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Highlighting and Reducing the Impact of Negative Aging Stereotypes During Older Adults' Cognitive Testing
Published on: January 24, 2020
[Impact of double stigmatization in oncogeriatry: reviewing existing data]
Sarah Schroyen1, Stéphane Adam1, Guy Jerusalem2
1Unité de psychologie de la sénescence, Université de Liège, Belgique.
Abstract:
Cancer is a major health problem for which age is a proved risk factor. Paradoxically, elderly suffering from cancer are often excluded from clinical trials and undertreated compared to younger patients. Also, their psychosocial needs remain unknown. An explanatory factor for these observations is the age stigma (that is to say our stereotypes about age and so, ageism), age being currently cited as the main reason for discrimination. Besides these age-related stigmas, cancerous patients face pathology-related stigmas because nowadays cancer (especially some types of cancer such as lung cancer) still conveys a lot of negative representations. These observations bring us to the notion of double stigmatization in oncogeriatry. Moreover, the aim of this review is to present ageism phenomenon on the basis of several studies that had proved negative influence of ageism on elderly's mental and physical health and on the attitude of elderly's interlocutors. Afterwards, we will broach the way by which ageism and stigmatization linked to cancer is observed in the specific context of oncogeriatry, which will allow us to identify current shortcomings.
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