|
Jed
Diamond is the internationally best-selling author
of eight books including Male
Menopause, now translated into 17 foreign
languages and his latest book, The The
Irritable Male Syndrome:
Managing. The 4 Key Causes of Depression and
Aggression and Mr.
Mean: Saving Your Relationship from the Irritable
Male Syndrome
For over 38 years he has been a leader in the
field of men's health. He is a member of the
International Scientific Board of the World
Congress on Men’s Health and has been on the
Board of Advisors of the Men’s Health Network
since its founding in 1992. His work has been
featured in major newspapers throughout the United
States including the New York Times, Boston Globe,
Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and USA
Today.
He has been featured on more than 1,000 radio
and T.V. programs including The View with Barbara
Walters, Good Morning America, Inside Edition, CBS,
NBC, and Fox News, To Tell the Truth, Extra, Leeza,
Geraldo, and Joan Rivers. He also did a nationally
televised special on Male Menopause for PBS. He
looks forward to your feedback. E-Mail
You can visit his website at www.menalive.com
Take The Irritable Male Syndrome quiz.
Ten Things You
Must Do To Save Your Mid-Life Marriage and Live
Happily Ever After, Part II
1. When you hunger for your partner to do
something for you, do something for them.
I made an interesting discovery. When I am
hungry for love and affection or want my partner to
treat me better, I lock myself into a quandary. The
more I want and don’t get, the more resentful
I become and the less likely it is that my partner
is going to want to give me anything good. The more
resentful I become, the more needy and hungry I
get, and the more miserable I am. I’ve found
when I am the most in need, it is the best time to
put my needs aside and give her something that will
bring joy to her life. I used to think that when I
was nice to her when she wasn’t being nice to
me, it would encourage her to withhold her
affection. I’ve found when I give, even when I
don’t get, I feel better inside. The better I
feel, the more joy I exude, and the more likely I
am to get an unexpected gift of warmth and
love.
2. Learn about the science of
happiness.
Are you living a productive and meaningful life?
Do you work on a cause that is important to you?
Are you really passionate about something and are
you bringing your personal strengths to bear on it?
Do you know why you are here? Do you feel you are
going somewhere wholeheartedly?
According to the psychologist Martin Seligman,
author of Authentic Happiness, if you answer these
questions in the affirmative, chances are that you
are already a happy person.
Recent studies have shown that subjective
well-being depends little on such "good things" of
life as health, wealth, good looks or social
status. Happiness seems to relate more directly to
how you live your life with what you have. So if
you want to have a happy marriage, forget about
trying to improve your marriage (i.e. get the other
person to change) and learn to improve your
happiness.
3. Slow down, you move to fast. You’ve
got to let the moment last.
I know it sounds like an old Simon and Garfunkle
song, and the advice is good. We all know we are
living life too fast. But like the frog in the
water, the speed of life has increased slow enough
that most of us aren’t aware of how fast we
are going.
A number of years ago I found out I had an
adrenal tumor. After having it removed, I asked the
doctors why I got it. I received the traditional
medical answer, “who knows, you just got
it.” That wasn’t good enough for me, so I
consulted my 2 million year old, inner doctor. When
I asked Guntar (that’s what he calls himself),
he told me that I needed to slow down. Adenal
tumor, adrenaline, speed—I was beginning to
get the picture.
I protested to Guntar that I had slowed down. I
had moved from New York City to Los Angeles, a
clear move to the slower lane, and had then moved
to mellow Marin, a large detour around the fast
lane. Guntar answered, “Yes, Jed, that’s
great. You changed your speed-o-meter from 100 down
to 94 and then to 86. Not bad. But what you need to
do is get it down to about 9.”
“Nine,” I sputtered and screamed back.
“I’d have to…change my whole
life.” Guntar’s only reply was
“yep!” A month later, Carlin and I moved
to Willits.
4. Talk less, listen more, sit close, and
watch the stars.
