At the start of the twenty-first century, over four hundred million people lived in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, more than in all of North America. Spanning twenty-seven independent countries, these populations represented every imaginable situation in which people grow old. Predominant religions in these countries included Islamic (central Asia and Albania), Orthodox (most European…
This entry provides information on the economic circumstances of older Americans by looking at differences in both the economic well-being among older adults and differences in economic well-being between older adults and others. Traditionally, policymakers have been interested in the economic well-being of groups that are particularly vulnerable—those individuals in society that theoretica…
When people think about education, they gradually think about the traditional school, and about their own personal experience. Education functions in all settings of modern society, however, and educational forms have changed over the years. During the industrial revolution, the advent of formal education undermined the authority of older people because older people's knowledge of farming, …
The American family has historically been viewed as a sacrosanct institution for care of the individual—the inviolate haven of love, safety, and protection. Growing awareness of family violence, however, has shown this view to be faulty, first with the "discovery" of child neglect and abuse in the 1960s, followed by spouse abuse in the early 1970s, and elder neglect and abuse …
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) involves the use of a brief electrical current to produce a seizure in the brain. Many studies have shown ECT to be an effective treatment for severe psychiatric disorders, particularly major depressive disorders. ECT is believed to work by regulating neurotransmitter systems in the brain, the same way other somatic (physical) psychiatric treatments (including medic…
The hospital emergency department has become a very important access point for health care for elderly persons and this trend will likely continue. The emergency room serves as the site of hospital entry for many patients, with scheduled admissions largely restricted to elective surgical procedures. Elderly patients are more likely to enter the hospital via the emergency room than younger patients…
The term emotion or affect is used to refer to a broad class of behaviors that include facial and vocal expressions as well as neurological and physiological patterns. The term feeling refers to the subjective experience of emotion—which may last seconds or minutes—and the term mood involves feelings that last over a protracted period of time. The scientific study of emotional behavi…
Almost one out of every seven dollars spent in the United States is spent on health care, with average expenditures per person increasing with age. It is not surprising, then, that health care insurance is of primary importance not only for all Americans, but especially for aging Americans. While all individuals over the age of sixty-five are eligible for Medicare, the federal government program o…
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) was signed into law by President Gerald Ford on Labor Day, 2 September 1974. This landmark law provides extensive rules governing private pension plans and other employee benefit plans. The primary function of ERISA has been to help ensure greater retirement security for those American workers who have pensions. ERISA has largely achieved this re…
People are considered to be employed if they are working for pay in a job that provides them with a salary or a wage, or if they are working for profit, as in a family-owned business. For most people, employment forms a central activity for much of adulthood and not only provides access to income but also contributes to one's identity and sense of self. Yet embedded within the norms about w…
Among the most intellectually compelling theories of aging are those based on the notion that selection pressure favors those mechanisms which increase the probability of reproductive success (i.e., of producing a next generation of viable offspring). This relationship would be true even if, for example, the mechanisms utilized early in life to assure reproductive success ultimately contribute to …
Epidemiology has been defined as "the study of the distribution and determinants of disease frequency in human populations" (Hennekens and Buring). Based on the underlying tenet that disease does not occur at random, this definition provides a framework for the systematic investigation of health, disability, and illness in human populations. Thus, epidemiology has been identified as …
Contrary to what has been asserted in the past, recent literature has demonstrated that the incidence of provoked and unprovoked seizures and of epilepsy and the prevalence of epilepsy in older people is high. It is therefore regrettable that seizures in old age are still relatively under-researched. There are reasons for not relying on data obtained from the general adult population when deriving…
