Middle-Life Mental Crisis - Part 1

In the UK (and possibly other countries too), the lion share of suicides are in men and this isn’t by a small margin as is often the case with gender stats, we’re talking 3 times higher. In 2018, the ratio was 76% of suicides were men. This trend has been unchanged since the 1980’s - which is as far back as the data I have access to shows.

And of these men, the majority of them sit in my age bracket. Well in actual fact, 25% are between 30-44 and 29% of them are in the next age bracket of 45-59. So I say my age bracket, because right now, I’m pretty much on the border of those two age groups. Although I don’t have the raw data to check, I’m guessing if you zoned into narrower brackets you might find it’s higher specifically around my age.

But why am I shining a torch on this topic and especially why am I reflecting on the fact my age is more prone to ending things. I’ll come out and say this in bold letters, I’m not suicidal, nor am I suffering from depression or other cognitive distresses. But I do find myself increasingly under certain pressures - almost all of them self-imposed and this has raised a question, as to whether there is a path or stepping-stone from how I feel to the mental darkness that sadly has driven so many to choose to take their ultimate breath. If many feel the same age-gender pressure I’m feeling, why do some go on to the bleakest of days and others wade on through.

Now, here’s my other bold text, expressing that I am not a clinical researcher, nor am I what you might call a ‘learned gentlemen’. I speak from no scientific basis but from my probable and rational means, but empathic views and logical reasoning based in what I know and from what I’ve extracted from my experiences to date.

It pleases me to see that in the past few years, in this country at least, there has been amplified focus and attention on the importance of good mental health and reassurance and encouraging those suffering to speak up and seek help. This is good for society, especially in the patriarchal infused parts of the world. Many rightly so want to level the gender playing field in many aspects of life, but there is still a biological pattern that results in women nurturing and men providing. Of course, that’s not to say the opposite doesn’t happen, because it does and it’s a resounding good thing where it does occur. But we need to accept that biology can’t easily be changed.

How many times do we hear the words “it’s hard being a woman” or “if only men could bare children, then they’d know what pain is” and so on. I’m not suggesting for a mere second that men would be better at motherhood or that they could do any better at being a woman than a woman could. The point is it’s all rhetorical, because despite what men say about being male and women say about their gender, we simply will never know - unless science advances in the decades and centuries yet to come - but as I say, you can’t change biology (easily).

And just like we can’t change biology, you can’t easily relate to the hormones and toxins in the mind that make us think and feel they way we do. The women in my life, namely my wife, says these same things, reminding me how much stress her body went through to bring our children into this world, that it was her who carried and still to this day burdens the shoulder of most of the nurturing for our children. This isn’t because I’m an absent father - although there probably have been phases where I could have been more present or done more to share the parental load. But much of the balance of parenting is a combined societal and biological make up.

My father’s generation, those who had kids in the 1970’s barely shared any of the parental duties and my grandparents generation who gave us the post-war baby boomers shared even less. I recall my grandma saying that it was normal for expectant fathers to drop their wives off at the hospital at early signs of labour, where they’d stay for up to two weeks after childbirth. Fast forward to my generation who attend NCT classes or similar, insist on being there pre, during and post labour. I like many others, did what I could, changed nappies in the dead of night, and shared as much as I could. I was there for most of all my two daughters major events and I felt a connection to my wife and children that I doubt I would if I repeated the norms of the 1940’s.

Despite there being a dramatic shift in parental involvement in the past 60 years, women have children and men do not. An obvious and almost pointless statement, right? But still I feel we need to remember that fact sometimes. Genders are not the same and of course we should strive for equal opportunities in the workplace and other areas of society, but men and women are different and this is true in how they react and deal with the external forces, how they typically handle scenarios presented to them. I bring this back to the start, when I observed that suicide rates are very imbalanced, but why is this?

We no longer live in a world where men do all the work, where only men confront danger and only men are faced with stressful situations. Both genders are exposed to almost the same world, the same traditions, the same media assaults, the same air and the same lifestyles as each other. So why are suicide rate so much higher. Men are not subjected to different mediums for them to reach these disproportions that the grim statistic infers. In fact, for example depression in younger years is far outweighed towards females compared to their male counterparts. We rarely hear about teenage boys struggling with mental health, but depression in young ladies (teens to mid-twenties) is quite common.

