This paper summarises current research on the mental health status of older African-Americans with a specific focus on late-life depression, one of the most common forms of mental disorder among older persons. Social gerontologists have brought to the forefront the need to consider the impact of historical eras, cohort location, and lifecourse development when studying various dimensions of the ageing process. Unfortunately, this type of theorising is still in its infancy, and has not been widely applied to the general population and all dimensions of health, let alone investigations into the mental health status of older African-Americans. Virtually none of the empirical studies we reviewed adequately address the historical, biographical, or structural factors related to the mental health status of older African-Americans. We suggest that to understand contemporary manifestations of racial presumptions, there must be an appreciation of the historical antecedents. African-Americans live with the corrosive effects of a legacy of slavery that presumed black inferiority. The identification of salient factors of risk and resilience among this population is critical to developing effective intervention and mental health maintenance programmes. By emphasising the socio-historical influences on the mental health of older African-Americans, we can develop a greater understanding of this population's mental health needs; thus paving the way for improved mental health services and a reduction in mental health disparities.

Risk is frequently invoked in contemporary accounts of ill health, but its construction is often constrained by a rationalist perspective that focuses on physical causes and functional outcomes, and that presents risk as external to the self and predictable. This paper describes an empirical study of the ways in which risk was realised and managed in a day hospital for older people. An ethnographic approach, with participant observation and semi-structured interviews, and discourse analysis were used to explore these issues with the staff and fifteen users. Whilst the service providers were orientated to the management of physical risk, as through the regimes for administering medication and their attention to risk reduction in the physical environment, the service users were more concerned with the risk to their personal and social identities, and they more frequently described its manifestations in inter-personal exchanges, sometimes as infantalisation and stereotyping. The paper develops this understanding of the potential for falls among older people to elucidate a broader interpretation of risk, and reveals that it is commonly constructed as a challenge to a person's self-image and identity. Such constructions help to explain older people's responses to complex health problems and to the services and treatments that attempt to solve them.

There has been an increasing interest in the caring responsibilities of middle generation individuals as numerous studies have noted the continuing family obligations of people in later life. Employing data from the United Kingdom Office of National Statistics Retirement Survey of 1988/89, we examined social class differentials in the provision of care by 55–69 year olds. Our results show few social class differences in the provision of co-resident care to a parent (among those aged 55–69 in 1988/89 with at least one living parent), but significant social class differences in the provision of care to a spouse. Working class individuals were more likely to be caring for a spouse than their middle class counterparts because of the higher prevalence of disability among this group.

Increasing numbers of people are using complementary therapies, and many are in older age groups. Although recent empirical research has considered the demands for complementary medicine, and in particular its recent consumer boom, little acknowledgement is given in research to the different social categories of users, and to the intricacies of their different motivations and consumer behaviours. In the context of a relative paucity of dedicated research investigations, the paper highlights the relevance of social gerontological perspectives. Based on a questionnaire survey of 144 older users, and in-depth interviews with 20 older users in southern England, it considers trends in local use and user actions, attitudes and opinions. From a disciplinary perspective, the paper also contributes to a growing body of research which focuses on older peoples’ self-implemented health and health care strategies. There is a substantial degree of user satisfaction with the therapies used, and many respondents claimed to have benefited in terms of their physical and mental health. Older users are also empowered by their treatment decisions and negotiations, many of which are made either independently, or jointly between themselves and their therapists. Treatment solutions are typically constructed with combinations of complementary therapies, or combinations of complementary therapies and orthodox health services.

In this paper we consider some of the ways that the third age can be thought about and studied. Taking the work of Peter Laslett as our key source, we explore his ‘aspirational’ approach toward redefining post-working life and look at some of its limitations as both definition and explanation. There is a need for a more sociologically informed approach to the third age, and we outline three potentially important structures that might better explain it – class, birth cohort, and generation. Whilst it might seem attractive to see the third age as a class-determined status, based on the material and social advantages accruing to people who have retired from well-paid positions in society, the historical period in which the third age has emerged makes this explanation less than adequate. Equally a cohort-based explanation, locating the third age in the ‘ageing’ of the birth cohort known as the baby boom generation, fails fully to capture the pervasiveness and irreversibility of the cultural change that has shaped not just one but a sequence of cohorts beginning with those born in the years just before World War II. Instead, we argue for a generational framework in understanding the third age, drawing upon Mannheim rather than Marx as the more promising guide in this area.