Adulthood Death Individual a Culmination Life Span

¶ … adulthood death individual a culmination life span developmental process.

Transitioning

Death and dying is an intrinsic part of life, and the culmination of a life cycle that begins with conception. There are several various stages related to death and dying, such as preserving one's health and wellness, dealing with various facets of ageism, as well as examining cultural attitudes and varying viewpoints of the dying process from different points in history.

Health and Wellness

The primary way of mitigating the effects of aging on the body, mind and spirits of people is to actively promote an awareness of health and wellness. Quite simply, people must take care of their bodies. A key facet of doing so is to have a trusted physician and to go on regular checkups. In addition to keeping in contact with a doctor, individuals should make certain changes to their diet to reflect the varying needs that their body will have as they grow. It is important to get a substantial amount of calcium to preserve the strength of one's bones, as well as to have plenty of fiber based on fruits and vegetables. Other factors that assist with health and wellness include the incorporation of regular physical exercise into one's regiment.

Ageism

As individuals grow older, other people's perception of them change. There are a number of stereotypes that develop regarding the elderly. One of the most eminent of these is the notion that older people either have or are in the process of losing their mental acuity. Although there are certain physical and mentally debilitating conditions that can cause such a process to happen, for the most part such a view is stereotypical and not necessarily based on truth. Other stereotypes of the elderly include the view that they are defenseless, helpless, and cannot provide for themselves. Although there certainly have been countless elderly people for whom this statement is true throughout history, becoming helpless is not an intrinsic part of growing older.

Views of Death

The attitudes propagated towards death and dying have varied considerably throughout time. Many of those views can be examined under a technological lens, in which the advent of technology, and the increase of health and wellness afforded by it, has drastically altered the way people think about both life and dying. In the middle ages, for instance, a person's lifespan was not projected to be nearly as long as it is today. Developments in technology have made it possible for the lifespan of contemporary individuals to be significantly greater than that of people at the close of the 20th century. To that end there has always been an inevitability regarding the way that people view death. What has actually changed is the way that life is viewed -- people are expecting to live longer. This change in the view of life has inherently affected the view of death -- because people are expecting to live longer, death is regarded as a fact of life that is something to be reserved for a person's latter years, such as those that follow 70.

Cultural Perspectives