title: Docs: ortho and para.
abstract: Ideally, mental health criteria are general, not age-specific. But their very vagueness encourages stereotypes of the aged and arbitrary standards of their normality. These typically ignore group norms, cultural factors, personal history, and situational pressures in assessing individuals. With reasonable consensus about specific disorders, monitoring pathology would protect the old from dogmatic assumptions about mental health. Professional authority should be limited to pathological, not existential, issues.
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D012931:Social Environment