MENTAL ILLNESS AND THE AGED STRANGER

Sociological investigations of mental illness in older populations have been largely concerned with the causes and consequences of morale and life satisfaction. Satisfaction with life and "good morale" are widely viewed as reasonable indicators of mental health. Apart from the definitional problems inherent in this approach, the focus on morale has effectively diverted greater research attention from more serious issues of mental health in older populations, such as schizophrenia, personality disorders, and depression. The intent of this paper is to evaluate the dominant mental health paradigms within social gerontology; to synthesize some existing threads of a political economy/social control approach to these issues; and, finally, to argue that the act of growing old in capitalist societies brings increased risk of mental illness not because of drift, selection, or stress but, rather, because of the exclusion of the aged from labor markets and the physical and ideological "strangeness" of the aged.