Ageism and Mental Health Funding

Something I have run into in our society is a seemingly widespread belief that mental health services are primarily for younger people and not older individuals. I have heard people say that older people have had their chances and that mental dianabolos 10 health funding should go to young people where it can make a bigger difference. While I love young people, and think that kids need and deserve a lot of support, I also am saddened to think that there is a bias towards older people not getting mental health help.

This attitude seems to reflect our youth-oriented culture which emphasizes staying young in order to be important. Where is the care and compassion and respect due to our elders? The aging journey very often brings up old fears, old triggers of insecurity, old pains, old losses even from childhood. Why should older individuals – who have given to their communities all of their lives – not  benefit from compassionate support as they continue their life journeys? Where is our culture’s realization that we need to hear the stories our older folks can tell us in order to gain from their wisdom and experience?

It seems to me as I grow older that I see our society having a shorter and shorter collective memory. After one year is over, we tend to go on and focus on immediate problems and immediate gains, forgetting the lessons we might have learned from what happened earlier.

While our country’s economy has been severely impacted in recent years, it has been enormously helpful to me to listen to elders’ tips about how they got through the trying years of the Great Depression and WWII. As Joan Erikson explained once, “wisdom” is not necessarily about knowing “why” but about knowing “how”.

I hope that a fair portion of mental health funding allocated by government at different levels will go to mental health services for older people. It  behooves us to take care of our elders, to listen to their stories and to afford them the respect they deserve. They are survivors. We need them. We can learn things from them!