Depression, child-rearing in the 21st century

MORE than 100 academics, teachers, psychologists, children’s authors and other experts yesterday called for a major public debate on child-rearing in the 21st century. The escalating incidence of childhood depression is caused, they suggested, by a lack of understanding, by both politicians and public, of the realities and subtleties of child development.

Exposed as never before to iconimagery, txt spk, 24-hour TV and targeted marketing, especially of dubious food products, where are children to go? What happens to the senses and the imagination? Does the fast, technology-driven and competitive world really suit a fragile, developing mind? The letter, published in the Daily Telegraph, was instigated by former head teacher Sue Palmer (author of the book Toxic Childhood) and Dr Richard House of Roehampton University: signatories included Baroness Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institute, children’s authors Jacqueline Wilson, Anne Fine, Philip Pullman and Michael Morpurgo, childcare expert Penelope Leach, nutritionist Patrick Holford and environment guru Jonathon Porritt. They wrote: “Since children’s brains are still developing, they cannot adjust to the effects of ever more rapid technological and cultural change. They still need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed ‘junk’), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives. They also need time. Today’s children are expected to cope with an ever earlier start to formal schoolwork and an overly academic, test-driven primary curriculum.”

Palmer cited research by Michael Shayer at Kings College, London, which showed that 11-year-olds measured in cognitive tests were “between two and three years behind where they were 15 years ago”. Childhood is not a race, she said; and its physical and psychological growth cannot be accelerated. Some of the areas of concern in the letter are on the Government agenda in Scotland and, in a general response to the issues raised, the Scottish Executive points out that its policy document, Vision for Children and Young People, promotes ambition, learning, confidence, responsible citizenship and effective contributing. A spokesperson says: “The Executive aims to support parents to fulfil their role and we also seek to create a positive environment for children in areas such as provision of leisure opportunities, open space. In 2005 the Executive developed Children and Young People’s Mental Health: A Framework for Promotion, Prevention and Care to assist local health, education and social services in delivering integrated approaches to young people’s mental health and wellbeing.”

In response to the criticism that high educational expectations are being placed on children at too young an age, the spokesman: “The Curriculum Framework for children aged three to five already recognises the powerful contribution that play makes to children’s learning, and we plan to extend approach into primary [education].” The Executive is also working on turning around Scotland’s eating habits and health. “We want to establish healthy lifestyles as early as possible. Strategies to improve the health of children and young people are already being successfully implemented across Scotland, and to build on this momentum we introduced the Schools (Health Promotion and Nutrition) (Scotland) Bill on 8 September. Among other measures, it will ensure food and drink served in schools meets tough nutritional standards.”

The Executive’s claim that it has been successful in tackling childhood obesity and bad eating habits is harder to swallow, however. An independent report published yesterday states that, despite spending 100 million in ten years on the problem, Scots are eating even less fresh fruit and veg than a decade ago. Although the Executive claims to be addressing many of the concerns raised in the open letter, there is still patently much work to be done.

Parental relationships are the real problem

CONSULTANT psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital and Gresham professor for public understanding of psychiatry, Raj Persaud is critical of the letter which, he says, plays on middle-class anxieties. “CHILDHOOD depression is on the up, but I disagree with the letter’s view of the causes. There’s a basic flaw in the reasoning: if a factor is widespread in society – such as junk food and electronic games – then how come large numbers of children don’t get depressed? They may not be the best things for our children, but it doesn’t mean they cause clinical depression.

Rising rates of depression are a problem, but the majority of children are not [afflicted]. This letter tries to lay the blame on various themes, all things that middle-class parents are worried about, but it allows parents to escape the responsibility for their child’s mental health. Factors that are definitely linked to childhood depression are rising rates of drug and alcohol abuse: children have more pocket money and are choosing to spend it in this way. People are also having sex at a younger age, and we have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy, often followed by termination, in Europe. I’m much more concerned about how this affects mental health.

Lower levels of parental surveillance can be a factor. I’m not against childcare for working parents, but the quality of that childcare is important, as is the quality of a child’s relationship with its parents (something that the letter does promote). There is evidence to suggest that the IQ of children has been going up each generation for the past 40 years, and this during the digital age. Expose a child to a faster information stream, and it could actually increase its IQ. A junk-food-eating, electronic-game-playing teenager can actually be quick and bright – and not at all depressed. It’s easier to blame electronic games, TV and junk food than to examine the more uncomfortable but realistic truths closer to home.