After spending 2 months in Australia and 5 weeks
in New Zealand, I realized that Carlin and I had
stopped talking to each other. Well, not totally
stopped, but we spent long times together in
silence. For most of my life, silence scared me. My
parents got silent when their marriage was in
trouble. My mother got silent when I did something
wrong. My father got silent just before he left.
Silence was never my friend.
My friends will tell you that I can talk up a
storm, anywhere at any time. I embarrass them often
talking about the most personal things in public,
usually too loudly. I like to talk and writing is
just talking with my fingers. But “down
under” I learned the joys of quietude.
Listening to the sounds of the wind and the bell
birds and breeze gave me great joy I had never
known. With my mouth shut my mind was allowed to
quiet down as well. I could enjoy my thoughts
without the pressure of having to say something.
Carlin and I found ourselves glancing at each other
and smiling with such warmth, it melted our hearts.
We enjoyed the stars in the southern sky and the
look of light we were seeing in each other’s
eyes.
5. Stop having sex and begin enjoying sensual
pleasure.
One of my major complaints through the years,
and the complaint I hear from many men, is that
we’re not getting enough sex. As I’ve
gotten older and erections are a bit harder to come
by, I found Viagra was a helpful aid. Carlin and I
made an interesting discovery when we had time to
go slow. Although Viagra was helping with
erections, it didn’t seem to be enhancing our
enjoyment of each other. As soon as I’d take
the little blue pill, it felt like I was on a time
clock. All our attention seemed to be directed to
Mr. P. Is he hard yet? Shall we start having
intercourse now or play around longer? If we wait
too long, will I lose my erection?
We finally decided to get off the pill. When we
did, we discovered something quite amazing. When
erections weren’t the primary focus,
“sex” wasn’t the outcome we were
after. For me, sex and intercourse were always
synonymous. Everything else was either foreplay or
after-play, sandwiched around the main event.
Lately we’ve been having a lot more fun
doing whatever we think would give us sensual
pleasure. This has ranged from rubbing
Carlin’s feet each night, to sensual massage,
touch, tongue, and yes, intercourse is still part
of the mix. It’s just not the main event. If
we don’t have intercourse I don’t feel
like a failure or frustrated because
“we’re not having sex.” We’re
just enjoying each other’s bodies a whole lot
more. We are more like playful adolescents than
serious adults. Maybe we’ll grow out of it.
But I hope not.
Ten
Things You Must Do To Save Your Mid-Life Marriage
and Live Happily Ever After, Part I
Developing a successful mid-life marriage is one of
the most difficult tasks human beings ever engage.
It’s also the most rewarding. Whether we are
straight or gay, legally married or living
together, these are difficult times for long-term
relationships. In 1996 the census bureau recorded a
significant spike in divorce rates among
leading-edge Baby Boomers born between 1945 and
1954. Although we think of mid-life men leaving
their middle-aged wives for a younger woman, it is
actually the women who are leaving in increasing
numbers.
According to Gail Sheehy’s new book, Sex
and the Seasoned Woman, among women who left their
first marriages sometime between the ages of 40 and
74, almost three-quarters left in their 40s. A 2004
AARP study found the following surprising facts
about mid-life divorce:
- Two-thirds of divorces among couples over
age 40 are initiated by the wives.
- One-third of divorced or single women over
40 are dating younger men—a reversal of
past behavior.
- The single woman in their 50s is much more
likely to be divorced or never married than
widowed.
But most of us would still prefer to find a good
partner, get married, have a relationship that
continues to grow closer and more intimate as we
age, and remain together until at death we do part.
So how do we accomplish this seemingly impossible
task? Here are my suggestions:
1. Recognize the hidden stressors that keep
us hypersensitive and irritable.
There is a reality we learned in biology class.
If you put a frog in boiling water, he immediately
jumps out. However, if you put him in cool water
and slowly heat it up, he swims around until he
cooks to death. The truth is we live in a world
that is slowly (well, not so slowly any more)
heating up. Global warming and all the attendant
stresses of modern life are building up in us. We
often aren’t consciously aware of the
“heat,” but deep inside, we know. We
become more sensitive and irritable, frustrated and
worried. Not realizing it is our deteriorating
environment that is stressing us, we often get down
on our partner. When we recognize the real source
of the problem, we can focus our energies in the
right direction and quit blaming each other for our
unhappiness.
