Needs and Care of the Elderly: Global Perspectives

The aged all over the world have always constituted problems to some extent, but recently they began to characterize major social problems. Under these circumstances, our goal should be to gather information about the way the elderly people are treated in different parts of the world. After passing the unanimous Bill for protecting the elderly, "The Maintenance and Welfare of Parent and Senior Citizen Bill", 2007, in India this issue has become relevant for creating awareness about elderly care. It is widely acknowledged that the ageing of societies involves much more than shifting demographic patterns. The main objective of the book is to highlight and understand the needs of care of the elderly by providing public education about care of the elderly mechanisms and various strategies on ageing adopted worldwide to bring ageing issues higher up on the national agenda. The book is divided into three sections; the first section presents "Needs of the Elderly Issues", which discusses the psychological, social, economical and biological needs. Section two "Elderly Care Mechanism" makes the reader aware about the existing instruments, including family care/informal care, Government support and NGOs’, concern for the aged. The third section on "Country experiences" significantly discusses the ageing trends in countries around the world. The book would prove to be an enormously worthy material not only for sociologists, demographers, psychologists, gerontologists, geriatricians, academicians, research scholars, students, policymakers, reformers and senior citizens but also for the NGOs working in the field.