One danger is leaving children to it, the TV or computer being a convenient place to dump them

ALTHOUGH not a signatory to the letter, children’s author Julia Donaldson (who wrote The Gruffalo) has some sympathy with its basic call for greater awareness and a full debate. “IT SEEMS to me the letter lumps a lot of things together that are not necessarily related, except under the umbrella of ‘modern life’, so it’s not very focused – I’d have wanted to re-word it.

But I do agree that the most important aspect of a child’s development is the quality of its relationships with parents and others. I also agree that children need real play, and have felt for a long time that TV is sometimes used as a substitute for this. In the days before we had DVD players, 24-hour schedules and dedicated children’s channels, TV programmes for youngsters would only come on at a certain time of day, so for a playleader there couldn’t be any choice – at other times you had to play. Now it can be on all the time, and there may be lots of good programmes, but it’s unremitting, and probably isn’t great for your physical health, let alone mental state, being able to sit in front of a screen for so much longer.

A good relationship between parent and child can certainly be fostered by reading together, but equally by looking at pictures together. It’s the sharing that is the point, and an awareness, on the part of the parent, of what is in the child’s mind. I call it ‘active sharing’, and it can give you many points of reference in common that contribute to a high-quality relationship. “I fell down, just like Jack and Jill,” for example. One of the dangers is in just leaving children to it, the TV or computer being a convenient place to dump them – then parents get out of touch. Children’s channels are not selective either; at least with a book or DVD you can control what they’re seeing or reading, and I don’t think there’s really anything intrinsically bad about the best of film, TV or computer games.

I agree that secondary schools are too test-driven, and that pre-teen ‘mini-adults’ are awful. But there are other factors, surely, that affect children’s mental health: an unhappy home can have an effect; or two absentee parents; or a favourite childminder who leaves. You could argue that more choice makes children more adaptable; it does mean that books have to compete harder for attention – but I still think that nothing can beat a good book, and it is totally the best entertainment there is. You can enter another world; and to my mind film can’t quite compete.”

We just don’t know the effects of computers

DISTINGUISHED neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield, author of Tomorrow’s People, instigated a debate in the House of Lords in April on the impact of the screen on the developing brain. She had no hesitation in signing Sue Palmer’s letter when it arrived on her desk. “A LOT of research has been done into the effects of, say, cannabis or Ritalin or fish oils and we now know all about Turkey Twizzlers. But there’s been a lot less [research into] computer-screen culture. We don’t know how an average of six hours a day in front of a computer screen may be affecting the developing brain, especially compared with previous generations.

For example, computer-screen icons could be detracting from abstract ideas such as democracy or love, and it may be that we’re breeding children to think literally and not in the abstract. It’s a gratifying, easy-sensation, ‘yuk-and-wow’ environment, which doesn’t require a young mind to work. It’s good [for a child] to be bored, because boredom empowers the imagination. If you are overpowered by limitless information, you are not in control. In the future, we could find ourselves so sanitised by screen culture that the notion of a real-time, real-life conversation, complete with body language, becomes as alien as hunting for food would be to us now.

I’m not saying we should smash up our computers. But there are grounds for concern, and we shouldn’t be complacent. It would be helpful if the Department for Education and Skills commissioned research to discover just how vulnerable and sensitive to inputs a child’s brain might be. We need to be aware we cannot park our children in front of the TV and expect them to develop a long attention span.”

If we don’t change our food culture now, by 2020 we will be in an intolerable position

