FRHD 3060 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Gerontology, Geriatrics, Infant Mortality
4 Oct 2016
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Week 1: getting started: principles of social gerontology. Gerontology vs. geriatrics: gerontology is the study of aging processes, individuals and practices and policies designed to assist older adults, geriatrics is a subset of medicine that focuses on physical and mental diseases of late life. Aging begins at birth, not just a late life phenomenon. When we talk about older adults we"re talking about a huge group of people: diversity in age, experience, abilities, culture etc. Age is socially constructed: context matters; different places value age or youth, associations with age are socially identified. Chronological: the exact number of years you have been alive, one birthday to another; passing of time. Biological: how our body changes, physiological changes that are programmed to happen in our bodies over time. Not necessarily in sync with chronological age. Graying of hair, bone mass changes, reduction in growth hormones etc. Psychological: changes in memory, learning ability, emotional states.
