Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Aging and sexuality: concepts, issues, and research methods
- 2 Sexuality in the aged male; research evidence
- 3 The neurobiology of aging males' sexuality
- 4 Psychological aspects of aging males' sexuality
- 5 Aging and marital sexuality
- 6 Aging and homosexual relationships
- 7 The social context
- 8 The nature and prevalence of sexual disorders in the aged
- 9 Impact of medical illnesses on sexuality
- 10 Psychopathology and sexuality in aging
- 11 Effects of drugs and medications
- 12 Role of psychosocial factors; coping and adaptation
- 13 Assessment of sexual problems
- 14 Management and treatment of sexual problems
- 15 Summary and conclusions
- Index
15 - Summary and conclusions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Aging and sexuality: concepts, issues, and research methods
- 2 Sexuality in the aged male; research evidence
- 3 The neurobiology of aging males' sexuality
- 4 Psychological aspects of aging males' sexuality
- 5 Aging and marital sexuality
- 6 Aging and homosexual relationships
- 7 The social context
- 8 The nature and prevalence of sexual disorders in the aged
- 9 Impact of medical illnesses on sexuality
- 10 Psychopathology and sexuality in aging
- 11 Effects of drugs and medications
- 12 Role of psychosocial factors; coping and adaptation
- 13 Assessment of sexual problems
- 14 Management and treatment of sexual problems
- 15 Summary and conclusions
- Index
Summary
Aging has emerged as an important area of social concern, first in industrialized countries and now in the less developed regions of the world. Demographic changes caused by increased life expectancy and declines in birth rates have resulted in a dramatic shift, with the proportion of older people increasing rapidly to form a substantial segment of the population. This demographic reality and the growing awareness of the aged as a definable social group have led to gerontology developing as a multidisciplinary endeavor. Initially, much gerontological research was biologically oriented, and only recently has its interaction with psychosocial factors, as they influence health and behavior, become a focus of concentrated attention. While sexological research in the field of aging has made significant advances, moving from the descriptive and epidemiological to the physiological and more recently to the biomedical and clinical, it has yet to fully integrate psychosocial perspectives in its studies. A review of data points to several methodological problems, not all limited to sexological studies, that need to be considered when interpreting the results. Much of the research is cross-sectional in design, confounding the effects of aging with differences in the attitudes, values, and behavior that characterized the different age cohorts as they grew up. Longitudinal studies, on the other hand, are undermined by selective attrition, biasing the results in the direction of the healthier, stable, and cooperative participants. Conclusions are frequently drawn from small, unrepresentative and nonrandom samples of white, middleclass and well-educated volunteers who are probably more liberal in their sexual attitudes than their counterparts who decline to participate in sexological research.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Aging and Male Sexuality , pp. 236 - 246Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999