NUTRITIONIST Patrick Holford, the chief executive of the Food for the Brain Foundation, and author of Optimum Nutrition for your Child’s Mind, is leading a new schools campaign to show the positive impact of good nutrition on mental and physical health. Parents can go to www.foodforthebrain.org to get a personalised report for their child, and tips on how to improve: 15,000 have done so already. “THERE is an epidemic of mental-health problems among children. One in three has difficulty with learning, reading, writing or attention, and children with special educational needs now number one in six. Some 250 million children worldwide are on stimulant drugs such as Ritalin; and last year 250 million prescriptions for anti-depressants for children were issued. If we don’t act now to change food culture, by 2020 we’ll be looking at an intolerable position for society. “On the one hand we still don’t have enough evidence, and need more studies on the effects of sugar and fats. On the other, controlled trials have shown that the non-verbal IQ goes up with increased vitamins and minerals; children with hyperactivity problems respond to a low glycaemic-load diet, keeping their blood sugar even; and autistic children are almost all allergic either to wheat, milk or both. “We have done studies which correlate sugar and caffeine to mental health. A child who drinks a two-litre bottle of cola ingests the equivalent of 45 spoons of sugar and five espressos – and I frequently meet people who do this every day. We need to change the culture: don’t give sweets as rewards or treats. Surround healthy food with positive messages. Take away the dependence on high-sugar foods. Make bad food less attractive. “Do we want to wait ten years or do something now? Our Food for the Brain Foundation has started a schools campaign, and we have good results after four months in a school of severe special-needs children, where we held workshops for parents and radically changed the diets, adding vitamin, mineral and essential fat supplements. The children have responded phenomenally well – they are now telling their parents what’s good to eat and what’s not. We’d like to extend it.

I’d also like to see the Government’s current healthy eating guidelines go even further. Children who have fish three times a week do better than those who have it twice; they in turn do better than those who only have it once. I’d even advocate a tax on sugar. “There is also an exercise system we use, SAQ (Speed, Agility, Quickness), practised also by Arsenal football club, which teaches co-ordination and balance; it particularly helps dyspraxic children, and encourages them to want to do sport – obviously one way to combat the threat of childhood obesity. Once 50,000 people have used our online questionnaire, we’re going to see which foods relate to which symptoms. It’s never been done before.”

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Depression fuels risky behavior in gay men, new study claims

Depression is fueling risky sex and drug use in gay men, according to a new report by a leading gay men’s health group. Living on the Edge: Gay Men, Depression, and Risk-taking was released Wednesday by the Medius Institute for Gay Men’s Health, a health advocacy group in New York City. The study pointed out that 17% of gay men have depression, approximately twice the rate of depression among the general public. The study found strong links between depression and high-risk behaviors, including substance abuse and unsafe sex.

“Clearly, depression and related disorders are a major challenge for gay men’s health,” said Spencer Cox, executive director of the Medius Institute. “For the most part depression doesn’t seem to cause high-risk behavior directly, but it certainly pumps up the volume on risk-taking.”

The institute advised integrating mental health care referrals with programs combating HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, as well as making mental health opportunities and educational programs specific to gay men more accessible. (The Advocate).

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Robbie Williams being treated for depression, cancels tour

Pop star Robbie Williams is reportedly being treated for depression at a top London clinic after cancelling the Asian leg of his world tour earlier this month. Williams, who has battled depression in the past, is struggling in the charts with new single “Rudebox” and is facing legal action from ex-manager Nigel Martin-Smith over a song Williams wrote about him in his new album reported contactmusic.com. Williams told a BBC documentary this month: “I could get up in front of 35,000 or 40,000 people and go, ‘Look at me, I’m ace’. Then I’d get in the tour coach, go back to my bedroom and pull the duvet over my eyes.” An informed source said: “He has suffered from depression before, but feels things are getting much worse and the tour was too much.”

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Daniel Smith died from overdose of depression meds

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 28 (UPI) — The private pathologist hired by Anna Nicole Smith to perform a second autopsy on her son said that Daniel Smith most likely died of cardiac arrhythmia.

Dr. Cyril Wecht said the arrhythmia was caused by a combination of Lexapro, Zoloft and methadone, Us Weekly reported Thursday. It is known that the Lexapro was prescribed to Daniel Smith but it is unknown where he got the other two. Wecht also told Us Weekly that there is no doubt in his mind that this was an accidental death. Methadone, Wecht said, is “a legitimate prescription drug for pain relief” and that Smith had “no known history of morphine addiction,” reported People magazine. Smith died in the Bahamas while visiting his mother in the hospital Sept. 10, three days after she gave birth to baby girl.

 

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Olivia Newton-John’s battle with depression

AUSSIE singer Olivia Newton-John has revealed she has turned to anti-depressants to cope with the loss of boyfriend Patrick McDermott. But she said she didn’t believe McDermott, who disappeared on an overnight fishing trip off the coast of California in July last year, faked his death. In an interview with People magazine, Newton-John said the loss of McDermott was tougher than her battle with breast cancer and her divorce from actor Matt Lattanzi. “I’ve been through cancer and divorce, but nothing compares to this,” she said. “I took anti-depressants – I had to.”

This year The Sunday Mail reported McDermott had been seen by up to six witnesses in Mexico in the months after he went missing. When he disappeared, the former lighting technician had been living in a modest home, was thousands of dollars in debt and facing jail over unpaid child support payments. But Newton-John said McDermott loved his son Chance, 14, too much to pretend he had died. “He just wouldn’t do that – his son was everything to him,” she said.

Newton-John has also revealed she’d broken up with her boyfriend of nine years before he disappeared. “We were on a break but we had been on breaks before and we got back together,” she said. “We had a wonderful relationship – he had a good soul, a good heart.”

To preserve her memories of him, Newton-John has made a rock garden in her Malibu home and is “moving forward in a positive way”.

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Alastair Campbell’s battle with depression

HE WAS once dubbed the second most powerful man in Britain, rebuking Cabinet Ministers and striking fear in the hearts of newspaper editors.

But Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s formidable spin doctor for seven years, has revealed that, far from being invincible in Downing Street, he suffered clinical depression. At one point he missed a media briefing because he was unable to “face doing it”.

In an interview to mark World Mental Health Day, he admitted: “When I worked for No 10 I had periods when I knew I was depressed, but you just have to keep going.”

He discussed his mental health issues with Mr Blair, whose support was one of the things that kept him going. Mr Campbell, a former alcoholic who suffered a mental breakdown when he was 28, spoke about his mental illness to help to remove the stigma from it.

“I was very depressed for a long time. You wake up and can’t open your eyes, you can’t find the energy to brush your teeth, the phone rings and you stare at it endlessly,” he told the Independent on Sunday.

He said that the lowest point was during the “nightmare” of the Hutton inquiry into the reasons why Britain went to war in Iraq. The worst day, he said, was when Dr David Kelly, the government adviser, committed suicide.

“The Hutton saga was one of those episodes where things were spiralling out of control. I felt completely confident in relation to the facts, but during the whole period it was a nightmare,” he said. “The day he [Dr Kelly] killed himself was without doubt the worst day. It was about the sadness that someone felt driven to do this.”

He added: “I did feel if the inquiry had gone against us that it would have been really bad. If it had gone against us, it was not just me who was out of a job, it was Tony.”

Mr Campbell had a nervous breakdown in 1986, when he was the news editor of a Sunday newspaper. He realised he was having the breakdown when he was driving repeatedly around a roundabout. He was arrested and ended up in hospital for several months. He had been drinking from “day to night”, and had a “work-induced, drink-induced, pressure-induced, depression-induced psychotic breakdown”. He said: “It was unbelievably scary. At one point, I thought I was going to die.” The now teetotal Mr Campbell said that having come through the mental breakdown made him far stronger, and memories of it helped him to cope in Downing Street. “At points of real pressure, I always say to myself this can’t be worse than 1986,” he said.

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Jean Rhys wrote her way out of depression

TAUNTED with the cruel nickname the “white cockroach” as a child, the author Jean Rhys grew up on the Caribbean island of Dominica. She was the daughter of a Creole mother and a Welsh father and always felt distant from both the black and white communities. Her complicated childhood was to continue to influence one of the most intriguing literary lives of the last century and inform all her writing.

Rhys’s exotic background and the violent mood swings of her adult life make her a figure who still mesmerises. At one time a chorus girl in London, she went on to wrestle with a depressive streak that saw her briefly locked up in Holloway women’s prison, north London. Her powerful books, while rated as among the most accomplished of her era, have rarely been adapted for television, but now her most famous work, Wide Sargasso Sea, is to be brought to the screen in a lavish new BBC film shot in Jamaica. Adapted by Stephen Greenhorn, it has been made by the team behind the mainstream hits Spooks and Life On Mars.

Attention will also be focused on Rhys by a biography due out early next year. Lilian Pizzichini’s The Blue Hour, to be published by Bloomsbury, will attempt to unravel her life and explain themes that haunted her. The biography will take its title from Rhys’s favourite French perfume, L’Heure Bleue, and will show for the first time how the novelist’s obsession with the female form and damaging relationships between mothers and daughters directed her writing and caused, in part, her terrible depressions. “Her own relationship with her mother had been harmful and I don’t think enough has been understood about her preoccupation with women and her fascination with the effect of a bad relationship with a mother,” said Pizzichini this weekend.

