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We want to acknowledge the passing of Robert Butler, a Pulitzer prize-winning author and psychiatrist who coined the term ”ageism”.

Butler helped create the modern notion that ageing is a time of choice, of opportunity, of growth. He is recognised as having conducted one of the first long term studies of older people in 1955.

Some of the groundbreaking findings of that study were that senility is not an inevitable consequence of age and that psychiatric care is not wasted on the elderly, as was commonly believed. It also found that older people were more contented and tended to live longer when their lives were filled with goals, structure and a sense of purpose.

His work has certainly contributed to the core values and philosophy of SageCo’s programs for redirecting retirement.