Objective:

To analyze subjective, social, and cultural factors associated with the risk of falls and their relationship with the functional status of older people in the Araucanía Region in Chile.

Methodology:

an observational study, with sequential design, DEXPLIS, QUAN-QUAL, of qualitative predominance.

Results:

It is observed that the subjective, social and cultural risk factors for falls are in permanent interaction and influence each other. In the subjects’ discourse, the macro-categories of bodily ignorance, socioeconomic condition, and biological deterioration stand out, linked to feelings of loneliness and abandonment, emotional breakdowns, complex life transitions, fear, and refusal to recognize life changes. Old age, presenting poor health, feeling discriminated against for being older and, neglect concerning their corporality, favors a view and experience of old age as a period of deterioration and losses at a physical, cognitive and social level (pathological old age). From the biocapitalist paradigm, the situation is strengthened by the predominance of the biomedical paradigm, which normalizes falls as part of old age.

Conclusions:

Two types of social subjects in the aging process are identified. On the one hand, those who hold a sociocultural conception of aging from a biocapitalist perspective, influenced by the predominant biomedical model, tend to relate pathologies as a constitutive part of old age, including within these symptoms fall. On the other hand, critical subjects of this discourse show high body self-awareness, acceptance of biological changes and relate this stage to healthy aging.

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