What is gerontology? To define gerontology, we can start from its etymology. Gerontology comes from the Greek words; geron which means old man and logia which means the study. Easily we can conclude that gerontology is a study about elderly people which covers the social, biological, and psychological aspects. While the other aspects about aging such as diseases and pharmacy are covered by another field, named geriatrics. Geriatrics definition is the branch of medical study. It also learns about nursing, criminology, dentistry, social work, therapy, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, political science, housing, and anthropology. So, gerontology and geriatrics definition are different. Gerontology is about the aging process and the effects, while focuses more about health care for the elderly people.
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Gerontology has branches as the focuses of the study. Gerontology which investigates the aging process is called biogerontology. Gerontology which investigates social impacts of aging is sociogerontology. Gerontology which investigates the disease related to age and the normal aging interface is geroscience. While psycogerontology studies the effect of aging to psychological condition. Those who study gerontology are called gerontologist. They view the term of aging in four processes: biological aging, chronological aging, social aging, and psychological aging.
source: agingandgeriatrics.com |
So, we can also define “what is gerontology” as a study which learns about the aging and its effects on various aspects.
What is gerontology for? The aim of gerontology is to recognize the condition as the effect of aging process – whether it is individual or in population – to be applied to the policies and programs. It is necessary for the government to understand the knowledge from gerontology to design and decide the government planning and policies related to population and social services. While the smaller subjects, such as hospital or nursing home also needs it to design the services and programs based on the condition.
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