Care in aging: Cross-fertilization within and between Geropsychology, other gerosciences, and Cultural Psychology

Care for elderly persons is multifaceted and embedded in a rich socio-ecological context of individual, micro-, and macro-social factors. This complexity requires multidisciplinary perspectives to better understand phenomena of elder care and to act successfully in this field. In the final chapter of a multidisciplinary book with contributions from geropsychology, other gerosciences, and cultural psychology the editors draw conclusions about major topics, new insights, and further implications for research and practice. The conclusions refer to four domains. First, the macro-social context—including demographic, historical, political, normative, and other cultural factors—opens and limits the available options for individual care giving and receipt and shapes how these issues are experienced by the participants. Second, elder care at the individual and family level is far more complex than previously thought, due to differentiated individual and social care preferences and due to consequences extending beyond single caregivers to multigenerational caring families. Third, processes involved in formal and informal care turned out to be rather differentiated: Understanding, emotional responding, motivation and acting towards suffering, care dependency and caregiver burden are influenced by multiple individual and social level factors. Fourth, future issues of elder care are shaped by macro level factors such as population aging, social trends in job and family life, and technological developments with implications for ensuring care quality, care staff, culturally sensitive care, and assistive technologies. Cultural psychology emerged as a valuable partner of the gerosciences by contributing essentially to a deeper understanding of the aforementioned issues.