Mental Health
Filed under: Anti-Aging For Men
Mental Health
In spite of the best efforts of your associates and family, you probably aren’t losing your mind. Then why does it seem that as you get further into midlife, there are times when you’re sure you are? In most instances, except in regard to the unfortunate progression of Alzheimer’s disease, which knows no intellectual or personal fitness boundaries (but fortunately also afflicts fewer than one in five older adults), using the brain-like physical exerciseprotects your memory and mental acuity. Studies also ascribe mental benefits for the elderly from three-times-a-week strength training. If this sounds very much like that Hellenic ideal of a sound mind and sound body, you’re getting my drift.
The fact is that at any stage in lifebut especially at midlifecognitive problems are seldom caused by actual neural degeneration or change. They are most often due to other factors. There continues to be a considerable underappreciation of how depression and anxiety can interfere with cognition. Being depressed, stressed, anxious, or under some other mental pressure can masquerade as a loss of mental capacity. Commonly, such conditions might make you forgetful or distracted or interfere with your attention span.
Stress and confusion can turn into Edgar Allan Poe’s “Descent into a Maelstrom.” Depression and distraction can affect your performance on the job. Your wife and family can become upset with you. Your friends may try to avoid you. The whole process becomes a vicious cycle, with the effects exacerbating the condition, the condition creating still more deleterious effects, and so on. This, coupled with the other pressures associated with hitting midlife, can bring the enjoyment of life to a wicked halt. The worse it gets, the less able you’re going to be to break the cycle.
Many men deal with this through self-medicationdrugs or alcohol, to be specific. This creates still another complication, one from which society suffers greatly. Where does it all end?
Men, unlike women, don’t go to the doctor or hospital unless they think they’re dying. Women go for birth control pills, pap smears, babies, premarin (a hormone treatment for menopause), and so on. Their mothers have done this before them. But men have historically sought medical help only in acute situations, and sometimes not even then. If men don’t seek medical help for an aching joint or even to get new glasses, how would they be expected to ask for assistance for something as nebulous as “mental illness”?
Fortunately, mental illnessor even just feeling blue, a bit out of sorts, less than top-notchis increasingly being regarded more as a physical disease and less as something one can control through willpower: It’s chemical, it’s biological. There is a curious intermix among the workings of the brain, the body, and the spiritone that we will probably never definebut just because you believe in the strength of one over the other doesn’t mean you can’t ask for help in areas where you are weak. That’s what being a member of society is all about.
Thus, if you feel you may be losing your mind, a trip to the doc’s could more easily solve a problem that could only get worse. An antidepressant drug or mood stabilizer, or simply just a few good conversations about what’s on your mind, could break the stress cycle just enough to let you get back on task.
Don’t let feeling down go too long. A good rule of thumb is: If someone tells you to seek help, they’re probably right.