A study in the US, found that the highest gender and age group to suffer from mental illness and depression is women between the ages of 40-59. But as you’ll recall from the numbers at the start, that’s the same age group that sees the higher suicide in men. If we believe the numbers, more middle-aged women suffer depression, but more men go on to take their own lives. If you’ve not already come to this conclusion, let me spell it out for you. Men don’t cope as well with stress as women!

Now we’ve got that out there, we can discuss why this is. But before I do, let me come back to that last statement and expand. I’m not suggesting that men are weaker, mentally - mainly because I don’t think you could fairly test mental strength across gender or any two people in fact. But something leads some men to take depression to a deep state where they feel the only option is the final option. Why is it that more women can recover or stop themselves falling to the darkness than men can?

I don’t have a huge amount of first-hand insight into the subject of depression or mental health, but as I outlined I am increasingly feeling low at times. I can recognise the difference between the odd low day and outright depression. Well I say I can, but perhaps that is how depression starts, completely unnoticed even by the individual. I have in the past found myself in very low periods, typically when I was younger and felt rejected by a particular girl I was chasing at the time. I even remember starting to drink alcohol every night to stop me thinking about my sorrow, all of this on the surface sounds like the tell-tell signals of depression, right? But when I say that I stopped drinking bourbon nightly after a week, because I broke out with facial zits, I was quickly able to stop and realised that I was just trying to be a little more rock’n’roll than I actually was.

Back then, I lived alone, had a decent corporate job and a mostly enviable life. 24 years old, owned property, drove a nice car (which I stupidly paid far too much on finance for), and most importantly, I had a great bunch of friends - which I still do today, although we typically see less of each other these days, as is the trappings of middle-age, work, family-life etc.

So I’m confident that my low days are not full depression. Forgive me, I did say there were only two sets of bold signposts to declare, but I forgot an important one and it's one that I’m sure will have a huge bearing on many for decades. That is, I’m writing this and feeling the way I do whilst in the midst of one of this species toughest challenges for decades, and that is the COVID-19 global pandemic. Like most, I’ve spent the best part of the past 12 months in lockdown, which has actually enabled me to see more of my children and wife, as I usually work long hours, often staying away in hotels. It’s been nice to tuck my beautiful daughters into bed every night.

I have wondered a lot recently, if my current feelings are influenced overly by the pandemic and I’m under no illusion that it has a burden on me. However, the pressures I spoke of at the outset and the relationship they may or may not have to those that go on to end their own lives, I believe are of the modern age, not just of the past 12 months whilst we all grapple with the Coronavirus.

I am in no doubt that not having much to do, being stuck at home during endless lockdowns has led me to contemplate and consider more about my own feelings.

I don’t consider myself to be particularly unique or massively different from my peers - there were days when I did strive for the remarkable, but I’ve recognised that success doesn’t have to come from winning an Oscar for best original screenplay - which was one of my teenage ambitions. I’ve settled down with the comfortable target for a happy and healthy life, surrounded by people I love. So I just consider myself normal.

I started writing this to help me articulate how I was feeling, because I know I avoid talking about what’s on my mind and it has just struck me that I have rambled on for paragraphs, discussing other points - which although are relevant but it’s an example of deflecting and even writing how I feel. So I will try and focus and target more centrally from here.

I’m feeling a lack of purpose. I increasingly feel like the only value I bring to my family is moving heavy boxes and helping bring money into the home. I feel like my wife and children have a very strong bond and having one child who has mental health issues has resulted in my wife building a stronger relationship with her, which she does to help my daughter through challenges. My wife is right, these tactics are essential, but I find it harder to deploy them myself and the net result of that is that my daughter wants her mother to help her more with day to day activities. Then the younger daughter mimics this and also only wants mum to help and I rapidly become redundant.

All of these demands on my wife by the kids, clearly takes its toll on her, there’s no rest-bite - and understandably she gets frustrated that I appear to not share the parenting load, but there’s a cycle happening here. The girls only want their mum, my wife then does what they ask (for a quiet life) and then the girls refuse to come to me for help or support and my wife gets annoyed that everything is on her. She understandably loses her temper with me because it appears I’m not helping.

