The Place of the Day Hospital in the Geriatric Unit

The increasing number of people reaching the age of sixty in many countries has revealed stresses and strains in our sociological fabric that have not hitherto been sufficiently considered. During the war years, the problem of our rapidly ageing population was in part hidden by labour shortages, and since then the policy of full employment and the shortage of juvenile labour has again tended to make the problems of the elderly less pressing. How large these problems may be can best be gauged by an examination of the numbers of people reaching pensionable age. In 1901 the number of men who had reached the age of 65 and women the age of 60 was about 1-1 million. In 1939 the number was 5t million. In 1946 the figure had reached 6-1 million while in 1977 it will approximate to 10 millions.