Midlife Suicide: the causes

Posted by Joel Friedlander | 1 Comment

Taken from my comments on the NYTimes readers board in response to Midlife Suicide Rises, Puzzling Researchers.

The core of the article:

A new five-year analysis of the nation’s death rates recently released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the suicide rate among 45-to-54-year-olds increased nearly 20 percent from 1999 to 2004, the latest year studied, far outpacing changes in nearly every other age group. (All figures are adjusted for population.)

My father’s post:

Why has there been an increase in suicides? Perhaps it was the revolution of rising expectations that has been fizzling for the past few years. Those in middle age in America were raised with the idea that they could accomplish anything that they wanted to do. Unlike their parents generation they never experienced the Depression; they never confronted something bad that they couldn’t do anything about.

Taking another view, my generation, to move from the general to the specific, always had the idea that they could age without getting any older. We were perhaps the first generation in America to be infused with the idea that youth could last forever. If you have such a view you may have a hard time adjusting to the fact that your virility, and appearance, and athleticism may decline with age. When you lost a step on your way to first base in an earlier generation it was chalked off to encroaching age and nothing more was thought about it. In my generation we see 40 year old men playing major league ball like champions. We see George Foreman win the heavyweight championship when was in his forties. We were witness to many accomplishments in athletics that could not be done in an earlier generation. The fact that many of those feats of excessive prowess were accomplished with the use of stimulants and steroids doesn’t matter, because the ethos of continual youth was imbued in our consciousness in our teens and we are stuck with it now. The reality is less important than the perception.

Faced with the obvious end of youth, which is major reality to be confronted between the ages of 45 and 54, many people must adapt. That adaptation was easier in earlier generations where a person was not expected to be young forever. In fact, age and the maturity that came with it was valued by our society. Sadly, that is not always true today; wisdom is not a sought after commodity. Youth in America is everything and when you no longer have it you may look elsewhere for your status, or, you may become depressed.

What is truly tragic here is that age catches up with all of us, no matter how we try to outpace it. It is only with adjusted expectations that we can survive and prosper.

There is also the fact that current medical technology calls for the prescription of more and more medications that have to be taken. The result of this is often the feeling that you are no longer in control of your life. Perhaps it would be better if the medical profession eased off a bit and concentrated more on lifestyle modification rather then medication to combat the effects of advancing age.

Let me give one anecdote in connection with this. I have a friend who developed early diabetes and was rapidly medicated, but without immediate results. After the medication did not have the desired result a friend of his suggested that he undertake daily exercise to ameliorate the condition.

Only when my friend began exercising daily did he get the condition under control. That should have been the first line of defense, not a subsequent adjustment. The doctor put too much faith in the prescription and too little in the patient’s ability to adapt his lift to circumstances. It is often your choice, change the way you live or pop a pill. If you have to pop too many pills your life may no longer feel like it is your own, and too many doctors are pill crazy. I won’t belabor the point.

There was also an expectation of great financial success that was conveyed to my generation. If you worked hard you could achieve anything. Many believed it and only after extended life experience began to learn that not everything is possible in the human condition.

Confronting this some people turn to religion, some turn to recreational drugs, some turn to alcohol (although some turned to it when they were young and never turned away), and some to self evaluation. When those palliatives don’t work a person sometimes becomes disheartened (an old fashioned, non psychiatric term that is limited in its specificity, but is a good one nevertheless) If no one is there to stand by them at that time suicide can be the result.

Now why wouldn’t someone be there to stand beside them. Well, as the article mentions many people move all over the country and when you really need them, they aren’t there for you. What the article doesn’t talk about is the fact that with both partners to marriage working full time, and in America that can mean 60 hours a week, there is little time for them to console one another. Often, both husband and wife are so obsessed with their careers that they pay little attention to one another. They are no longer partners, they are merely roommates. They speak at each other and not to each other.

America is the land of Horatio Alger success and little provision is made for those who aren’t a success. When the world calls for success and all you can give it is failure, well, to some, suicide looks like a good solution.

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