2. Run for your life and give thanks.
For most of human history stresses came from
such things as wild animals coming into the camp to
eat us. We dealt with those crises by running away
and climbing a tree or chasing after the animal and
killing him if we could. Either way, we got our
body moving, burned up the stress chemicals in our
systems and our body/mind/spirit returned to
normal. We sat around the fire at night and told
stories about how lucky we were to still be alive.
The stressors are different today, but the need to
run off the tension and give thanks every day for
being alive hasn’t changed.
3. Tend and befriend for a long life and
joyous relationship.
A landmark UCLA study conducted by Drs. Shelly
Taylor and Laura Klein found that the classic
fight/flight response, thought to be a universal
reaction to stress, was how men responded to
stress. They found that women usually responded
quite differently. Under conditions of stress they
reached out to other women and children. The
researchers called this the “tend and
befriend” response. As we get older and the
world becomes ever more complex, the fight/flight
response doesn’t work so well. Men need to
learn how to make and maintain deep friendships if
we are to have successful marriages. Carlin and I
are both convinced that one of the main reasons we
have a wonderful relationship after being together
for over 25 years is that we are each in a
gender-specific support group. She is in a
women’s group and I have been in a men’s
group for over 26 years.
4. Give up being right and begin being
happy.
If you’ve lived more than 40 years you know
that we develop a sense of what’s right and
wrong. Life teaches us many lessons and we believe
we have a pretty good idea of what’s right,
right? Wrong! I can’t tell you how many fights
Carlin and I have had when one of us was sure we
were right and felt it our marital duty (for the
other’s own good, of course) to point out the
error of their ways. The longer I live, the less
sure I am of what is right or wrong. I can tell you
what feels right for me in this moment, what I
believe will make me happy. When I tell you
“my truth” not “the truth” and
listen to your truth, I find I am much happier and
enjoy our relationship much more fully.
5. Know that no one else can make you
happy.
This is one that has taken me a long time to
learn. For most of my marital life I was convinced
that the only way I could be happily married was if
my wife did things that made be happy. I
wasn’t asking for the moon. Just basic things
that any good wife would want to do for the man she
loved. Like have sex whenever I wanted. O.K., I
didn’t need it whenever I wanted, but most of
the time.
It would make me happy if she would get ready so
that we could leave on time for the party. She
knows how I hate to be late. It would make me happy
if she would rub my back without having to be
asked. She knows how much I like my back rubbed and
after all, I rub her back a lot more than she rubs
mine. I “knew” if she didn’t do
these kind of simple things to make me happy, she
probably didn’t really love me, or at least
not in the way I needed to be loved. It was a great
revelation to me when I discovered that there were
times that she would do all the right things and I
still wasn’t happy and times when she
didn’t do the things I wanted her to do and I
was happy anyway.
What have you found that is most helpful in
enhancing mid-life marriages? Stay tuned next week
for my other 5 suggestions including why I think
you should stop having sex.
Man Therapy: Why
Gender-Specific Health Care is Good for Men, Women
and The World
When I began medical school in 1965 I had a vague
notion that I wanted to become a healer and a
subconscious desire to help men. It soon became
clear that the medical education at U.C. San
Francisco was more limited than I had hoped and I
transferred to U.C. Berkeley where I eventually
received a master’s degree in social work.
During my three years in graduate school, I not
only broadened by knowledge of the psychological,
interpersonal, social, cultural, and spiritual
aspects of health, I also better understood my
interest in men’s health.
I was five years old when my father took an
overdose of sleeping pills because, as I would
learn later, he had become increasingly depressed
because he couldn’t make a living doing what
he loved to support his family. He was committed to
the state mental hospital in Camarillo, north of
our home in Los Angeles. It is the same hospital
where the 1948 movie, The Snake Pit,
starring Olivia de Havilland, was filmed. I still
remember the terror I felt going every Sunday with
my uncle to visit my father in 1949. Over the year
I went, I watched as his depression worsened and
his mental health declined.
