Posted on 06/18/2010 4:05:56 PM PDT by neverdem
If you are suddenly feeling confused about whether to greet middle age with open arms or dread, it is understandable. In recent weeks, researchers reported that Americans in midlife are a remarkably contented lot, and that they also have the highest rate of suicide.
So what is going on? Is middle age the best of times or the worst?
First, the positive side of the ledger. A new study of a Gallup telephone poll that essentially took a snapshot of how more than 340,000 respondents felt on a particular day...
--snip--
Myrna Weissman, an epidemiologist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, offers a more intriguing theory. She believes that the baby boom generation has a higher incidence of depression than previous ones. Dr. Weissman, who first published her theory more than 20 years ago, said, “We did predict in 1989 that there could be an increase in suicide attempts and suicide as that cohort, which was showing very high rates of depression, aged.”
Asked why boomers would be particularly vulnerable, Dr. Weissman speculated: “That’s a cohort that came to maturity when there were great social changes, more instability, more divorce and separation, more moves, an increase in drug use, and war.” As for those happy midlifers? “They’re different people,” she said with a laugh, “less vulnerable and subjected less to these adverse life effects.”
Dr. Eric C. Caine, co-director at the Center for the Study and Prevention of Suicide at the University of Rochester Medical Center, agreed that the postwar generation was big enough to contain the happiest and the most desperate.
“Both can be true,” he said. “You can argue that at this time of life there is a lot of satisfaction, but this population is so large, you can still find those who don’t fit that profile.”...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I’m 63.
I think the peak in Boomers is 12-15 years or so behind me.
INDEED.
GRIEVING has been a familiar feeling for months . . . for people, for our grand land . . . for the world.
thx thx
In one week I heard my mother-in-law talk about horrible it is to get older and how you can’t do anything you could when you were younger, and heard of some guy named Dr. Oz who said sex was no good after 40. I was wondering if I should off myself at 40. Thankfully, I come from a very active lot of family who live their life to the fullest at 60 or 90.
As a boomer who was born in 1955, and grew up more like a gen-xer, (lots of day care, two parents working etc), I think this hits it on the head.
I remember seeing on the news how in the future SS won't be solvent x years in the future. This was in the seventies. WE KNEW WHAT WAS COMING, BUT LOOKED THE OTHER WAY. The whole nation did this!!!
I think the horror of what is coming is frightening many.
I couldn't find that article, but I did come across this:
It is NOT what happened, it IS how you respond.
Suicide versus happy is about how you respond to the same life experiencxes.
Successful people versus unsuccessful people, at the task of happy living.
Thanks for the link.
Baby boomers make up a substantial portion of the people at fault for the parlous state of this nation - so I can’t say I’m too upset about anything that helps to reduce the numbers of that misbegotten generation sooner rather than later.
I think it’s immaturity and inflated expectations.
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