The property and property rights a person owns are considered his or her estate. Estate planning can be defined as thinking about and developing a plan for the acquisition, conservation, use, and ultimately the disposition of one's estate. However, estate planning is even broader, in the sense that it involves people as well as property. Some of the most powerful motivations for estate plan…
Menopause, defined as the permanent cessation of menstruation, is the final stage in the process of female reproductive aging. Because of the dramatic increase in life span during the twentieth century, the average woman in this country experiencing menopause has more than one-third of her life ahead of her, and as of the late 1990s, an estimated thirty-five million American women were postmenopau…
A patient on a life-support system in the intensive care unit of a hospital. Many people feel that disconnecting such life-support machines after a person has stopped breathing on his or her own represents a form of euthanasia that should be allowed, while many others feel such an action is both unethical and immoral. (Photo Researchers, Inc.) "Euthanasia" is a word coined fro…
Evidence-based medicine refers to an approach to the teaching and practice of medicine that developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The approach emphasizes that medicine should be practiced according to evidence that can be assayed on the basis of its quality. The idea is that from among competing claims that physicians might face concerning various courses of action they might take, they can…
There are remarkable differences in observed aging rates and longevity records across different biological species (compare, for example, mice and humans). These differences are a result of what is known as the evolution of aging, a result of the processes of mutation and selection. The attempt to understand the biological evolution of aging and life span was sparked, in part, by the puzzling life…
There has been a gradually growing awareness among policy makers and health care professionals of the great importance of appropriate exercise habits to major public health outcomes. It has been known for decades that physical activity prevents heart disease, but data now suggest that, on average, physically active people outlive those who are inactive and that regular physical activity helps to m…
The sense of sight, said Aristotle is preferred "to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses makes us know and brings to light many differences between things" (Metaphysics, 98A225). If one looks an eye straight on, several important structures are recognizable, including the pupil, which is the black circle in the center of the eye that dilates and constri…
Fainting is a common symptom in the elderly, generally referred to in the medical literature as syncope. Fainting is defined as transient loss of consciousness accompanied by loss of postural tone, with spontaneous recovery, not requiring resuscitation. Fainting has multiple underlying causes. This common symptom has potential adverse consequences, such as falls, fractures, brain injury, soft tiss…
Although much has been written about the declining importance of the family as a social institution in American society, family relationships continue to be of critical importance in the lives of older people. In fact, research on life course and the family repeatedly finds that people highly value family relationships throughout all of life, and that family ties significantly affect quality o…
A large number of departments and agencies within the federal government administer programs designed to help older Americans. There are multiple reasons why this public responsibility is spread across so many different government bureaucracies (Hudson). First, older Americans have long had special needs that are absent or less intense among younger people. At advanced ages, people's streng…
In a 1972 article in the International Journal of Aging, Myrna Lewis and Robert Butler asked why feminism ignored older women. A more pertinent question today is: Why are gerontologists ignoring feminism? Aging can be defined as a feminist issue because women make up the majority of older adults, and because older women are disproportionately affected by poverty and chronic illness. In addition, c…
The phrase "filial obligations" is generally understood to refer to special duties—specific kinds of actions, services, and attitudes—that children must provide to their parents simply because they are those parents' offspring. Influential in many human cultures throughout history—"Honor thy father and thy mother" is a widely known example fr…
Financial planning for retirement or "old age" is typically based on factors that are fairly well known and more or less under personal control. That is, most people choose when to retire, Table 1 Aging Changes in ADL rates (per 1000 persons age 65+) SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of the Census. 65+ in the United States. Current Population Reports, Special Studies, P23-190, 1996. Pages 3-…
A large part of an individual's body weight is made up of water and chemicals (e.g., sodium, potassium, and chloride), which are called electrolytes. Although the proportions of these electrolytes are tightly regulated throughout life, as people age the relative amount of body weight made up by water changes. In the normal young adult, the capacity of the kidney to regulate fluid and electr…