I grew up wondering what happened to my father,
whether it would happen to me and what I could do
to help other men and their families. I graduated
from U.C. Berkeley in 1968 and started MenAlive in
1969 following the birth of our first son. I became
a psychotherapist and soon specialized in working
with men and their families. After practicing for
34 years, I returned to graduate school and earned
a PhD in International Health in 2008, at age 65
(we joked that my “retirement” party was
also my coming-out party as a doctor.) My
dissertation study, published with the title,
Male vs. Female Depression: How Men Act Out and
Women Act In, answered many of the questions I
had been wrestling with since childhood and
expanded my focus on gender-specific health
care.
The Emerging Field of Gender-Specific
Medicine and Health Care
Marianne J. Legato, MD, is an internationally
renowned academic, physician, author and lecturer.
She pioneered the new field of gender-specific
medicine. She is a Professor Emerita of Clinical
Medicine at Columbia University College of
Physicians & Surgeons and an Adjunct Professor
of Medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Dr.
Legato is also the founder and director of the
Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine, which she
created in 2006.
In her 2002 book, Eve’s Rib: The New
Science of Gender-Specific Medicine and How It Can
Save Our Life, she says,
“Eve’s Rib is not just
about women’s health, but about the health
of both sexes and the new science of
gender-specific medicine. Until now, we’ve
acted as though men and women are essentially
identical except for the differences in
reproductive function. In fact, information
we’ve been gathering over the past ten
years tells us that this is anything but true,
and that everywhere we look, the two sexes are
startlingly and unexpectedly different not only
in their normal function but in the ways they
experience illness.”
Although Dr. Legato’s first book focused
more on women’s health, her subsequent books
expanded her focus to men. Why Men Never
Remember and Women Never Forget was published
in 2008 and explored the ways men and women are
different and how those differences impact our
relationships. She acknowledges the ways in which
discussing sex and gender differences can be
misunderstood.
“I have taken a number of risks
in writing this book,” says Dr. Legato,
“and I wish to acknowledge them right
at the outset. For instance, there is a
tremendous risk in categorizing certain
behaviors as ‘male’ or
‘female,’ as I do throughout the book.
There is a cautionary skit in Free to Be You and
Me in which two babies (played to great effect
by Marlo Thomas and Mel Brooks) argue about
whether they’re boys or girls. Boys can
keep secrets, and they’re not afraid of
mice, so the Mel Brooks baby, who can’t and
is, must definitely be a girl—right? The
debate continues until the nurse comes to change
their diapers, which settles the matter once and
for all.”
Legato obviously was willing to take the risks.
She concluded in the book’s introduction,
“Whatever speculation I have
engaged in over the course of the pages that
follow is in the service of a larger concept:
the ideas that, whatever our differences, there
is much that men and women can learn from one
another.”
Dr. Legato is not the only clinician and
researcher to take the risk to tackle sex and
gender issues. There are many, including David C.
Page, MD. Dr. Page is professor of biology at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and
director of the Whitehead Institute, where he has a
laboratory devoted to the study of the
Y-chromosome.
“It has been said that our
genomes are 99.9% identical from one person to
the next,”
says Dr. Page.
“It turns out that this
assertion is correct as long as the two
individuals being compared are both men.
It’s also correct if the two individuals
being compared are both women. However, if you
compare the genome of a man with the genome of a
woman, you’ll find that they are only 98.5%
identical. In other words, the genetic
difference between a man and a woman are 15
times greater than the genetic difference
between two men or between two women.”
Dr. Page, like Dr. Legato, demonstrates that
even small differences can be important.
“There are 10 trillion cells in
human body and every one of them is sex
specific,”
says Dr. Page.
“So, all your cells know on a
molecular level whether they are XX or XY. It is
true that a great deal of the research going on
today which seeks to understand the causes and
treatments for disease is failing to account for
this most fundamental difference between men and
women. The study of disease is flawed.”
In looking ahead to the future of
gender-specific healthcare, Dr. Paige is
hopeful.
“Here’s what I think. We
need to build a better tool kit for researchers
that is XX and XY informed rather than our
current gender-neutral stance. We need a tool
kit that recognizes the fundamental difference
on a cellular, organ, system, and person level
between XY and XX. I believe that if we do this,
we will arrive at a fundamentally new paradigm
for understanding and treating human
disease.”
Man Therapy: A New Approach For Addressing
Men’s Health Issues
When I began working in the field of
Gender-Specific Medicine and Men’s Health,
there were very few programs that addressed the
unique health issues facing males. Now there are
many. One of the new programs that I feel is making
a positive difference in the world is Man
Therapy. I first heard about the work of Man
Therapy when I met its founder and creator, Joe
Conrad in November, 2021.
“We realized early on that if
we waited until men were in crisis, we would be
too late,”
says Grit Digital Health Founder and CEO, Joe
Conrad.
“I have always felt that
creativity, innovation, and communication could
solve any challenge. From the beginning, our
team set three goals for Man Therapy:
1) Break through the stigma surrounding
mental health by making it approachable.
2) Encourage help-seeking
behavior.
3) Reduce suicidal ideation.
“Through research, men told us to
just give them the information they needed to
fix themselves, so we built a website that
provides a broad range of information,
resources, and tools to do just that. It is
extremely rewarding to know that we are
accomplishing our goal of positively impacting
and changing men’s lives.”
Man Therapy has been doing great work for some
time.
“Man Therapy was launched in
2010,”
says Joe Conrad,
“and has had more than 1.5 million
visits to the site. Visitors have completed 400,000
‘head inspections’ and there have been
40,000 clicks to the crisis line.”
A recent A CDC-funded study shows that men who
access Man Therapy, as a digital mental health
intervention, experience a decrease in depression
and suicidal ideation, a reduction in poor mental
health days, and an increase in help-seeking
behavior. Additionally, this study shows that men
in the Man Therapy control group reported
statistically significant improved rates of
engaging in formal help-seeking behaviors through
tools like online treatment locator systems, making
or attending a mental health treatment appointment,
or attending a professionally led support
group.
Dr. Jodi Frey, chief investigator of the study,
concluded,
“Interventions that can be offered
online and scaled up to reach men throughout
communities, including workplaces, are important
additions to comprehensive suicide prevention
programming.”
Dr. Frey goes on to say,
“Web-based resources, such as
Man Therapy, can play an important role in
suicide prevention to engage men in considering
risk and help-seeking, and this study shows that
programs like Man Therapy should be part of a
comprehensive, community-based intervention to
reduce suicide and depression risk and increase
resilience.”
The world needs better approaches to health care
for both men and women. A gender-specific approach,
I believe, will become standard care for men and
women throughout the world.
You can learn more about Man Therapy at
https://mantherapy.org/.
You can learn more about my own trainings and
upcoming events at https://menalive.com/.
Source: menalive.com/why-gender-specific-health-care-is-good-for-men-women-and-the-world/
Related Articles:
Effectiveness
of man therapy to reduce suicidal ideation and
depression among working-age men: A randomized
controlled trial
Help-seeking
and Man Therapy: The impact of an online suicide
intervention - 112222
Deaths of Despair: Are
Males More Vulnerable?
The end of the year can be a time of joy or one
of deep anguish. We need to talk about the things
we often try and hide. There were times in my life
I wasn’t sure I wanted to go on living. When I
was five years old, my mid-life father took an
overdose of sleeping pills in despair because he
couldn’t find work to support his family. I
grew up wondering what happened to my dad and
worried that it would happen to me. I vowed that I
would never be out of work and nearly worked myself
to death to keep my promise. I was in my
mid-fifties when my company was downsized and I
lost my job. I fell into despair and death seemed
my best option. I was lucky. I had a supportive
wife who encouraged me to get professional help,
even though I was resistant. Many others are not so
lucky.
