Evaluation of ageism in Portugal

Abstract

The aging of the Portuguese population is accompanied with the emergence of new problems, many of which we are not fully aware of. One of those problems is ageism or social discrimination carried out by behaviours, attitudes and prejudices in the daily interaction with elderly people or spread by mass media. This descriptive observational study's aim is to find out the self perception of elderly people concerning their experience with discrimination. Using a specific instrument designed by Palmore, we characterize the self perception of 324 older persons, men and women older than 60 years and living in several regions of Portugal, some of them living within residential facilities and the others living in the community. The results point to a real self perception of discrimination or ageism. The events with more prevalence of occurrence are with health professionals, either a physician or a nurse, or in other settings in which one assumes that the older person could not hear well or could not, understand because of his/her age. We found a strong association between self perception of discrimination and age. We will discuss the d ta and point some directions to new research and prevention of this phenomenon. © International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology.