A Comparative Study on the Problems faced by Senior citizens living in Institutions and Noninstitutions in Mangaluru Taluk

Abstract

Ageing is a normal, common, universal and un-avoiding phenomenon. Ageing has threeaspects biological, psychological and social. We are living in this busy world, it is the dutyof each and every young ones to spend a little time for our elders, patient listening, lovingtalks and careful attention can relieve many of the psychological problems. It appears inIndia senior citizens have no right to live a life of dignity. Day by day they are gettingshocks and traumas in one form or other, the past two decades the social scene, due to anumber of factors, had undergone drastic changes with the joint family system breakingdown. Today, nuclear families are the norm. In fact, for most people, growing old is time tobe enjoyed. They mostly ignore the symptoms considering it as the signs of aging.Institutionalized elderly refers to the people above the age of sixty years who live in theinstitution and Non-institutional elderly means who stay in their own house alone, with theirpartner, children, and grandchildren together. The issues and problems are varied in anyplace be it in families or in the institution. It differs from person to person. The researcherscame to know of various problems faced by them. Thus was interested to study the problemsthey face. The scope of the study is restricted to only 50 elderly in Mangalore city. 25respondents are from institutions and 25 from those living in families. The aim is to draw acomparison between the problems faced by the elderly in each of these places. Theobjectives are to assess the problems faced by the elderly and to know their opinion on theirstay. The respondents were selected adopting a simple random method of sampling.