Men aren’t the only ones who lose hope and
think about ending their lives, but males are at
higher risk than females, and our risk is highest
when we are younger and when we are older. In his
book, Dying to Be Men, Dr. Will Courtenay
alerts us to the troubling fact that too many males
are killing themselves, sometimes slowly over the
course of their lifetime or abruptly through
impulsive risk-taking, violent encounters, and
suicide. According to the National Center for
Health Statistics at the CDC, age-adjusted death
rates per 100,000 U.S. population (2019):
|
Age Group
|
Male Rate
|
Female Rate
|
Ratio
|
|
15-24
|
22.0
|
5.5
|
4.0
|
|
25-44
|
28.0
|
7.4
|
3.8
|
|
45-64
|
29.9
|
9.6
|
3.1
|
|
65-74
|
26.4
|
3.9
|
4.5
|
|
75+
|
39.9
|
4.3
|
9.3
|
The ratio statistics mean that for every 100
females between the ages of 15-24 who died by
suicide, 400 males died. For every 100 women over
the age of 75 who died, 930 men died by
suicide.
Clearly males as a group are more susceptible to
“deaths of despair” than are females.
“Suicide rates among middle-aged
white Americans are rising rapidly,”
say Anne Case and Angus Deaton, in their book,
Deaths of Despair and The Future of Capitalism.
Both Case and Deaton are Professors of Economics
and Public Affairs Emeritus at Princeton University
and go on to say,
“We found something else that
puzzled us. Middle-aged white Americans were
hurting in other ways. They were reporting more
pain and poorer overall health.”
They detail a number of causes and demonstrate
that our current economic system is one of the
primary factors. They note that
“men without prospects do not make
good marriage partners and marriage rates among
less educated whites fell, and more people lost
out on the benefits of marriage, of seeing their
children grow, and of knowing their
grandchildren.”
When my father couldn’t find work, he
blamed himself. I did the same, as do many men,
even when they sense that it is the system that is
broken. In a society based on values of
“rugged individualism,” being out of work
feels like a personal failure. We often don’t
realize the importance of jobs until we lose
them.
“Jobs are not just the source of
money,”
say professors Case and Deaton.
“They are the basis for the
rituals, customs, and routines of working-class
life. Destroy work and, in the end,
working-class life cannot survive. It is the
loss of meaning, of dignity, of pride, and
self-respect that comes with the loss of
marriage and of community that brings on
despair, not just or even primarily the loss of
money.”
In looking at suicides, Case and Deaton note
that
“Suicide, like other deaths of
despair, has been increasing among white
not-Hispanics in the United States since the
late 1990s. This is true at all ages from
fifteen to seventy-four, and it has led to the
U.S., whose suicide rate used to be
unexceptional with those of other rich
countries, now having one of the highest rates
among them. Women are much less likely to kill
themselves than men, in part because they choose
less effective means—drugs versus
guns—and in part because they are less
susceptible to social isolation than men.”
Addressing America’s Crisis of
Despair
Suicide is the ultimate indicator of despair.
Why do young males 15 to 24 years old have suicide
rates 4 to 5.4 times higher than females of the
same age? Why do older males 65 to 85 kill
themselves at rates 6.3 to 17.5 times higher than
females of the same age? Human beings are complex
and there is no simple reason that explains why
males give up on life more often than females. But
one word stands out as I reflect upon my fifty plus
years working with men. That word is
“loneliness.”
In my most recent book, 12 Rules for Good Men, I
quoted social scientists John Cacioppo and William
Patrick. In their book, Loneliness: Human Nature
and the Need for Social Connection, they say,
“When people are asked what
pleasures contribute most to happiness, the
overwhelming majority rate love, intimacy, and
social affiliation above wealth, or frame, even
above physical health.”
Males seem to have more difficulty with love,
intimacy, and social affiliation than do women.
When I’ve spoken to large groups of men and
women, I’ll often ask “how many of you
have a number of close friends you confide
in?” Most of the women have at least three,
other than their spouse. Most men have none.
That’s why my first rule in 12 Rules for Good
Men was for guys to join a men’s group. It is
one of the best ways to address the loneliness
epidemic. I’ve been with the same group of
guys now for forty-two years.