I find myself unable to help my kids, this means my wife gets annoyed with me and I’m unable to offer any value to any of them. Although I don’t feel suicidal in the slightest, maybe these are some of the seeds that makes men feel they’re not needed. Financially my family will be very well off if I popped my clogs - maybe this is where some of them end up being.

Most men take on that traditional role of being the provider, as mentioned before, there is more balance in this modern age, but it’s written in our DNA. Just look at the jobs each of the genders typically undertake, women gravitate to jobs with people and men towards jobs with things. More men become engineers and more women become nurses and teachers, jobs that are about working with people. This is because we are wired in that way, this is why typically women nurture and care and men do non-personable things.

The same is true about how we deal with matters, women will chat with friends and go over their feelings, play out scenarios, take a real interest in other people’s lives to help learn for themselves and also to get the rewards of being able to help someone else. I’m not suggesting that men can’t help others or are unable to help. My wife and I are friends with a couple, our kids are in the same class at school and we all get on. Both of our kids are going through some difficult times and both families are completely fed up with the pandemic and the negativity everywhere. But when the two wives get together they chat about everything, mainly the children, then discuss deep rooted feelings, offer the other the support that comes with knowing they’re both going through similar things and this brings solace for them. In a way, they relive the experiences that troubled them so much, but it harnesses a support structure, a prism in which they can recreate annoyances, but together they find it soothing.

On the other hand, when me and the husband meet up for a walk on occasions, we chat about our heating systems and how to fix our bikes. We both know the other is getting fed up, but we just take comfort in being able to have a friendly chat about common matters, maybe share a joke or two. The key point here, is that neither of us spoke about our feelings or offered the other any direct support. Of course, having friends who you can chat shit about is helpful, but if someone is struggling, us men, typically avoid the discussion. Something deep inside us doesn’t want to show weakness, I think it is a primordial instinct, our less developed ape relatives would have use weakness against each other, only the alpha male got to mate with the female and all that anthropology stuff. As men we find it hard to open up to another person, especially another man unless we have the perfect storm of circumstances, a complete safe haven where we know nothing we say or admit too will be used against us. Men can be so mean to each other, we call it banter amongst mates and it is there to serve a comical and bonding purpose, but it goes beyond that, it proves to us that even in the company of our trusted friends, it can be tricky to open up.

So men can’t easily share or seek support from their male friends, but what about those closest to them - their partners. Well this is where it’s even more of a paradox. Transitioning from pre-children days to becoming a parent is difficult for most people, both mum and dad face the challenge together, one day only looking out for each other and then the next day having this tiny fragile being that you both created and you both are hit with the huge responsibility and love that you thought you knew was coming, but wham it hits you like a train. At this point, both mum and dad change, but they change in slightly different ways. For a man, you realise your role, more than it has ever been, is to provide. Provide support, comfort, an income, a safe haven, a roof etc. Again, not suggesting that mothers don’t do that also, but that is the instinct that hits us squarely on the nose.

I recall back in December 2014, when I found out we were expecting our second child, I remember driving down the road and narrowly avoided a car accident, it would have been a simple fender-bender if it had happened, nothing major. After the near-miss and the adrenaline had left my body, I remember a thought channelling through my mind. I thought that if I was killed in this car, then my main biological purpose had been satisfied, I had provided the seed to conceive the second child we wanted for our family. Like a male black-widow spider who is killed after he’s impregnated the female - his job is done. This feeling was just a flash micro-second, but I remember it well.

Sadly that pregnancy miss-carried and that was traumatic for us both, but far more painful for my wife. And I felt helpless during this time. It was a sad event, made worse by the way the hospital dealt with the situation - but that’s a different topic altogether.

As mentioned, my children rely on my wife for so much, so she picked up the load on so much. So it’s quite understandable that when things get too much, she will creak and need to vent - we all do after all. But in a house of two adults and two children, where the day to day grind of parenting, having a career, and generally trying to keep the merry-go-round moving, you need to decompress. But you rightly can’t vent and let off steam at the young people. So guess who gets the brunt.