ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book reflects the degree to which issues relevant to sleep and ageing are divided between changes in the structure and quality of sleep and the social response to these changes. Alterations in sleep represent just a single component in the complex sequence of biological, psychological, and social changes which collectively make up the ageing process. Attitudes towards illness and medicine are not unrelated to age. It has often been pointed out that the circumstances in which the present elderly generation grew up have produced a stoicism in the older members of society not seen in the young. The therapeutic approach to complaints of poor sleep in old age should be broadly based and flexible, able to adjust to the needs of the patient. Forces operating within medicine are currently changing the way doctors regard non-pharmacological treatment approaches.