In his book, Lonely at the Top: The High Cost of
Men’s SuccessLonely at the Top: The High Cost
of Men’s Success, Dr. Thomas Joiner says,
“Men’s main problem is not
self-loathing, stupidity, greed, or any of the
legions of other things they’re accused of.
The problem, instead is loneliness.”
He goes on to offer this chilling example from a
postmortem following a suicide of a man in his
60s.
“He did not have friends…He
did not feel comfortable with other men…he
did not trust doctors and would not seek help
even though he was aware that he needed
help.”
I thought of my father. I thought of myself when
I felt deep despair. I think about the millions of
men in the world who are disconnected from others
and feel forgotten and passed over by society. I
think about the millions of men who will lose their
jobs and an economic system that is based on wealth
for a few at the expense of jobs for the many.
“Men’s main problem is not
self-loathing, stupidity, greed, or any of the
legions of other things they’re accused of.
The problem, instead, is loneliness.”
The Brookings Institution is an American
research group founded in 1916 and has been rated
by the University of Pennsylvania as “the top
Think Tank in the world.” They are bipartisan
and are cited equally by conservative and liberal
politicians. In a recent report, “Addressing
America’s Crisis of Despair and Economic
Recovery,” they offer important insights about
deaths of despair, their causes, and potential
solutions.
According to the Brookings report,
“From 2005 to 2019, an average of
70,000 Americans died annually from deaths of
despair (premature self-imposed deaths due to
suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol and other
poisonings), with the numbers increasing
gradually over the period. These deaths are
concentrated among less than college educated
middle aged whites, with those out of the labor
force disproportionately represented.”
The report also notes that the problem has
gotten worse since Covid-19 arrived.
“The COVID-19 pandemic was a
fundamental shock, exacerbating an already a
growing problem of despair,”
says the report.
“Before the pandemic, the U.S.
boasted robust stock markets and record low
levels of unemployment. Yet those numbers masked
the roughly 20 percent of prime aged men (ages
25-54) who had permanently dropped out of the
labor force (OLF)—i.e., neither employed
nor searching for work.”
Male deaths of despair not only impact millions
of men and their families, but also undermines the
very foundations of American democracy.
“White despair contributes to
decreasing levels of geographic mobility, it
reflects in our cognitive skill
‘deserts’, and has political
spillovers,”
says the report.
“For example, counties with more
respondents reporting lost hope before 2016 were
more likely to vote for Donald Trump.”
We also saw the anger and despair in action on
January 6, 2021.
“White males out of the labor
force, middle class whites with high levels of
debt, and whites from towns with high levels of
fear of being ‘replaced’ by growing
minority populations were disproportionately
represented among the protestors who stormed the
U.S. Capitol on January 6th,”
says the Report.
The report concludes that
“there is the need for a new
federal interagency task force to coordinate
existing and new efforts to address addiction,
despair, and economic recovery as a critical
first step.”
Given the state of conflict and paralysis in our
Federal government, I’m not holding my breath
waiting for government response.
Over the last fifty-plus years since I founded
MenAlive, we have become a world-wide leader in
addressing these issues. In a recent article on
MenAlive, “The
Man Kind Challenge: Why Healing Men Will Do More
Good Than Curing Cancer,” I described
the efforts of a group of colleagues who, like me,
have been working in the field for many years. We
had a kickoff event on International Men’s Day
on November 19th and are planning further events in
2022.
If you’re interested in getting more
information, please send me an email to Jed@MenAlive.com
and put “Man Kind Challenge” in the
subject line. In the meantime you don’t have
to wait to start a men’s group. Just reach out
to a guy who you like who may need some extra
support. It will be good for you both. Let’s
make 2022 a year of greater connection man to
man.
©2022 Jed Diamond
See Books,
Issues
* * *
Wealth can't buy health, but health can buy
wealth. - Henry David Thoreau
Contact
Us |
Disclaimer
| Privacy
Statement
Menstuff®
Directory
Menstuff® is a registered trademark of Gordon
Clay
©1996-2023, Gordon Clay
|
