Disease, Health, and Aging

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Abstract
In this chapter we consider how understanding health can add to the study of developmental psychology. Developmental psychology sees health primarily as a topic of worry and concern to aging persons. Poor health is a source of stress, requires coping, and can start a cascade of life events. Health is an extremely important contextual variable which exerts considerable influence on many areas of individual lives. Cognition is perhaps the most important aspect of development that is changed when health is compromised. Relationships between health and cognition are bi‐directional. Not only do changes in health status precede changes in personality, cognition, and social functioning, for example, but changes in health status can also be the result of basic developmental changes in other area of life. Disease, on the other hand, is an entity physicians treat. It is the province of medicine and for psychologists, behavioral medicine. In this chapter we focus on new realities confronting the study of aging for the next century: (1) The explosion of input from other disciplines, (2) the emphasis on Alzheimer's Disease and what this has meant for research, (3) changes in the health status of aging populations reflected in demography and centenarian studies, and (4) the genetic revolution and its impact on developmental psychology.