Mid-Life Crisis

11 Pages 2742 Words

Midlife Crisis
Bob just turned forty. He has trouble relating to his kids, and wonders if his life has any meaning anymore. His wife of twenty years has just divorced him, and he can’t seem to fight the bouts of depression that attack him, especially at night. There is a common name for this widespread problem. Bob is having a mid-life crisis. As we learned at the beginning of our course, the most common view among psychologists currently is the life-span development perspective. This is why I decided to work with a topic that would most likely not have been studied 40 years ago. What exactly causes this problem, how it affects the relationships a person has with others, and whether it only affects men are all issues to be discussed from a look at some articles in several accredited psychology magazines.
The first article is “Mid-life Crisis: Helping Patients Cope With Stress, Anxiety, and Depression”. The article presents a fictional case report of a person the psychologists call John who cannot seem to escape from the “sandwich” of problems associated with his adult children and the needs of his aging parents. It also recommends methods of treatment for health physicians to treat the depression associated with this syndrome. John’s family life apparently has been complicated by several factors. His wife died at an early age, leaving him a widower for several years. His children are not successful. His new mother-in-law has been taking away his and his wife’s intimate time by interrupting them with rants caused by her progressing Alzheimer’s disease. To top it off, he has begun to seek the help of sleeping pills to help him get the rest at night he cannot seem to find. The article states that, “[E]ven when environmental stressors seem to explain a patient’s depression, it is important to search for underlying medical conditions” (Samuels, 1997). Common medical conditions that would present th...