THE PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL INCLUSION OF ELDERLY AND SENILE PERSONS

The paper gives the analysis of geronto-social understanding of senility and aging. The problem of elderly persons exclusion from the society considered in the paper is particularly topical due to the Russian population greying caused by the fertility dynamics and expectancy of life. The issues of late age are polemic as the academic circles and the public consciousness did not create any uniform assessment of this period of human life. The senility image is historically determined and being transformed under the influence of various world paradigms. In the ancient world and in the medieval period, the ideas of senility were parts of encyclopedic scientific and theological knowledge about a person. The attitude to the final vital stage was dual, on the one hand this period can be perceived as the full-fledged period of life, on the other hand – as degradation. In the XX century, the social and philosophical understanding of senility is connected with the category of “social exclusion”. In the western social psychology, the theory of separation and theory of activity are topical today. The theory of separation considers the aloofness of elderly persons as the socially and biologically associated and inevitable process underlying in the system of social updating. The author proves the voluntary basis of the exclusion from the social space as the aging releases an elderly person from all obligations to the society. The authors of the theory of activity defend the necessity to retain social activity of elderly persons as the needs and the system of values of the older generation are similar to social orientations of middle age people. The results of the study of social status of elderly persons prove the existence of the older generation exclusion, on the basis of which the necessity of creating conditions for maintenance of social subjectivity of an elderly person, the activation of life in senility for the purpose of its quality increase. The author made the conclusion that the late age can become the period of social roles retaining, and also of the development of new ones.