The International Day of the Elderly was marked on October 1. A series of activities, spanning a whole week, were held by the National Council of the Elderly. President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca also paid a courtesy visit on three residents of the home for the elderly in Żejtun:, a male aged 102 years and two females who are 100 years old.
That’s a perfect example of a rapidly growing tribe: older people. Of course, old age is nothing new. There have always been those outliers who lived far beyond their allotted years. When Queen Victoria died in 1901 at the age of 81, her subjects’ life expectancy was just 48. But a population with hundreds of thousands of people with an extended average lifespan makes for uncharted territory. Just how well are we prepared for a society where the majority could live far beyond a century?
Global trends indicate quite significant increases in the older population.
Old age brings its own problems, including dementia, which is on the rise
Over the last 40 years, life expectancy in Malta rose from 70 years in 1971 to 80.75 years in 2012; in the UK it went up from 71.13 years in 1961 to 80.75 years in 2011. In China, life expectancy stands at 73.49 years, compared to just 43.46 years in 1960.
That adds up to an increased life expectancy worldwide of about five hours for every 24 hours. That means that if we speak again at the same time tomorrow, life expectancy will be five hours longer.
It’s a strange dichotomy that, though we fear death, we shy away from the idea of a longer life. A ‘dementia time bomb’, an unsustainable caring load on the State or a health service struggling to cope with wards full of older people having expensive life-extending treatment have all been mooted as consequences of living longer.
A longer lifespan does not necessarily mean spending your extra years in the twilight of the nursing home. Consultant geriatrician Finbarr Martin says: “Think of your life as an elastic band held between your hands. The last inch to the right is grey – your life as an older person. Stretch it out wider and you’ll see that the whole thing is stretched and the grey inch is now two inches.”
The life events of the last three to four years of life are not being stretched out in proportion to life expectancy being stretched out, he notes. “So instead of 60 years plus three years of grief, we’ve got 80 years and four years of grief. Though it’s not quite as simple as that, as about half the extra years you’ve got past post-65 are with extra reported disability. Half those years are a free bonus. The other half is very old age lasting a bit longer.”
It is a fact that old age brings its own problems. One of the biggest is dementia, which is on the rise. It is estimated that there were 25 million people worldwide who were suffering from dementia in 2005, rising to 35 million five years later. It’s projected that there will be almost 80 million people suffering from dementia worldwide by 2040.
In the earlier stages of the illness, people with the right support are able to function pretty independently. However, as the disease progresses, more help is needed for things like stettling bills and doing shopping. People lose the ability to do personal things, like washing or going to the toilet.
Behavioural symptoms emerge. People can become restless, aggressive and suspicious. That can make it very difficult to look after people at home.
If successive governments do not plan for higher rates of dementia, then the situation is going to be unmanageable.
Dementia research is still lacking. There are 716 clinical trials for cancer and about 20 for Alzheimer’s that are officially registered.
If you are over 60, the two conditions are probably equally common and you are probably more likely to die with Alzheimer’s than with cancer.
A lot of public surveys now suggest that dementia is one of the things that people are most frightened of.
An ageing population also has implications beyond the practical. The very structure of families will change. The ‘sandwich generation’ – older parents caring for their children and their increasingly frail older parents simultaneously – is already common parlance.
The “beanpole family”, says Karen Glaser, reader in gerontology, is becoming the norm. “It’s family verticalisation. You are much more likely to have different generations alive. If you’re a child, you’re much more likely to have grandparents. What you don’t have are as many cousins. So intergenerational relationships will become even more important.”
Older people contribute a huge amount to society. They run societies and clubs, they work, they provide care in the home.
Problems in old age are also not inevitable. A healthy lifestyle can reduce chances of developing dementia by 15 to 20 per cent. People should be encouraged to changing their habits. A healthy old age is, in part, due to attitude. It is an axiom that you live for others, look after yourself and don’t get stressed.
Herbert Messina Ferrante is Malta’s representative on the European Senior Citizens’ Union.