Attention to foot education and care is especially important as people age. The National Institute on Aging reports high prevalence of lower extremity joint pain among older women. For those relating "severe" pain 17 percent was foot related. The foot is a complex area consisting of twenty-six bones, thirty-three joints, and several ligaments, muscles, veins, arteries, and nerves. As…
Frailty refers to a condition in which older people have multiple, usually interacting, medical and social problems. Such states, with multiplicity and interaction of problems, are complex. Complexity has many consequences, each of which can make the care of a frail older person more challenging. These consequences include complexity of care, making it impossible to do just one thing at once. Ever…
Theorists generally conceptualize "friendship" as a voluntary relationship between equals. This definition of friendship is an abstract conceptualization rather than a description of reality. As Graham Allan observed, in Western society there are no formal rules about who should be friends, but people generally establish relationships with others who are similar to them in terms of r…
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a recently used terminology for clinical Pick's disease (PiD). Arnold Pick (1892) described aphasia and personality changes with progressive frontal and temporal degeneration, but later it became a pathological entity defined histologically by the presence of argyrophilic globular inclusions (Pick bodies) and swollen achromatic neurons (Pick cells). It also …
The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has been a leading model for aging research since early in the twentieth century. The benefits of using D. melanogaster for research include its short life span (1 to 2 months), ease of culture, and the availability of powerful genetic and molecular biological tools. The latter includes the Drosophila "P element," which is a transposable elem…
In the course of daily life, people get out of bed, take baths or showers, use the toilet, dress, prepare meals, and eat. These types of basic functions allow people to socialize, work, or engage in a myriad of other productive and social activities. In the lexicon of gerontology, these fundamental self-care activities have been labeled activities of daily living, or ADLs. Although mundane and ord…
In 1900, it was not uncommon for death to strike at any age. Young children and people over age sixty-five each accounted for about a third of annual deaths in the United States. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, in developed countries, death was largely confined to older adulthood. Three-fourths of annual deaths in the United States now occur to persons over the age of sixty-five. Thi…
Gay men and lesbians (females) are both defined as homosexuals. Homosexual is defined as a preference for emotional and sexual relationships with persons of the same sex. The terminology used, however, indicates a sense of personal and cultural identity. Homosexuals are typically hidden and fearful of disclosure, whereas gays and lesbians are socially open (out) in many walks of their lives (e…
When considering issues of aging, gender must be considered as an integral component. The Census Bureau estimates that the number of women age sixty and older in the world will double between the years 2000 and 2025. In 2000, in developed countries, one in ten persons was a woman age sixty or older. This is projected to increase to one in seven by 2025. While developed countries may have higher pe…
Generational equity refers to the concept that different generations should be treated in similar ways and should have similar opportunities. It is often invoked as an issue by those who criticize the share of societal resources that elderly persons consume today and are predicted to consume in the future, when the baby boomers have retired. According to these critics, a trade-off exists between m…
Genetics is the branch of biology that deals with heredity—the passing of characteristics (traits) from parents to offspring. The genetics of aging deals with the studies of heredity for traits related to aging, such as life span, age at menopause, age at onset of specific diseases in late life (Alzheimer's disease, prostate cancer, etc.), rate of aging (estimated through tests for b…
Ethnicity is a term used for categorizing the highly diverse human populations into more homogeneous and distinct ethnic groups, based on their common ancestry and cultural characteristics. An ethnic group is defined as a category of people that, in a larger population, is set apart (to some extent) and bound together (through preferential intermarriage) by common ties of race, language, national…
Most of the differences between human males and females are based on the chromosomal mechanism of sex determination—two X-chromosomes in females and one X chromosome and one Y chromosome in males. There is a gene on the Y chromosome (called Sry) that encodes a protein (called testis differention factor (TDF)) that is required for testicular development. The testes secrete male sex hormones …
Fundamentally, the science of genetics is concerned with the explanation of differences among organisms. Some theories and methods pertain to the differences among species; others concern the individual differences among members of the same species—the subject matter of this section. Historically, Mendelian genetics was categorical, dealing with individual differences that could be characte…
