Aging, Dignity and the Armenian Woman

2026-01-25 - 21:06

Listen to the AI generated audio article. Your browser does not support the audio element. There is a well-known moral adage that a society should be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable. Across cultures and centuries, thinkers have echoed this sentiment in different ways. Gandhi spoke of the “most vulnerable members,” the Bible warned against mistreating “widows and orphans,” and Dostoevsky wrote that “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” Hubert H. Humphrey’s version is perhaps the only widely cited one to explicitly name older people: “The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; the twilight of life, the elderly; and the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.” Despite their differences, these formulations share a common logic: how a society treats those pushed to the margins is a litmus test for its humanity. They emerged in eras when deprivation was the clearest marker of moral obligation. And yet, in the 21st century, when people live longer, healthier, and more productive lives, aging is still treated as an aberration rather than an intrinsic part of the human condition. We still lack a dignifying adage that captures the moral urgency of how we treat older people, or how we see them. “I Feel Seen Here”: Inside Armenia’s Healthy Aging Classes I arrived at the Ministry of Health’s Healthy Aging program as an evaluator, forms in hand, ready to observe. But within minutes of entering a yoga class, something shifted. The warmth in the room was palpable. Women smiled as they entered and steadied each other as they rose from their mats. The instructor demonstrated gentle adaptations for stiff hips, arthritic knees, and shoulders worn from decades of caregiving. Eventually, I put away my laptop, sat cross-legged in my jeans, and joined them. In a forward fold, I felt someone watching me. “Look at our Ani!” one woman called out with a grin. The others laughed softly and returned to their breathing. I realized I wasn’t just observing a program. I was witnessing a community quietly, tenderly building itself. After the session, we sat in a circle. Their reflections tumbled out in joyful, overlapping bursts. “I used to have terrible back pain,” one woman proudly stated. “Now I don’t feel pain at all.” Another shared, “I thought I wouldn’t be walking in two years. Now I lift my arms over my head.” An older woman who was doing yoga from her chair reported, “The doctors said I needed implants. Now I don’t.” Someone else chimed in, “My blood pressure drops every time I come.” Then came the emotional shifts—the ones that can’t easily be quantified. Smiling warmly, one woman reflected, “We can share our lived experiences here.” Another quietly admitted, “I used to get angry so easily. Now I see the positive in everything.” Toward the end of the session, a woman approached me, glowing, and stated, “These classes gave my life a restart.” Women who had spent years alone told me how their isolation slowly gave way to belonging. They spoke with a kind of relieved joy, saying the program had breathed life into them and made them feel human again. The cognitive sessions carried this same tenderness. Women gathered around puzzles and memory games, even practicing tasks like writing with both hands. They celebrated every small triumph. “I feel my memory and concentration improving,” one woman shared. Another beamed, “I started playing chess again—I even won two games last week.” A woman who had suffered two strokes told me, “I used to walk slowly. Now I walk quickly.” A retired teacher leaned in and said softly, “At 70, I found myself again.” And another, once isolated, added with quiet pride, “I never left the house before. Now I want to be around people.” These sessions were not just about memory drills. They were about identity, meaning and the restoration of self. One woman said it plainly: “I feel seen here.” But outside rooms like these, opportunities shrink. As Hasmik Gevorgyan, a human rights defender, co-founder of New Justice Culture, and a veteran of the domestic violence field explained, the lack of such spaces is not just logistical; it’s emotional. “We need far more centers and programs for older people, cultural programs and safe spaces where they can talk,” she explained. She added that many older women hesitate even when such programs exist, carrying a lifetime of messages that their needs and joys are secondary: “There is a taboo, a sense of shame. They think, ‘At my age, what can I possibly do?’ We need to overcome this mentality.” The Armenian Woman Who Ages If vulnerability is a mirror, the aging Armenian woman reflects everything we prefer not to confront about loneliness, gender, care and responsibility. Older Armenian women are expected to be endlessly resilient—caretakers of grandchildren, guardians of memory, holders of tradition—while simultaneously being pushed to the periphery of public life. The mythology of the strong Armenian grandmother flattens their real human needs for rest, recognition, community, learning and emotional support. The women I met were not seeking charity. They wanted reasons to leave the house, places to gather, people who valued them, opportunities to grow, and acknowledgment that their lives still carry purpose. This hunger for engagement is not anecdotal. In 2019, a qualitative study by Kristine Galstyan—who later helped shape the state Healthy Aging