Reclaiming the word "Senile"

The other definition of senile is “pertaining to old age”.  Senile is not “being demented.” That mistake comes from the earlier definition of dementia when in 1895 Arnold Pick identified premature dementia as separate from dementia of old people—senile dementia. Later of course, Emil Kraeplein defined Alzheimer’s dementia, which quickly separated old  (senile) dementia from young (Alzheimer’s disease) dementia. But we still confuse “senile” with “dementia”.

The single most important factor that accelerates aging is negativity—our own and other people’s. In the blue zones we see people living past 100 years of age. Twenty years more than the average, nearly a quarter of a life more. What they do not have in these zones is negative stereotypes.  Although stereotypes exist for everyone—race, gender, sexual preference, size, height, intelligence and even geographic residence—for older adults it is transient and develops fast and have little time to develop resilience.

Richard Eibach from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada and his colleagues explained how older people internalize negative stereotypes. In one study the authors asked older adults to read text that had small type and low contrast. Some participants were told that the lack of clarity was due to a photocopying problem, while the rest received no explanation. Older adults that did not receive an explanation reported feeling 10 years older than the participants who had an explanation. And it is not just about feeling old but that they associated feeling old as a negative. Accepting the term “old” you accept an omnibus of negative stereotypes.

Thomas Hess and his colleagues from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC explored how stereotypes create a world of negative memes. There is a self-fulfilling prophesy. When older adults encounter negative stereotypes about age-related cognitive decline, their memory performance decreases, rate their own health as being worse than others, and rate themselves as lonelier.  Stereotypes play a significant self-fulfilling role in diagnosis as well. Physicians who have been primed about the connection between memory loss and dementia—and it is now everywhere in the media—diagnosed 70% of their older adult patients who reported having memory problems, as having dementia rather than 14% when there was no stereotype.

And the stereotype does not have to be transmitted negatively. Even providing assistance while completing a puzzle—implicitly suggesting that they need help—resulted in decreased performance over time, whereas those older adults who were only provided with verbal encouragement showed increased performance over time. Don't let others patronize. Lets take over the concept of senile again. That pertaining to old age is not a negative. Be aware of accepting such negative judgments and of making them about yourself.  We can reverse this process by starting with recognizing that senile does not have to be a negative term.

© USA Copyrighted 2014 Mario D. Garrett