Genomes contain all the genetic information needed by an organism, regardless of the circumstance or environment. Generally, however, even single-cell organisms use only a fraction of their genome at any time; that is, cells generally express only a fraction of their genome at any given time. This is especially true among the individual cells that make up multicellular organisms, where cell specia…
Researchers have identified numerous longevity genes, variants of which predispose individuals to a longer life span than the average for a species (see Table 1). These gene variants, or alleles, may occur spontaneously in a fraction of the natural population (e.g., human apoE2) or they be created by researchers in laboratory organisms (e.g., mouse p66shc). A subset of longevity genes extends lif…
Studies examining the factors that affect both longevity and the diseases associated with aging have traditionally focused on the interaction of inheritance (genetics) and lifestyle (environment) on adults. Specific genetic backgrounds have been demonstrated to be risk factors for diseases that occur later in adult life, such as some types of cancers and neurodegenerative diseases. Similarly, cert…
Long-lived organisms have had to evolve mechanisms to suppress the development of cancer. These mechanisms are termed tumor suppression mechanisms, and the genes that control them are termed tumor suppressor genes. Tumor suppressor genes promote the development of cancer when they are lost or inactivated. Many genes have been shown to function as tumor suppressors. Most participate in normal cell…
When older adults experience changes in their thinking or judgment, their ability to care for their personal or household needs, finances, or physical health, the whole person is negatively changed. Geriatric assessment units (GAUs) can respond with a perspective from the specialty of aging when one or more of these major areas declines. Most GAUs can provide services for older adults in response …
Geriatric medicine is the study and practice of the medical care of older adults. In the English-speaking world the development of geriatric medicine as a specialty traces its roots to Marjorie Warren in England, in the 1930s. The term "geriatrics" was coined in 1909 by an American, I. L. Nascher, who was struck by parallels with the care of children, pediatrics. Around the world a n…
Geriatric psychiatry is the branch of clinical medicine dedicated to the study and the care of mental disorders in older adults. Such disorders include depression, dementia, delirium, other forms of cognitive impairment and behavioral disturbances, psychosis, anxiety, substance abuse, and sleep disorders. Some of these problems may have come on only in the later years; others may have begun in mid…
More than any other topic in historical gerontology, gerontocracy forces us to distinguish between valid representations and stereotypic images of age and aging, past and present. Our presumptions about the powers ascribed to long life must be tested in light of what we know today about age-grading in various networks as well as the impact of demographic aging on social norms and societal institut…
Gerontological nursing has taken several centuries to become acknowledged as a separate nursing specialty. Its rise should be understood within the context of the emergence and development of the nursing profession generally. Additionally, the growth in the number of older adults, and in the cultural care of elderly persons around the world, must be considered. It is important to note that the pre…
The quest for explanations for why we age is nearly as old as the written record, going back to long before Ponce de Leon's fabled search for the "fountain of youth" in the early 1500s. It was not until the beginning of the twentieth century, however, that the term gerontology emerged. Writing in 1903, the zoologist Élie Metchnikoff noted "it is extremely probable…
Government housing assistance is available to low-income older persons through three major programs: public housing, section 202, and section 8. These programs aim to relieve the housing burden of low-income families, older people, and persons with disabilities (regardless of age). There is no uniform public housing policy solely for older people in the United States. Historically, housing policie…
Grandparenthood is a significant status in the life of many older adults; more than three-fourths of all people aged sixty-five and older are grandparents. It is a kinship status, and, as such, is dependent on the structure and norms of the kinship system. The contours of the grandparental role have changed dramatically over the last century due to demographic and socio-structural factors, and div…
A large body of scientific evidence has accumulated to support the concept that decreases in anabolic hormones that occur with aging contribute to the aging-related decline in tissue function and the aging phenotype. Growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) are two potent anabolic hormones, and decreases in these hormones have been hypothesized to contribute to the loss of muscle an…
