Gerontophobia: What It Is, Characteristics And Causes
There is much we can learn from our elders. Their experiences, their values and their wisdom are treasures that older people can share with new generations.
We should all value this stage of the life cycle, since if luck is on our side we will all reach old age one day, and we do not want to be treated badly when we are old.
Unfortunately, today there are still certain attitudes and behaviors that are anything but respectful towards our elderly people. The fear of getting older and discrimination against people in old age is called gerontophobia a problem that we will delve into below.
Third age is natural, a period that most of us want to reach since it is synonymous with having had a long life. Everyone can consider reaching one age or another as old age, but it is usually agreed that we begin to be old when we surpass the magical age of 65, an age at which in many countries coincides with that of retirement.
Living to that age implies having had many experiences, acquired a lot of knowledge and having reached a high level of reflection and maturity All older people have something to teach the youth, knowledge that we should not underestimate. As much as they may seem like “little battles” to us, the exploits and stories of older people can be a great source of knowledge for us and a great relief and feeling of being useful for them.
However, the attitude of many people towards the elderly is a mixture of fear and boredom. many young people They treat older people with animosity, seeing them as individuals who are no longer useful and who only bother Others see old age as an illness, a period in which everything declines, and they make every effort to look young forever. These behaviors are behaviors typical of gerontophobia, the rejection of everything related to elderly people.
But aging is not a disease, but a privilege that life grants us. Reaching old age is something we should all aspire to, wishing that nothing happens to us before it ends our lives. And of course, we also want to be treated with the same respect when we are older as we were when we were young. Emmanuel Kant argued that all human beings, including the elderly, deserve special and dignified treatment for being who they are, for being human beings like any other.
Gerontophobia: specific phobia and discriminatory attitude
In a clinical sense, gerontophobia can be defined as the pathological fear of aging, in addition to an excessive, irrational and persistent fear of elderly people or everything related to them. Defined in this way, this phobia would meet the characteristics to be considered a specific phobia and, therefore, an anxiety disorder as they appear in the DSM-5.
People who suffer from gerontophobia first show an intense anguish towards the passage of time and the fact of getting older This fear goes beyond simple physical change, but includes a series of fears of diverse nature and complexity:
People with this type of specific phobia associate the passage of time on their body with the absolute loss of attributes, including beauty, intelligence and independence. They deeply fear ceasing to be valid people on their own and having to be helped to move forward. In order to avoid seeing how old age takes its toll on their body, those who suffer from this specific phobia are capable of compulsively undergoing surgical operations to appear eternally youthful.
But although it has characteristics typical of a specific phobia, gerontophobia is better known as a social attitude in the form of discrimination towards elderly people and everything associated with them. That is, we say that a person is gerontophobic when rejects elderly people, discriminates against and belittles people who have reached a certain age or look old This attitude has a lot to do with ageism, which is discriminating against people based on their age, whether they are younger or older than the person discriminating.
Where does this fear of old age come from?
Stereotypes associated with the elderly abound. Gerontophobic prejudices are nourished by the social image of the elderly as that person with gray hair and wrinkles who cannot stand without a cane, needs a walker to walk, and even requires the help of a caregiver to eat and do their homework. needs. From a young age we are instilled with the stereotype that this is what older people are like, fragile and annoying.
We do not learn these stereotypes explicitly, but through references in the media and in the family environment We attribute old age as something bad from what we see in movies, books, television and we even find them in the form of very bad taste jokes on birthday cards. Our language is a reflection of this, since words like “old man”, “elderly” or “grandfather” are usually accompanied by a multitude of negative connotations.
Old age is seen as an irreversible state of decline, older people are seen as beings who have lost their human condition and value, becoming a burden on society, while youth is seen as an indisputable synonym of beauty, happiness and productivity. . This stereotypical and negative view of people who reach old age is undoubtedly a social attitude that encourages and feeds gerontophobia serving as a breeding ground for them to suffer more discrimination and victimization.
There are several beliefs in which a person with gerontophobia believes in the sense of social discrimination.
But It is not necessary to have this specific phobia and/or discriminatory social attitude to engage in gerontophobic behavior Gerontophobia is the result of a series of behaviors and beliefs widespread in collective thinking about what older people are like and how they should be treated. These attitudes manifest themselves in subtle ways, such as not hiring qualified people from the elderly, ignoring the somatic complaints of elderly patients in medical consultations by attributing their ailments to aging, or speaking in a paternalistic tone to an elderly person. .
In its most serious nature, gerontophobia is hatred towards elderly people, a pathological rejection of old age that comes from ignorance and that is as serious for Western societies as sexism, racism, xenophobia and LGTBIphobia. The gerontophobe can even have supremacist behavior towards elderly people, which of all the types of discrimination that exists, this is the one that makes the least sense since, unless he does something to avoid it, sooner or later it will become what you fear most, since we all grow old.