The book will also chronicle her relationship with the writer Ford Madox Ford and his partner, Stella, and reveal the depths of Rhys’s pessimistic world view. “I wouldn’t say she was bipolar or borderline necessarily, but she had a very bleak vision and I think she was brave to express it because it doesn’t always make comfortable reading,” said Pizzichini.

Rhys was born Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, the fourth surviving child of a doctor, William Rees Williams and Minna Lockhart, the Creole (a person of mixed European and black descent) granddaughter of a colonial landowner. Rhys left her Caribbean island home in 1907 for schooling in England, her head full of the books of Dickens and the Brontes. But the London she found was unexpectedly grey and full of tired, poor people. After school in Cambridge she went to drama school in the capital, and enjoyed a period working as a chorus girl in musical comedies, calling herself Ella Gray, before she was rapidly absorbed into the half-lit world of the bohemians in Paris. She became the wife of a Belgian conman and adventurer. While in France, she met Ford, who took her on both as his creative protege and his girlfriend, changing her name to the modern-sounding Jean Rhys.

In the Seventies, Diana Athill, of Rhys’s publishers, Andre Deutsch, wrote of her regret that the company did not treat the impoverished Rhys better or pay her more. According to Athill, the author was remarkable for her incredible attention to detail in her books. In a foreword to Rhys’s unfinished and posthumously published autobiography Smile Please, she gives an example of this “perfectionism”: “Some five years after the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea, she said to me out of the blue: `There is one thing I’ve always wanted to ask you. Why did you let me publish that book?’… I asked her what on earth she meant. `It was not finished,’ she said coldly.”

Even in later life, once she had become a celebrated talent and a London socialite, Rhys was dogged by self-loathing and depressive rages which alternated with phases of creative activity. These bouts of illness saw Rhys briefly imprisoned in Holloway but also drew her, most famously, to write about the best known madwoman in literature: the incarcerated Mrs Rochester.

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Electronic Depression Syndrome

ELECTRONIC Depression Syndrome or EDS is a novel term which I have coined to describe my own state of mind after losing two hard disks on separate, networked personal desktop computers within ten minutes. Thanks to the non maintenance of the main feeder by Goa University-while working on my regular PC, rapid power surges sent the machine into a loop damaging the software and the hardware. Having finally seen the dreaded blue screen on the monitor I switched off the PC while breaking in a cold sweat. The urgency of the work demanded that I could switch on the other PC. But it was not my day. Everything was Ok for a few minutes but then like bombarded by an invisible electromagnetic pulse the other PC also went in a loop owing to rapid power surges. Then it was dead. Within ten minutes I lost two PCs. Since then I have been fighting off the EDS.

The technician gave the final verdict – “Sir, your hard disk is gone.” We could not retrieve the data. Readers may wonder whether I did not regularly take backup of my data. The fact is that the backup was scheduled the same week. My PCs were connected to a three phase underground power supply, through circuit breakers, surge protectors and UPS. But power surges like the ones described above were not experienced during the past five years. So the loss was unexpected.

This is not an isolated experience. People cannot depend in Goa on the quality of the power supply and there is no provision to compensate the power consumers if they lose their expensive gadgets. The world has turned increasingly mechanocentric and mechanodependent. Our material comforts are impossible without uninterrupted power supply.

Machines driven by electric power can function as certified by their manufacturers only under guaranteed and quality power supply. Any machine can tolerate some minor glitches or voltage fluctuations. But when the interruptions become frequent and unpredictable then the machines fail. Work becomes impossible. Add computers and Internet to our dependency-once you get used to these facilities, there is no looking back. But a time comes when machines fail, all of a sudden, without warning and then you realise that there are limits to their performance. As more and more educated people are turning to computers there is a new phenomenon depressions caused by computer failures and the data loss.

So far the psychiatrists and the anthropoethologists (who study human behaviour) have focused on stress created by the use of machines and the working conditions. But they have overlooked the new maladies-depressions created by the failure of electronic gadgets like the computers. People who have been inconvenienced by non-functional telephone lines or TV cable connections would understand the level of irritation caused by such failures.

Technology is an extension of the human consciousness. We have come to look at our favourite machines like the computers, TV sets, mobile handsets as our electronic, non living pets of some sort. When these pets fall sick or are dead then the feelings which the users get are akin to mourning. This is an age of electronic depressions which we can define as a set of conditions which develops after the failure of a microprocessor/chip dependent machine abruptly, without warning. If a machine gets old and shows sign of retarded performance then the user can at least anticipate some trouble. But when a healthy machine goes dead, then it is a technological shock. Would humans in future grieve over the loss of their pet machines?

