Much like sexism or racism, ageism is unwarranted treatment and discrimination of people based on prejudices revolving their ages. Ageism can be as simple as derogatory words like geezer or take on a more impactful role when seniors are met with emotional or physical abuse. Finally, ageism takes form in the general belief that the elderly are useless, weak, and can’t think straight. Unlike sexism or racism ageism is deeply institutionalized into our society to the point where most people don’t think it’s a problem or don’t even know that the problem exist. (Raynor, 2015)
Even though ageism can be found almost anywhere, it’s incredibly prevalent in healthcare. One way it is manifested is through underdiagnosing seniors. This happens when complaints about curable medical conditions are written off as just “old age” (Kane & Kane, 2005). Unfortunately, this is especially prevalent when it comes to diagnosing mental health conditions because many doctors believe that old people simply “aren’t all there” (Blakemore, 2009). Logically, this has worrying impacts on the health of senior citizens as they will suffer from preventable ailments due to this. Additionally, Under-diagnosing typically happens because healthcare professionals aren’t knowledgeable about the typical health issues associated with old age, because of confusion of chronological and biological age ( i.e. because he is 75, he will have the typical body and ailments of a 75 year old), or because of ageist attitudes