THAT'S MEN: MENTAL DISTRESS in young men is a source of great worry to families and communities, but a side effect of this concern is that we have underplayed such distress in older people.
I was interested to read lately that relatively high levels of distress have been found in men and women aged 50-64 years.
And while we all worry about the prevalence of suicide in young men, I was surprised to learn that female rates of death by suicide peak between the ages of 50-54 and 60-64.
This surprised me since women are often thought to be protected against suicide because they talk out their problems while men keep it all to themselves.
I read the figures in Grow Young, a research report on mental health issues and older people published by Shine, which promotes the rights of those affected by mental ill health, and Source, which is made up of current and past mental health service users.
At the launch of the report, Minister of State Kathleen Lynch suggested that the menopause was a factor in the high levels of distress among women.
I agree, but I think other factors come into play also. It seems to me that when children grow up and leave home, women who have built their identities around being mothers are faced with a huge crisis.
The 50s is also an age when both men and women have to come to terms with the fact that certain dreams they had earlier in life will never be achieved. They have reached the age at which, if they lose the job, a new job will be harder to find.
And they were teenagers in the 1960s and young adults in the 1970s which were characterised by a youth culture that swept aside the traditions and restrictions of older generations.
It is not easy to accept that you have now become the older generation.
For some, also, there is the loss of the dream of a comfortable retirement with the economic crash meaning they may have to work on. I suspect that retirement, a luxury which I will not be able to afford and never really cared about, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Still, the loss of its possibility is a blow for those who counted on it.
Depression and suicide in the young need to be absolute priorities and people of all ages would say so. But let’s not forget that older people, too, face challenges and need mental health services that respect them and the particular needs of their stage of life.
Addendum: What have farmerettes got in common with David Beckham?
You might recall that Beckham once admitted to wearing Posh’s knickers. He also had a habit for a time of appearing on the football field wearing a girly hairband, to the ire, unsurprisingly, of Alex Ferguson.
Beckham could get away with this because he was, undeniably, a man’s man and his manliness was so beyond question that even wearing items of female attire could not dent his image.
Farmerettes are female competitors in ploughing championships and probably most associated in the public mind with the National Ploughing Championships, which begin today.
It’s an odd word to describe women 40 years after the Women’s Liberation Movement kicked off in Ireland. But any female farmers I have come across have unquestionably been strong women who could probably run the country in their spare time and would make a better job of it than the men have, too. So strong are they that the word “farmerette” does not diminish them in any way even if it grates on more liberal ears.
All this is by way of telling you that various bodies connected with mental health will have stands at this week’s National Ploughing Championships. They include the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and the William Glasser Institute Ireland which promote reality therapy in this country.
Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is accredited as a counsellor by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living,is published by Veritas. His mindfulness newsletter is free by e-mail.