Uticopa Blog

In so many ways our lives today are a vast improvement over those of our grandmothers’.  We now have technology to fulfil our every need, and even some systems – like the much-vaunted ‘Cloud’ with its ‘big brother’ aspects – which George Orwell himself could not have imagined.

But in some ways, we still have much to learn from our forebears.  Yes, life was harder in their day. However, the essential difference was in how they dealt with each other. They knew how to recognise, respect and deal with old age, in all its forms and frailties. 

One can only wonder when that attitude is contrasted with today’s much-hyped media bombardment of all that is young, beautiful and famous.  For females, in particular, to be seen as old today is catastrophic!  Just ask Arlene Phillips, Selina Scott, Moira Stewart to name but a few. Many are the women who are forced to resort to plastic surgery, foolishly to keep up the appearance of youth. The media instil a fear of growing old within us with daily articles about how to look young and eliminate wrinkles.

Old age is not a disease:  it is but a natural part of life.

And when we look at issues commonly associated with later old age, like dementia, so many care-homes have no idea of how to treat their patients.  Famously, Sir Michael Parkinson was appointed to the Government’s Dignity in Care campaign, following the appalling treatment of his late mother, who developed dementia in her nineties. 

He saw that so many care homes treated their patients as decrepit ‘vegetables’. Yes, they were usually cleaned and fed (and even these basic requirements weren’t always done properly), but were given no dignity.  Even more importantly, the residents needed to have their minds stimulated.  Carers need to be trained to be aware of each individual’s past life so that healthy conversations can be undertaken.

The better care homes have started to provide items from the residents’ youth, such as typewriters and other objects that made up their earlier lives.  This is a useful stimulus for the residents as well as reminding the carers that these are people just like them, many of whom had led often busy and amazing lives.

In medicine, there is still much to be learned about mental illness, especially common afflictions of old age like dementia.  Certainly in the more severe forms of Alzheimer’s, there is a gradual loss of the protein filaments that string together different parts of the brain processes.  But, it is generally believed – and certainly in the earlier stages of dementia – that regular mental stimulation can have very beneficial effects.

And society’s treatment of old people in general?  There needs to be a marked sea-change in attitude. We need to give old people, whether relatively healthy or stricken with disease, a dignified place in society, not neglect them as happens all too frequently at present.

All of us need to review our attitudes to how we view old people and mental illness. We will all be old one day. Society’s attitudes must change.