Since the first confinement, fear of a new war of the ages has emerged.
Sanitary restrictions have sent back to back isolated seniors and a “sacrificed” younger generation.
A new report from the “Little Brothers of the Poor” unveiled on Tuesday entitled
Isolation of the elderly: the impacts of the health crisis
warns of this
“risk of a divide between the generations”
.
Read also: 2020, the year of disarray for the “Covid generation”
The Covid has accentuated the distrust of the over 60s towards the younger generations.
Faced with the threat of the virus, a negative image of youth is reflected in the in-depth interviews with 100 seniors over 60, including 45 residents in nursing homes carried out by the association in collaboration with the Cercle Vulnerabilities et Société between and May and December 2020. “
When we show you mass groups of young people on the news and it dances and embraces each other.
I see them when I go out on the promenade, about ten of them are seated on the same bench, without a mask, without anything, so how can you prevent the virus from continuing on its way ",
protests for example Renée, 90 years old, who lives in a residence in the Occitanie region and says she is
"rebellious"
.
While the tightening of family ties, solidarity with the elderly was put forward during the first confinement, some of the elderly have had in recent months
"the feeling of being neglected, but also in a sense of being underestimated. or even insulted by the younger generation ”.
As if the message about the need to protect older adults had turned against them, older people felt stigmatized.
“
Now people are even afraid of each other.
When they mainly see old people, they think that it is they who take all the diseases, ”
notes Malak, 62, who lives in a shared home in Île-de-France.
720,000 isolated elderly people
In a previous study released in June, the association estimated that 720,000 elderly people had no contact with their families during the first confinement.
To the fear of being
"excluded from public space and society"
, is added a form of
"anger or resentment"
with the feeling "
of being designated guilty of the consequences of the crisis on the socio-economic level. economic ”
.
A form of reciprocal mistrust existed before the crisis, but the fear induced by the virus and the mistrust it created jump in my face
The psychiatrist and gerontologist Gérard Ribes
“After the first confinement, many elderly people have become accustomed to wearing masks to respect barrier gestures. They had a fairly bad experience of a form of return to normal life last summer and the looping images on the news channels showing crowds of young people. This aroused quite strong reactions and which were accentuated in this fall and this winter when we heard that
"
Grandpa and Grandma" had to stay in the kitchen at Christmas to eat the log and that the 24-hour news channels conveyed a form. of "bashing" of the old
, analyzes Yann Lasnier, general delegate at Les Petits Frères des Pauvres.
"
A form of reciprocal mistrust existed before the crisis, but the fear induced by the virus and the mistrust it created jump in my face"
, abounds the psychiatrist and gerontologist Gérard Ribes, questioned in the report.
Beyond this risk of a generational divide, The Little Brothers of the Poor warns against a risk of a divide between the elderly itself at a time when old age
"is only identified as a shipwreck"
.
"The elderly have always been the
poor and considered
embarrassing
people "
, regrets for example Armelle, 61, who lives in Île-de-France.
“There is not old age but old people
,” explains Yann Lasnier.
This age group is not homogeneous.
There is a very noticeable cultural difference between a 70 year old and an 85 year old.
In addition, two 70-year-olds can experience the health crisis in a different way depending on their habitat, their income, their surroundings… ”
.
To fight against this threat of intergenerational divides, Les petits frères des poor calls for a
“change of perspective on old age”
and the development of public policies that take advancing in age into account.
Finally, the association pleads for the support of civic engagement towards the elderly and intergenerational initiatives to prevent the divide between the ages from widening.