Senior Lecturer, Gaeddu College of Business Studies, Royal University of Bhutan, Bhutan
Online published on 30 September, 2013.
The process of successful aging is differentially understood by researchers as well as by individuals of old age and by individuals who are directly and indirectly related to the care of the aged population. The theories of aging range from analyzing the psycho-physiological processes of the aged to understanding and arranging an age friendly environment. The explanatory status of these theories differs as no theory give equal importance to person and environmental processes. Successful aging is contingent upon an interaction between the person and the environmental characteristics. The person and environment interaction varies from minimum utility interaction to maximum utility interaction. And the maximum utility interaction is consequent to the compatibility between person and environmental characteristics. The model of successful aging suggested attempts to explain how compatibility achieved between person and environmental characteristics contribute to successful aging. A one-to-one compatibility between individual's socio-psychological and physiological processes and the characteristics endowed with the environment is to result in successful aging whereas other forms of interaction result in unsuccessful aging. The compatibility between individual and environmental characteristics is further influenced by the primary and secondary control processes exercised by the individual.
Aging is a natural process but unlike other natural progressions, this process is involuntarily made into one of agonizing, fearful and punishing by many. Even though no one can reverse the process of aging, one can have better control and dominion over this drifting activity of the nature or the inevitable end of human lives. It is in this context of controlling and ameliorating the ill-effects associated with aging, one thinks of the science of aging or the psychology of aging. Aging has always been associated with negative stereotypes of frailty, senility, incompetency, dependency, depressive, lonely and dirty (Cheng and Heller, 2009). But the advances made in the science of aging have gone a long way in disproving these notions which is a legacy of the unscientific and ephemeral approach to old age of human lives. While population characteristics remain unchanged or uncontrollable (or with moderate improvements), a scientific study of the aging process can mitigate the negative effects associated with biological, psychological and social mechanisms.
