How to Draw on Narrative to Mitigate Ageism

Abstract

Ageism is so structurally integrated and normalized in US health care that it is generally unnoticed by clinicians, despite its effects on the medical care and lives of older adults. Clinicians often lack time, incentives, and opportunities to pause and fully consider the perspective of older adults, especially those with mental illness. As a result, clinicians might infantilize older adults and pathologize or dismiss their preferences, values, and capacity for growth. This commentary on a case proposes a narrative-based ethical approach to shift clinicians' perception of older adults as suffering from the inevitable and unsolvable problems of aging to experiencing a need for dignity and the possibility of continued personal growth.