ABSTRACT
The analysis by R. W. Fox raises a set of troubling issues concerning mental illness in old age. The historical documentation carries considerable importance for current investigators of aging and mental illness. This chapter argues that growing old in capitalist societies brings increased risk of mental illness primarily because of the exclusion of older workers from labor markets and the consequent diminution in their ability to “consume.” Gerontological studies of mental illness, while sharing many of the same conceptual and methodological problems of mental illness research generally, must contend as well with a set of issues specific to older populations. The “insanity” of the aged stranger has roots in their strangeness: not only are they different from the accepted cultural models of youthful health and physical vigor, their superfluous economic position also disallows their full sharing in the “cognitive and normative assumptions” of consumer capitalism.
