Mental health articles

Elderly Mental Health Concerns: education.Rates of education have been increasing in many countries of the developing world and should continueto rise. Literacy rates vary from country tocountry. In the poorest countries more than two-thirds of the population are functionally illiterate, with higher rates of literacy among younger members of the population. Illiteracy is almost always higheramong women than men. In 1990 in low in comecountries, the average rate of illiteracy among women was 30% higher than among men, but the gap isclosing in many countries for younger age groups.

Education levels relate to the mental health of the elderly in two ways:

(1) when the elderly themselves have receivedformal education, which has positive effects;and

(2) when the young are educated and the elderlyare not, which can have negative effects.

Elderly Mental Health Concerns: education.Education in early life improves the well-being ofthe elderly. Longevity correlates positively with education, both because education enhances theindividual's economic prospects, and because it helpspeople adapt to socioeconomic changes. On theother hand, when younger members of the society havereceived formal education, they often feel they haveless of a role in the agriculturally based, traditionalsociety and migrate to cities, most oftenleaving the elderly behind.

When younger members begin to receive education,elderly uneducated members find themselves in asociety that no longer values their knowledge andexperience in the same way as before. A lack of respect from younger familymembers bears psychological, social and economicrepercussions for the elderly. For example,according to Dorjahn, the elderly Temne of SierraLeone felt 'short-changed' in the sense that the"knowledge they had gained was not always regardedas valuable by the young, increasingly coopted byknowledge gained through Western schooling . . . ". Furthermore, Cattell says that amongthe Samia of Kenya, even though the elderly generallyreceived good care, they often complained "that young people 'don't want to hear what we old people have totell them, they just go to books'".After fieldwork in different parts of Africa, and particularly in a Bambara village in Mali, Rosenmayrconcluded that contact with aspects of Western society,especially formal education, created a situation where"children learned to become critical of the old powerfigures in their villages". He believes that afunda mental change in the social fabric of the villageis occurring, as the principle of 'seniority,' throughwhich elders have traditionally received their socialstatus and power, declines.

As explained earlier in the description of Fig. 1,access to education, place of residence (i.e. urban vsrural) and the nature of the economy (i.e. level ofindustrialization) are intimately linked, and together asa group, they affect sociocultural norms regarding theelderly. According to Levine, after massiveexpansion of public education infrastructure in Mexicoin the 1970s, parents have invested more in theirchildren's education; yet, an attitudinal survey amongschoolchildren in a poor urban area and a longitudinalstudy of 18 families revealed that children often feltthey did not owe their parents anything in a materialsense. Seventy-two percent of mothers of childbearingage surveyed in a rural area expected their children tosupport them in old age and widowhood in comparisonto only 26 % of the urban sample. Levine concludes that social change linked to urban residence and educationhas led to a situation in which "transactions which, inan earlier rural generation, were based on a sense ofparental right on one side and filial obligation on theother, now depend to a far greater extent on thecapacity of the aging parent to demonstrate his or hervalue to adult children". Another examplecomes from Taiwan, where the gradual industrializationof the urban economy has attracted a steadystream of young rural migrants. In order to preparetheir children for higher paying urban employment,parents in the rural, agricultural environment sendthem to high school and college in urban areas.The elderly villagers view the knowledge of theirchildren as superior to their own, and when the youth return home on vacation they are notcalled upon to participate in work on the farm, despitethe high cost of paid labor. The eventual consequencesof these changes in Taiwanese society for the elderlyinclude a shortage of manual and domestic labor in therural environment, a longer working life and a lack ofrespect from the young.

 

Tags: elderly, Health, mental, Mental health