program—identified the same unmet need. Older adults expressed clear desires for structured learning and described how continued intellectual engagement helped them feel mentally sharper and more socially connected. At the time, Galstyan concluded that Armenia “does not currently support opportunities to promote learning in old age”: there were no age-friendly learning programs, no “universities of the third age,” and few spaces that treat education as a natural part of later life. The Healthy Aging program, launched in 2023, was the state’s first serious attempt to address this gap. And what I witnessed in those classrooms reflected Galstyan’s findings with remarkable clarity. The women were hungry for movement, stimulation, conversation and the chance to sit at a desk again and feel like students rather than burdens. When they spoke about puzzles or playing chess again or writing with both hands, they weren’t recounting activities; they were describing a return to self. Against this backdrop, the conversation has slowly begun to shift, owing primarily to sustained voices from civil society working in partnership with the government. In recent years, Alzheimer’s Care Armenia (ACA), a nonprofit organization at the forefront of dementia care, prevention, and institutional capacity building, has played a central role in bringing cognitive health into the public and policy agenda. Working in close partnership with the Ministry of Health and with technical support from Alzheimer’s Disease International, ACA helped spearhead the development of Armenia’s National Dementia Prevention Plan, which was approved in 2023. The National Dementia Prevention Plan’s vision of a “memory-friendly society” feels both urgent and profoundly unfinished. On paper, it calls for early diagnosis, risk reduction, better data, caregiver support and multi-sector collaboration. In reality, most older women still rely on their families, their own coping skills, and the occasional NGO-led intervention. The rest is left to chance. Armenia is entering a new demographic era—one marked by longer lives alongside a quiet but accelerating rise in age-related conditions. According to the National Dementia Prevention Plan, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias now account for 4.4% of all deaths in Armenia. In a 2023 baseline cognitive screening of about 4,500 older Armenians conducted by ACA, at least one in ten showed signs of cognitive decline. Yet early detection remains rare, misinformation is widespread, and memory loss is still too often dismissed as “just aging.” And while ACA’s screenings are laudable, Armenia is only now taking the first steps toward developing a national dementia registry—an effort led by ACA, the Yerevan State Medical University, and the National Institute of Health. For now, tracking prevalence or planning services at scale remains impossible. That, hopefully, will change soon. Meanwhile, the structures meant to support older Armenians remain painfully thin. According to the National Dementia Prevention Plan, the country has only two adult residential care facilities, 22 day-care centers capable of serving older adults with dementia, and a small homecare program reaching just 55 people nationwide. The Healthy Aging program—an exceptional first step—still largely reaches communities in Yerevan, leaving rural older adults out of its scope. Much of the practical care capacity is carried by a handful of nonprofits, including ACA. And all the while, the country continues to age. In 2023, roughly one in seven Armenians was 65 or older. By 2050, that share will likely rise to nearly one in four. Women already make up the clear majority of this age group, and the gender gap will widen as life expectancy increases. Yet longevity is not the same as wellbeing. Dementia care remains framed primarily through the lens of end-of-life palliative care. While some medications are free or partly subsidized, early screening, long-term support, and community-based services are not structurally encouraged, and dementia is still treated largely as a psychiatric issue rather than a broader public health and social care challenge. Dr. Jane Mahakian, president of ACA, explained that as the country’s population ages, diseases like Alzheimer’s and related dementias will be an urgent public health and humanitarian concern. “Memory cafes and Healthy Aging Clubs are not a luxury; they are a lifeline—providing social connection, cognitive stimulation, and dignity to older adults who would otherwise face isolation and rapid decline,” Mahakian explained. This begs the question: How are we preparing for 2050? Femicide Makes the Invisible Visible Beyond cognition lie even more painful truths. While Armenians pride themselves on respecting elders, many older women are violated by those meant to protect them—their families. When these women are unseen, their suffering can quietly intensify, until it erupts in ways that reveal the full depth of our societal failures. Hasmik Gevorgyan, who spent 15 years in the domestic violence field, described horrific cases of neglect, financial exploitation, and physical and emotional abuse of older women. But when older women do reach the point of seeking help, they encounter another barrier entirely: a system built for someone else. “The domestic violence mechanisms we have in Armenia are not designed for older people,” Gevorgyan said. “We cannot work with a 70- or 80-year-old survivor the same way we work with a 20- or 40-year-old woman. Empowerment models don’t translate. You can’t tell a 75-year-old, ‘Leave your home, we’ll empower you, you’ll get a job.’ It isn’t realistic.” The supposed “options” for older survivors are often no options at all. “An older survivor usually has three choices,” Gevorgyan explained. “Return to the violent home; stay with a relative—though if such support existed, she likely wouldn’t have stayed in abuse for years; or be placed in a nursing home, which is profoundly traumatic for someone who built a life in her own home.” Their silence is often misinterpreted as acceptance. In reality, it is duty, shame, and a lifetime of conditioning. “They refuse to file police reports—especially when the abuser is their son,” Gevorgyan said. “They would never ‘go against’ their own child.” Silence, however, has consequences. According to the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Women’s most recent femicide report, 39 femicides occurred between 2022 and 2024. At least seven of these victims were elderly women—and in six of those seven cases, the killer was her own son. This pattern echoes what human rights defender and New Justice Culture co-founder Zaruhi Hovhannisyan has written: mother-killings are not anomalies but symptoms of a deep structural distortion. Children learn from an early age that their mothers’ voices carry little weight. They watch their mothers ignored, interrupted, shouted at, diminished. They absorb this hierarchy as natural. Mother-killing is one of the most brutal forms of femicide, but also one of the most revealing. And it raises the starkest question: What does it say about a society when the eldest mothers—those who built families, homes and community—are most at risk from those they raised? Human Stories About Dignity Years ago, a friend told me about her father, who lived in one of Paris’s most advanced Alzheimer centers. Despite the state-of-the-art facilities, he was deeply unhappy. When the family brought him to Armenia and moved him into a modest village home with round-the-clock care, something softened. His Armenian, unused for decades, returned. He laughed. He danced shurj par. His dignity was restored. Dr. Mahakian shared another story from ACA’s screening initiative. After the team identified older adults showing signs of impairment, they conducted home visits. In one home, they found an elderly man with dementia living entirely alone. The neighbor tasked with watching over him was likely stealing from him. When Dr. Mahakian opened the refrigerator, it was completely empty. He had no food. He was simply starving in silence. Where were the social services in this community? How did this man fall through the cracks? One Saturday morning, while I was writing up the Healthy Aging evaluation, I stepped into a public restroom in Yerevan. The cleaner, a woman in her mid-to-late 60s, scolded me harshly for not wiping my feet. My first reaction was defensive. But then I noticed the spotless floor. She had likely spent her entire morning tending to that small corner of public space. My obliviousness had made her feel invisible. Before leaving, I told her, “I appreciate you and the care you put into your work.” She looked stunned, then softened, whispering “Merci, aghchik jan.” A small exchange, one that I likely would never have initiated just a month prior. But spending time with older women that month had changed me, changed my perception of aging, dignity, and what it means to be seen. What Works: Lessons from Around the World Armenia does not need to invent solutions from scratch. Worldwide, countries have built simple, transferable models that improve wellbeing, cognition, mobility and belonging. There are community hubs offering art, music, reading circles, crafts and intergenerational events. Programs where children and older adults learn together. Peer-support networks that frame aging as a contribution. Cognitive training paired with physical activity. Tai chi and multicomponent exercise programs. Age-friendly city design. Day centers. Co-housing models that reduce loneliness. “Reinventing the wheel delays care.” Dr. Mahakian said. “Since 2018, Alzheimer’s Care Armenia has shown that adapting evidence-based dementia care models is not only possible in Armenia, but essential to meeting the urgent needs of our aging population.” She added, “Investing in memory clubs is one of the most effective ways Armenia can respond to the rising prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease. These programs bridge healthcare and community care, offering a sustainable model that honors aging with dignity while easing strain on families and institutions.” The common thread is this: older adults flourish not simply when taken care of, but when they are integrated, needed and acknowledged. Armenia has begun to understand this. We must build on it—and we must do so quickly. Toward a New Adage The classic moral formulations speak in the language of deficiency. They measure society by the absence of cruelty rather than the presence of care. Perhaps we need a version that reflects today’s realities, one rooted in belonging, not fragility. Something that speaks to a society’s strength being linked to how well it ensures safety, dignity and belonging for older people, children, and all who face structural barriers. Not the weakest. Not the shadows. Just people—living full, complex, deserving lives. 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