Ordinarily the person who will be most directly affected by any particular decision about health care, finances, social services, residential issues, or other personal matters is the person who gets to make that decision. There may be times, however, when that individual is not capable of making and expressing difficult personal choices. In those instances, the legal system may need to intervene o…
"Hair is the crowning glory"—this old double-play of words emphasizes the significance of hair for men and women. From a physiological point of view, hair provides mechanical protection, insulation, and a wick effect for the dispersal of lubricating sebum and sweat over the adjacent skin. The personalization of hair as a means of defining individual (or group) identity is of e…
The health and long-term care service delivery system is compartmentalized. Physicians, usually the primary care physician, are responsible for outpatient care. Inpatient care is usually under the management of a medical specialist, such as a surgeon, cardiologist, or neurologist. Care after the patient leaves the hospital includes home health care, rehabilitation, and skilled nursing home care. T…
Aging naturally entails changes in physical, cognitive, and social capacities. Many of these changes, such as declining strength, difficulty remembering, or bereavement from the death of friends and loved ones, are experienced as a kind of loss. Experiences of loss can affect one's health negatively, but some people maintain a positive health attitude despite these unwelcome events, which g…
One key feature of a health system is health insurance. Health insurance allows individuals to share the risk of any large costs due to illness, and provides a structure by which individuals are linked with health care services. Although insured individuals often pay fees to obtain medicine or to see a doctor, health insurance pays for a large portion of medical costs. Typically, health care insur…
To understand the connection between social factors and health, it is necessary to examine the average level of health of aging people in one social group and then compare this to the average level of health of those in another social group. One's social situation can be examined in several ways including marital status, social class, religiousness, and relationships with others. If the hea…
The auditory system changes as a consequence of the aging process, as well as a result of exposure to environmental agents and disease. The cumulative effect of these factors over the life span is a significant hearing loss among a large proportion of adults aged sixty-five years and older. Hearing loss associated exclusively with the aging process is known as presbycusis. Deterioration of the aud…
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of mortality worldwide. As cigarette smoking continues An older man rides an exercise bike while taking an aerobic capacity test, one of a number of cardiac tests that can be used to determine if the warning signs of heart disease are present. (Photo Researchers, Inc.) to be a status symbol in developing countries, this ranking is expected to con…
For thousands of years, plants have been a source of medicinal agents. Many of the drugs we use today still come from plants, for example, morphine (opium poppy), digoxin (foxglove), and atropine (datura) to mention a few. In recent years, there has been much interest on the part of the general public about herbalism, often as part of an alternative/ complementary form of health care. A renewed in…
Although diastolic blood pressure is considered an important risk factor for cerebrovascular disease, congestive heart failure, and coronary heart disease, it is now clear that isolated systolic hypertension and elevated pulse pressure also play an important role in the development of these diseases, which are the major causes of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality among subjects over sixty-fiv…
Hip fractures, particularly in frail elderly persons, have a profound effect on morbidity, mortality, and length of hospitalization, and they are a significant risk factor for institutionalization. With the age of the world's population ever increasing, hip fractures will constitute an increasingly large health, social and economic burden. A coordinated multidisciplinary approach, including…
As people get older, two major challenges impact on their ability to engage in everyday tasks. The first is a gradual decline in hearing, vision, and mobility (which includes walking, and movement of the arms and body). The second challenge is a high probability, which increases with age, of having one or more chronic diseases, such as arthritis, cataracts, or heart disease. These chronic diseases…
Services delivered in the homes of older adults have become an increasingly popular form of care in recent years. Such services allow older persons to remain in the familiar surroundings of their homes and neighborhoods, thus avoiding the trauma that can be associated with relocation and entry into a nursing home or related facility. In-home services, by definition, are based in the community and …
As health care costs continue to increase and the trend toward consumerism in health care accelerates, older adults are seeking more information about the health care options available to them. In many cases they are also thinking about how they will handle their future long-term care needs. Though home health care can address many short-term and long-term health problems, it is often overlooked o…
