over 55 to be fired.
 .
• The Middle-aged woman is hired, the old-aged
woman is not hired. The middle-aged woman
is hired because she can do a lot, but the old-
aged woman is not because she can not do as
much as the young; however, the old has more
experience than the young.
 .
• Ageism is seen everyday on the news, TV shows,
books, and the radio.

• According to the AARP(American Association of

Retired Persons), out of 11.1 million unemployed
people, 1.4 million were over the age of 55.

• Although the ADEA was passed, people today are

still fired because of their age.
 Age Bias In Healthcare
• In the world of medicine, older people are routinely treated
differently than younger people. Older patients tend to receive
less aggressive medical treatment than younger patients with
the same symptoms, for example, found that older women are
less likely to receive radiation and chemotherapy after breast
cancer surgery, even though they are more likely than younger
women to die from the disease.
• Older adults have been poorly represented in other medical
research and funding priorities as well. Few research studies,
for example, definitively show that specific treatments are
beneficial to older patients.
 .

• Several factors contribute to the discrimination older people face in the

health care system. First, many health professionals adhere to the
traditional view of aging as a continual process of decline. Unaware of the
distinction between processes of normal aging and disease, they frequently
dismiss older patients' complaints and symptoms. Physicians, for example,
may write off older adults' symptoms of depression as part of the normal
aging process and therefore fail to refer them for psychiatric assessments.
Furthermore, doctors often prefer using their skills to cure acute illnesses
rather than managing chronic diseases and rehabilitation. Because chronic
conditions are much more common among the old than the young,
physicians trained to focus on discrete causes of diseases and their cures
may ignore the opportunity to intervene and improve older patients' quality
of life.
 .
• Lewis et al. (2003) looked specifically at cancer
clinical trials and found that although 61 percent of
new cancer diagnoses (and 70 percent of cancer
deaths) occur in older adults, they continue to make
up a minority of trial participants.
 Activity
• When I get old I will be……….

• Can you think of a time in your life when you have

been discriminated against because of your age?
How did you feel ????
References
Principles and Practice of Geriatric Medicine
Fourth Edition
Editors
M.S. John Pathy