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Dr. Robert Neil Butler, M.D.-- psychiatrist-turned-gerontologist -- died in July. He was the first to articulate the concepts of "ageism" and of "productive aging." 

Butler’s painful youthful realization that death is inevitable prompted him to challenge and ultimately reform the treatment of the elderly through research, public policy and publications . He was 83 and had worked until three days before his death. The cause was acute leukemia. 

Dr. Butler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Why Survive? Being Old in America, proposed reforms for the elderly. It went from a bleak explication of their condition to prescriptions for its improvement. “Human beings need the freedom to live with change, to invent and reinvent themselves a number of times through their lives,” he wrote.  

An advocate for the medical and social needs and rights of the elderly, in 1975, Butler became the founding director of the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health. Seven years later, he founded the Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development at Mount Sinai Medical Center, the first department of geriatrics in a U.S. medical school, and served as Chair and Brookdale Professor until 1995. The author of hundreds of scientific and medical articles, Dr. Butler served as editor in chief of Geriatrics journal from 1986-2000.  

He defended as healthy the way many old people slip into old memories, naming it the “life review.” And he helped establish that senility is not inevitable with aging. 

In speech after speech, he pounded home the message that longevity in the United States had increased by 30 years in the 20th century — greater than the gain during the preceding 5,000 years of human history — and that this had led to profound changes in every aspect of society, employment and politics.  

He advocated for the aging before the U.S. Congress and the United Nations . He helped start and led the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, the Alzheimer’s Disease Association, and the International Longevity Center. President Bill Clinton named him chairman of the 1995 White House Conference on Aging.  

Dr. Butler challenged long-held conceptions about aging, calling it “the neglected stepchild of the human life cycle.” When the Heinz Family Foundation presented him with an award in 2003, it called him “a prophetic visionary.” 

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Dr. Butler wrote that his mission emerged from his childhood. His parents split up eleven months after his birth on January 21, 1927 in Manhattan. He went to live with his maternal grandparents on a New Jersey chicken farm. 

He came to revere his grandfather, with whom he cared for sick chickens in the “hospital” at one end of the chicken house. He loved the old man’s stories. When his grandfather disappeared, Robert was seven; nobody would tell him why. He finally learned that his grandfather had died. He would have preferred that people had been honest with him about death. 

Robert found solace in his friendship with a physician who helped him through scarlet fever and took him on his rounds by horse and carriage. He wrote that he learned about the strength and endurance of the elderly from his grandmother. After losing the farm in the Depression, she and her grandson survived on government-surplus foods and lived in a cheap hotel. Robert sold newspapers.  

“What I remember even more than the hardships of those years was my grandmother’s triumphant spirit and determination,” he wrote. “Experiencing at first hand an older person’s struggle to survive, I was myself helped to survive as well.” 

Dr. Butler served in the United States Maritime Service before entering Columbia University , where he earned his bachelor’s and medical degrees. During his internship in psychiatry at St. Luke’s Hospital, he had many elderly patients and realized how little he had been taught about treating them. He began reading about the biology of aging. 

After his residency at the University of California, San Francisco , he worked at the National Institute of Mental Health as a research psychiatrist. He studied the central nervous system in elderly people, work that became part of a large study of aging. He also helped Ralph Nader investigate problems in nursing homes. The book that emerged from his experiences proposed many specific reforms to help old people, including a national service corps that would enlist the elderly as community volunteers.  

He is survived by four daughters and six grandchildren. 

Dr. Butler acknowledged in a Saturday Evening Post interview in 2008 that his views on his own aging had changed: he feared death less. “I feel less threatened by the end of life than I perhaps did when I was 35,” he said. 

His death is a great loss. In 1997, I was honored when Dr. Butler wrote the Foreword for Women & Aging; A Guide to the Literature. I appreciated his thoughtful evaluation of the book and his daring assertion that my “strong commitment to gender and age equity comes through.” 

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Four of Dr. Robert Neil Butler’s Books:  

Wh y Survive?; Being Old in America. (Can be borrowed by your public library in your behalf via the LINK.)  

The longevity revolution: the benefits and challenges of living a long life.  

The longevity prescription: the 8 proven keys to a long, healthy life. (2010)  

Ageing & Mental Health 

With Dr. Myrna I. Lewis:  

The New Love and Sex after 60.  

Love and Sex After 60.  

Selected articles by Butler:  

“The Study of Productive Aging”, Guest Editorial . Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences. ” Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences. 57, no. 6, (2002): S323.  

“ Dispelling Ageism: The Cross-Cutting Intervention .” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, May, 1989, vol. 503, p. 138-147. 

“ Thoughts on the Development of Geriatrics .” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 55, no. 12 (2007): 2086-2087. 

“ Science & Aging - The Myth of Old Age .” Newsweek. 138, no. 11, (2001): 33 

Obit. by Douglas Martin. July 7, 2010 New York Times. A version appeared on page A13 of the New York edition. 

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Helen Rippier Wheeler can be reached at pen136@dslextreme.com. No email attachments; use “Senior Power” for subject.