Prior to the current crisis (which began in 1980 when the number of homeless persons started to increase dramatically), definitions of homelessness included persons residing in substandard housing, such as single-room occupancy A homeless elderly woman is assisted by a Salvation Army volunteer at one of that organization's many food centers throughout the United States. For many senior citize…
For most of history medical care has been provided in the home, in most cases by family A home health care worker leans forward to take the blood pressure of an elderly woman in a wheelchair. Home visits make it much easier for many older people to receive medical care. (Corbis Corporation) members or neighbors and in more dire situations by physicians. With the rise of the modern hospital…
Hospice care was introduced in the United States in 1974 in response to the growing concern about the medicalization of dying. The first hospice in the United States was the Connecticut Hospice in New Haven. At that time, within health care, the emphasis was on curing illnesses and prolonging life, often at tremendous cost and with limited input from the seriously ill person. Patients typically vi…
Housing plays a vital role in the lives of older adults due to the amount of time they spend at home and their desire to age in place. The features of housing are strong determinants of safety and ability to get out into the community. In addition, the cost of housing is a major expenditure for most older adults. The aging of the population necessitates a broad array of housing alternatives that p…
Any discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of age-segregated housing must be placed within the context of several important facts. Ninety percent of older adults live independently in age-integrated communities. Age-segregated housing options are marked by great diversity, ranging from inner-city housing projects to trailer parks to upscale continuing care retirement communities. Elders wh…
A long time ago a wise woman said, "Everybody needs a place to stay." That includes the elderly members of society. Housing for older people is often ill defined and poorly understood; most people think of high-rise buildings or subsidized projects that older people move into when their neighborhoods are lost to urban development. In reality, there exists great diversity among senior…
Although most older people live active and relatively healthy lives, increased age is associated with changes in certain abilities, such as vision, hearing, and memory, that make it difficult for some older people to perform tasks such as driving, using equipment such as computers, or remembering to take medications. Furthermore, older people are more likely to suffer from some type of chronic dis…
The mass media's neglect of older people—and the often distorted presentation of elders as uniformly robust "golden years" retirees on the golf course—is generally regarded as regrettable, but financially understandable. Economic interests in news, entertainment, and advertising are used to rationalize the marketplace bias against anything more than an incidental…
Immigration had an important influence on the American population during the last third of the twentieth century comparable to peaks in the earliest decades of the century. In 1997, for example, nearly 800,000 persons immigrated legally to the United States. In that year, the mean age of native-born American adults eighteen and over was virtually identical to that of long-term immigrants (45.1 and…
The immune system provides the body with resistance to disease. Innate immunity is furnished by relatively nonspecific mechanisms, such as the rapid inflammation experienced shortly after injury or infection. In contrast to innate mechanisms that hinder the entrance and initial spread of disease, adaptive immunity is more selective in its activity, and upon repeated exposures to pathogens can ofte…
Observations in animal models have substantially advanced our knowledge of immune system adaptation, changes during the aging process, and age-associated degenerative diseases with autoimmune characteristics. …
The immune system is an intricate network of cells and tissues that resists invasion from infectious agents (pathogens) and combats environmental stresses that induce allergic reactions, viral infections, infectious diseases, autoimmune syndromes, and cancer. The body eradicates foreign substances using innate (natural or nonspecific) and adaptive (acquired or specific) immune responses. Innate im…
Means-tested and social insurance programs have evolved to provide income support to people who cannot, or are not expected to, support themselves. Thanks to old-age income protection schemes, typically referred to as social security, growing numbers of men and women around the world face an economically secure old age free of work. Between 1940 and 1999, the number of countries with programs that…
An Individual Retirement Account (IRA) provides some form of tax advantage to assets held by an individual until retirement, with certain exceptions. Despite the recent trend toward the use of the 401(k) and similar plans, the IRA is still a valuable tool for retirement planning and other goals. The types of IRAs are traditional, Roth, education, SEP, and SIMPLE; all of them use one of two forms o…
