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ADVANCING OUR UNDERSTANDING OF ELDERHOOD: A NARRATIVE REVIEW

There are relatively few explorations of later life in the peer reviewed gerontological literature that holistically embrace the duality of potential and decline. This is in striking contrast to a growing body of non-scholarly literature, frequently authored by elders, displaying deep interest in th...

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Autores principales: Inker, Jenny, Gendron, Tracey, Brooks, Marshall
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6841265/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igz038.2562
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author Inker, Jenny
Gendron, Tracey
Brooks, Marshall
author_facet Inker, Jenny
Gendron, Tracey
Brooks, Marshall
author_sort Inker, Jenny
collection PubMed
description There are relatively few explorations of later life in the peer reviewed gerontological literature that holistically embrace the duality of potential and decline. This is in striking contrast to a growing body of non-scholarly literature, frequently authored by elders, displaying deep interest in the phenomenon of elderhood, i.e. the holistic, lived experience of later life. We conducted a narrative review with the aim of describing the state of the science with regard to the bio-psycho-social-spiritual experience of elderhood. Following a search of multiple databases for English language, peer reviewed articles published from 2000-2017, we identified 24 articles in the disciplines of gerontology, anthropology, psychology, the humanities, and spirituality studies, reflecting elderhood in Eastern and Western cultures. While the articles offered no shared operational definition of elderhood, nor applied any unifying conceptual or theoretical structures, several common themes emerged. These included the description of elderhood as both inward facing (inner development) and outward facing (social contributions of elders). Numerous articles also recognized that ageism socially mediates the experience of elderhood, resulting in a failure of social systems and structures to recognize or provide opportunities for lifelong growth in later years, including a lack of mentors and role models for individuals transitioning into elderhood. This review demonstrates that there is a compelling need for the discipline of gerontology to strengthen our understanding of the phenomenon of elderhood by leading on the development and implementation of theoretically driven empirical research into the subject of the holistic, lived experience of later life.
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spelling pubmed-68412652019-11-13 ADVANCING OUR UNDERSTANDING OF ELDERHOOD: A NARRATIVE REVIEW Inker, Jenny Gendron, Tracey Brooks, Marshall Innov Aging Session 3340 (Poster) There are relatively few explorations of later life in the peer reviewed gerontological literature that holistically embrace the duality of potential and decline. This is in striking contrast to a growing body of non-scholarly literature, frequently authored by elders, displaying deep interest in the phenomenon of elderhood, i.e. the holistic, lived experience of later life. We conducted a narrative review with the aim of describing the state of the science with regard to the bio-psycho-social-spiritual experience of elderhood. Following a search of multiple databases for English language, peer reviewed articles published from 2000-2017, we identified 24 articles in the disciplines of gerontology, anthropology, psychology, the humanities, and spirituality studies, reflecting elderhood in Eastern and Western cultures. While the articles offered no shared operational definition of elderhood, nor applied any unifying conceptual or theoretical structures, several common themes emerged. These included the description of elderhood as both inward facing (inner development) and outward facing (social contributions of elders). Numerous articles also recognized that ageism socially mediates the experience of elderhood, resulting in a failure of social systems and structures to recognize or provide opportunities for lifelong growth in later years, including a lack of mentors and role models for individuals transitioning into elderhood. This review demonstrates that there is a compelling need for the discipline of gerontology to strengthen our understanding of the phenomenon of elderhood by leading on the development and implementation of theoretically driven empirical research into the subject of the holistic, lived experience of later life. Oxford University Press 2019-11-08 /pmc/articles/PMC6841265/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igz038.2562 Text en © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Session 3340 (Poster)
Inker, Jenny
Gendron, Tracey
Brooks, Marshall
ADVANCING OUR UNDERSTANDING OF ELDERHOOD: A NARRATIVE REVIEW
title ADVANCING OUR UNDERSTANDING OF ELDERHOOD: A NARRATIVE REVIEW
title_full ADVANCING OUR UNDERSTANDING OF ELDERHOOD: A NARRATIVE REVIEW
title_fullStr ADVANCING OUR UNDERSTANDING OF ELDERHOOD: A NARRATIVE REVIEW
title_full_unstemmed ADVANCING OUR UNDERSTANDING OF ELDERHOOD: A NARRATIVE REVIEW
title_short ADVANCING OUR UNDERSTANDING OF ELDERHOOD: A NARRATIVE REVIEW
title_sort advancing our understanding of elderhood: a narrative review
topic Session 3340 (Poster)
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6841265/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igz038.2562
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