Everyday ageism experienced by community-dwelling older people with frailty

Ageism encapsulates stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination towards others or oneself based on age. While identified as the most frequent form of discrimination, relatively little work has captured the problem of day-to-day ageism faced by older people with frailty in community settings. The aim of this study therefore was to examine the prevalence of everyday ageism experienced by older people attending hospital-based ambulatory care services, and to clarify its association with measures of quality of life (QOL) and frailty.

A consecutive series (n = 100) of patients aged ≥ 70 years attending ambulatory care completed focused interviews. Day-to-day experience of ageism was measured with the everyday ageism scale, QOL was measured with the control autonomy self-realisation pleasure scale.

Just over half of participants reported exposure to ageist messages; over 5/6 reported experiencing ageism in interpersonal interactions and 2/3 held some ageist beliefs themselves. Logistic regression demonstrated that experiencing ageism in interpersonal interactions was associated with a higher likelihood of internalised ageism [Adjusted Odds Ratio 6.02 (95% CI 1.70, 21.34); p = 0.005)]. Both ageism in interpersonal interactions [β = -5.22 (95% CI -9.52, -0.91); p = 0.018] and internalised ageism [β = -5.36 (95% CI -8.75, -1.97); p = 0.002] were associated with significantly lower QOL.

This study highlights the striking prevalence of everyday ageism experienced by a cohort of community-dwelling older people with frailty and multimorbidity. In the context of further projected demographic changes in coming decades, with increasingly higher proportions of older people worldwide, these findings highlight an important societal issue that needs to be addressed.