The
New York Times’ blog
The New Old Age reported on a study in the American Journal of Public Health that categorized seniors into one of five groups based on how they have adapted to disability.
The study examined seniors on Medicare. After doing about 8,000 in-person surveys with seniors, the researchers divided them into the following five categories:
- lives independently without assistance (31%),
- uses assistive technology to deal with disability (25%),
- cuts back on activities due to disability but does not acknowledge limitations (6%),
- copes on their own while admitting that it’s hard to do so (18%), and
- needs assistance from other people (20%).
One point of note to researchers was just how large the second group was and how well those people seem to be doing. “It’s extremely important for us as a society to understand that getting older and losing some degree of functioning does not have to be equated with the loss of independence,” said Dr. Linda Fried, dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, to the New York Times.
