title: Successful aging and its discontents: a systematic review of the social gerontology literature.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of this study was to analyze the range of critiques of successful aging models and the suggestions for improvement as expressed in the social gerontology literature.
  
  
  METHODS
  We conducted a systematic literature review using the following criteria: journal articles retrieved in the Abstracts in Social Gerontology, published 1987-2013, successful aging/ageing in the title or text (n = 453), a critique of successful aging models as a key component of the article. Sixty-seven articles met the criteria. Qualitative methods were used to identify key themes and inductively configure meanings across the range of critiques.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The critiques and remedies fell into 4 categories. The Add and Stir group suggested a multidimensional expansion of successful aging criteria and offered an array of additions. The Missing Voices group advocated for adding older adults' subjective meanings of successful aging to established objective measures. The Hard Hitting Critiques group called for more just and inclusive frameworks that embrace diversity, avoid stigma and discrimination, and intervene at structural contexts of aging. The New Frames and Names group presented alternative ideal models often grounded in Eastern philosophies.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The vast array of criteria that gerontologists collectively offered to expand Rowe and Kahn's original successful model is symptomatic of the problem that a normative model is by definition exclusionary. Greater reflexivity about gerontology's use of "successful aging" and other normative models is needed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Education, San Francisco State University, California. martym@sfsu.edu.
authors.forename: Marty
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Martinson
authors.affiliation: School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley.
authors.forename: Clara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Berridge
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005853:Geriatrics; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011788:Quality of Life; D012944:Social Support
keywords: Critical gerontology; Social gerontology; Successful aging