Scribd
Upload
1K views3 pages

The Field and Scope of Geropsychology

Geropsychology is a subfield of developmental psychology that deals with physical, cognitive, and psychosocial development in late adulthood and old age. It seeks to address mental health issues like depression and anxiety that are related to aging. Geropsychology emerged after World War II as lifespans increased and there was a need to help older adults with age-related problems. Recent developments include increased research publications on topics like cognitive aging and models of selective optimization with compensation in late life development. Geropsychology covers a broad scope, including issues like substance abuse, dementia, end-of-life transitions, chronic illness, and mental health challenges in older populations.

Uploaded by

satyag24
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
1K views3 pages

The Field and Scope of Geropsychology

Geropsychology is a subfield of developmental psychology that deals with physical, cognitive, and psychosocial development in late adulthood and old age. It seeks to address mental health issues like depression and anxiety that are related to aging. Geropsychology emerged after World War II as lifespans increased and there was a need to help older adults with age-related problems. Recent developments include increased research publications on topics like cognitive aging and models of selective optimization with compensation in late life development. Geropsychology covers a broad scope, including issues like substance abuse, dementia, end-of-life transitions, chronic illness, and mental health challenges in older populations.

Uploaded by

satyag24
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 3

Geropsychology: The Field and

its Scope
-G. Satya
Geropsychology is the subfield in developmental psychology
which deals with the physical, cognitive and psychosocial
development in late adulthood or old age and seeks to remedy
mental disorders, anxiety, depression and other age related
illnesses that may have some psychological basis.
Geropsychology: how it emerged as a field?
Geropsychology is a relatively new field among the others in
developmental psychology. The research publications started
pouring in the post world war II era (because of increased
longevity of adults and the rising need to help them with agerelated problems). It was a very a slow emerging field in the 20 th
century, trailing behind child development by about 50 years.
Francis Galton, though he did not produce much further influence,
in his 1884 health exhibit found that slowness of reaction time
with age was associated with CNS rather than peripheral sensory
changes. Another contributing factor were the various schools of
thought such as behaviorism and psychoanalysis providing
explanations for personality of the aged as product of early
rewards and punishments and early emotional experiences
structuring the predisposition respectively.
A negative influence was the little exploration of Jean Piaget, the
Swiss psychologist who proposed the stages of cognitive
development which abruptly ended at adolescence. It was
concluded by him that further cognitive changes would not be
there. The Work of Kohlberg had a positive influence as it studied
progressive stages of moral development with age. Erik Eriksons

eight psychosocial stages of development provided another


positive influence.
G. S. Hall provided little encouragement in the studies of old age.
He conducted interviews with older adults and found that there is
a shift in attitudes towards
death as age progresses which are still relevant such as assisted
death and euthanasia.
The first organized attempt to study this age group was at
Stanford University in 1927-32 by Walter Miles. After several other
small positive influences, a division was devoted to psychology of
aging in American Psychological association by Sydney Pressey.
Recent developments in Geropsychology have seen a dramatic
increase in research. Riegel(1997) did a quantitative analysis of
publications under the topic psychological gerontology. Thus in 1
year, 1969, almost as many articles and book s were published as
in the entire pre-World War II period. Birren was the first to study
systematically the age-related slowing of behavior as a
fundamental characteristic of aging. The works of Baltes and his
colleagues in 1980 resulted in a psychological model called
Selective optimization with compensation. Other recent
developments include studies of organization of behavior over the
course of life from a gerontological perspective such as
gerodynamics.
The methods used in studies of aging are longitudinal studies and
twin studies. Schaie(1986) proposed analysis of data into three
components i.e. APC-Age, Period and Cohort.
The scope of Geropsychology:
Geropsychology, in itself, is a large field with various
specializations.
Substance abuse among older adults

Cognitive disorders, such as Alzheimers disease/dementia


Elderly individuals dealing with life transitions, such as loss of
independence, relocation, not being able to work, isolation (due to
many peers having passed away).
Older adults dealing with chronic physical illness/disease, such
as arthritis, heart disease and cancer.
Depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, PTSD, psychosis and
other mental illnesses.
Support for individuals and their loved
ones/caregivers.approaching death
Sleep Disorders
Socio-economic and multicultural demographics
How aging differenciates from one cohort to the next.
Impact on caregivers
Spirituality and religion
The process of aging is far more complex and requires information
from various disciplines not merely from psychology (eg:
genetics, epidemiology, physiology etc) and being a relatively
new field requires a lot of further exploration.

References
Geropsycholgist-Goropsychology http://psychologycareers.com/geropsychologist/

You might also like