Tag: social determinants of health

  • Income and Life Expectancy

    Today’s New York Times has an excellent article on income and longevity that compares Fairfax County, Virginia, to McDowell County, West Virginia. In Fairfax, median household income is $107,000. In McDowell it’s about one-fifth of that. In Fairfax, the average life expectancy for men is 82. For women it’s 85. In McDowell, the comparable life…

  • Dogs and the Elderly

    As an only child growing up in New York City, I hounded my parents for a dog.  They held fast. Then, in the eighth grade, playing stickball with friends after school, I came upon a mutt tied to a barbershop pole. The barber told me the dog had been wandering around on its own. Did…

  • Making a Human Community

    My wife Sidney and I spend our summers on a small island off the coast of Maine, Little Cranberry, well down east. The island has many charms, but I am most impressed by the wonderful integration of all age groups in the life of the island, from babies and young children to those in their…

  • Retirement and Dementia

    On Monday, July 15, at 4:00 PM at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Boston, Carole Dufouil, director of research in neuroepidemiology at the Institut National de la santé et de la recherché médicale at the Bordeaux School of Public Health in France, presented her research on the relationship between retirement and dementia. In less…

  • Job Loss and Mortality

    In my clinical practice some years back I saw “Mr. A,” a man in his early 50’s who had become profoundly depressed after losing his job. We had a good relationship and he was very cooperative in his treatment, which involved medications, different forms of psychotherapy, and environmental manipulations. Despite all our efforts, nothing worked.…

  • Aging, Autonomy, and Social Determinants of Health

    A few weeks ago I came across notes I had written five decades ago on the subject of aging. I had been struck by a distinction drawn by David Riesman, in an essay on “Clinical and Cultural Aspects of Aging,” between the different ways in which aging takes place for three types of people.