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Historically, most people in the world used to spend their evenings around a fire. Although this is still the case in many places, for many cultures, the fire has been replaced by television. Before the industrial revolution, Western societies are generally structured such that the young and the elderly, the sick and the healthy, all lived together, taking care of each other. But as societies became increasingly stratified, these connections decreased. The home of the extended family has given way to the house of the nuclear family. How have these changes affected the quality of health care?

 

Today, in Western industrial societies, the youngest children spend their time in child care outside the home. Many people living with chronic illness or cognitive disabilities spend their days away from their relatives and family members. Similarly, the vast majority of seniors live in assisted living situations rather than institutionalized their extended family. In Central Europe, one in two ends to their lives outside the home. These trends are puzzling, given that home care is more cost effective than institutional care and the science tells us that those who receive care in their home are more likely to have better health care.

 

Anthropologists who specialize in the study of older adults, for example, we say that seniors who remain in their own home with the help of health care at home have the best of both worlds. Their research showed that people who remain in their own home during their years of seniors are happier, healthier and more active than their counterparts who enter assisted care facilities or nursing homes, while at the same time to enjoy the benefits of home help with tasks that have become difficult, such as housekeeping, meal preparation, transportation and medication tracking. On average, their cognitive abilities also remain intact as long as they go about their normal daily activities and make decisions on what to do every day, what they eat, what they wear. Seniors who remain in their own home with the help of caregivers in a health home more committed to their families and their longtime friends and neighbors, which stimulates the brain involved in memory, communication and sense of identity. Depression is much less likely in this group.

 

 

The move to an assisted living facility or nursing home is a traumatic event for the oldest, to be separated from many of their cherished possessions and become oriented to a new lifestyle in a new location. Unfamiliar surroundings and difficulties in adapting to meals and scheduled activities can overwhelm the elderly, who often react by slipping into a passive state of depression and addiction.

 

 

An older person or couple who can remain in their own home, with the assistance of an in-home care, continue to feel independent and in control of their lives, which reinforces their self-esteem. Studies show that a sense of control over her life is an important factor in preventing depression. Seniors in their own homes are more likely to follow world events through newspapers and television, use the telephone to keep in touch with your friends and family enjoy their hobby of long duration and even take new activities.

 

 

So, why such care often taken outside the home? How industrial societies are structured plays a huge role. As German sociologist Reimer Gronemeyer explains: “Companies that see themselves as productive societies tend to” marginalize “or even to suppress … seniors and their interest because their needs could be perceived as an unacceptable strain on the budget. “If the medical developments have greatly increased life expectancy in industrialized societies, with over 65 years being the fasted growing segment of the U.S. population, these societies have not yet adapted to adopt family models which explain this increase.

 

May the problem lies in how these companies conceive of anyone. This question is one of the most revealing tools by which anthropologists can make intercultural comparisons. Is the value of human life based on the quantity produced by a person or how that person treats others? Similarly, for Gronemeyer, how a company “meets members weak, poor and fragile in its structure measure [s] the sense of humanity of any society. ”

 

 


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