Social inequality encompasses relatively long-lasting differences between groups of people and has considerable implications for individuals, especially "for the rights or opportunities they exercise and the rewards or privileges they enjoy" (Grabb, 1997, pp. 1–2). Most studies of social inequality consider gaps in income and assets between advantaged and disadvantaged groups …
Influenza is an acute respiratory illness caused by infection with influenza type A or B virus. It typically occurs in outbreaks over a five-to six-week period each winter. Each year, hundreds of thousands of excess hospitalizations, tens of thousands of excess deaths, and billions of dollars in health care costs can be attributed to influenza and its complications. Attack rates can Nurse J…
Empirical work in geropsychology began in the early part of the twentieth century with the observation that there were apparent declines in intellectual performance when groups of young and old persons were compared on the same tasks. This early work was done primarily with measures designed for assessing children or young adults. The intellectual processes used in the development of cognitive str…
One of the most salient aspects of the relationship between aging parents and their adult children is the nature and extent of exchanges of goods, services, and support. No matter what their age, parents and children occasionally need help; most of time, family members are asked first. Exchanges between parents and children are embedded in family and kinship relationships. The focus here will be o…
The term intergenerational justice refers to the ethical problem of distributing scarce resources between different age groups in a society. For example, intergenerational justice is at stake when societies debate how much of their scarce resources should be devoted to areas such as education that primarily benefit the young, versus programs such as social security or Medicare that benefit older m…
The large number of Internet sites related to aging has both simplified and complicated electronic information retrieval. Many government, professional, trade, and consumer organizations maintain informational pages on aging on the World Wide Web. In addition, nearly every institution of higher learning has its own site—with links to countless others. Commercial websites are available, rang…
Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) is a time-limited psychotherapy originally developed for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD). Since its development, it has also been used as a treatment for other psychiatric disorders. IPT focuses on interpersonal relationships because clinical observations and research have documented that depression can be triggered by problems in human relationsh…
An intervention involves actions that alter, or are intended to alter, relationships between observable phenomena. Prototypical characteristics of intervention studies include a clearly defined starting and ending point, a detailed manual describing the intervention protocol, one or more postintervention outcome measures, and a baseline measure or comparison group against which individuals exposed…
The State of Israel was established after the Holocaust, in 1948, as a Jewish and democratic state. One of its declared goals was to become the renewed homeland, open to Jews from all over the world. Since then, Israel has absorbed immigrants from about one hundred countries. Most of them came in large waves during short periods of time as other countries opened their gates for emigration. The dem…
At the start of the twenty-first century, 17 percent of the Japanese population was age sixty-five or older—a proportion matched only by Belgium, Greece, Italy, and Sweden, and surpassed by Monaco with 22 percent. What sets Japan even further apart from the rest of the world is the speed with which this aging has occurred. For example, it took Sweden eighty-five years to increase from 7 per…
What is the relationship between age and job performance? The average age of people in the workforce is getting higher, with increasing numbers of middle-aged and older workers employed in many different jobs (Fullerton; Johnston and Packer). Thus, it is important to know whether job performance is higher or lower for older workers in comparison with younger workers. Most reviews of empirical rese…
The kidneys sit, one on each side of the midline, high in the back of the abdomen—so high in fact that their top halves fall under the lower end of the rib cage. The chief roles of the kidneys are filtration of blood, reabsorption of key chemicals, excretion of fluid and waste metabolites, and the maintenance of acid/base balance, but they also have important glandular (endocrine) functions…
The term kin refers to one's relatives or one's family. The nuclear family consists of parents and dependent children (a structure often complicated today by divorce and remarriage). Families become more complex when children reach adulthood, marry, and have children; they then include children-in-law and parents-in-law, grandchildren and grandparents. Sisters and brothers grow up to…