It is a peculiar feeling when you suddenly realize that you have to start all over again – install new hard disk, load the new software, configure the add-ons, streamline the machine to give optimal performance. The grief becomes intense when you feel the full impact of the data loss-all your work which is not backed up is gone, permanently, forever. There is also a limit to backups because hardly any computer user does it on a regular basis. It is generally a mass backup when one knows that disk space is getting crowded. So, the computer users have very limited options. It is my guess that bad power supply in Goa has been causing incalculable loss to computers and electronic hardware. So far, nobody has surveyed the situation.

It is our common experience that unpredictable power interruptions make the UPS useless. You may go crazy, if you start work with all seriousness and the UPS sounds a signal that the backup power is depleted. Then you wait for the power to be restored. When the supply is restored, you need to pray hard that it will not fail again. With trembling fingers you switch on the system. Everything is fine. You smile, believing that the nightmare is finally over. You continue on your unfinished job-and suddenly the power gets interrupted. At that very moment what would be the state of your mind, disappointment, anger and frustration? And if such failures become frequent, if you cannot describe state of your mind properly-use EDS next time. I guess that the next stage of EDS would be cybertechnophobia-or losing faith in the electronic machines.

We have come to view computers as essential electronic equipments which store and process our data. We consider these machines as our friends. But when these friends fail-one may get EDS. There is no point in rationalising about failures of microprocessor driven machines. Generally every computer user takes maximum care to maintain his pet PC. But he is helpless regarding the power supply. The government of Goa has ambitious plans to network the whole state through broadband. This plan is useless without good power supply.

Before the first cable for broadband is laid down the power distribution network needs to be improved. It is not possible for all households to install inverters and portable power generators. People may purchase subsidised PCs in large numbers, only to realise later that these machines break down on account of unreliable power supply. Having tasted the bitter fruits of such failures, I caution the computer users to be prepared for an attack of EDS. It can hit you in Goa anytime. It may be better to invest in a good laptop to avoid power failure related EDS.

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Study: Men less likely to seek help for depression

Men like being strong, silent types, according to a new study, but that might affect their ability to seek and receive treatment for depression. Older men identified in the study as “old school” or “John Wayne types” tended to believe there was a stigma attached to being diagnosed or labeled mentally ill, and they were less likely than women to seek help for depression.

The study, published in the October issue of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, also underscored several other depression-related barriers older men face, including having more difficulty than women recognizing or expressing anxiety or seeking referrals to treatment programs. Dr. Ladson Hinton, lead author and associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Davis, said the findings had significant implications for men aged 65 and older, who were almost eight times as likely to commit suicide than women; that translates to 31.8 per 100,000 compared with 4.1 per 100,000. “The way we think of ‘crazy’ or having a severe mental illness … is something that was not consistent with how they thought of themselves as being masculine,” Hinton said. “Talking about your feelings or reaching out for help is not consistent with their own views of being a man.”

Hinton said that doctors and mental health caregivers should be mindful of these potential psychological barriers when treating older men. Dr. Stuart Fischer, who didn’t work on the study, said he has found some male patients “internalize” their emotional problems and do not discuss them even with close family members. “There is a mental health stigma in our society,” said Fischer, whose practice is based in Manhattan. “Depression is similar to the shame of impotence. We have no shame telling a physician we are overweight … but when it comes to impotence or depression, it is viewed as a sign of weakness in men.”

Psychotherapist Sheenah Hankin welcomed the study’s findings but said that quite the opposite was occurring at her Manhattan-based practice. “I have had far more older men in the last two years than I have ever had,” Hankin said. “I think they are becoming more aware because of their wives and girlfriends’ helping making it more acceptable. It is becoming more culturally acceptable, and they do use the word ‘depression’ when they come in. ‘I am depressed. I can’t get out of it by myself.’”

Hinton said the reasons for the gender disparities in depression treatment were not fully known and required additional study. Previous studies have established that gender role identity and masculinity play a significant role in shaping how a man expresses depression and his reluctance to seek help or accept treatment.
To quantify older men’s resistance to depression treatment, Hinton said, researchers studied data from 1,800 depressed older adults from another study known as IMPACT, or Improving Mood: Providing Access to Collaborative Treatment for Depression. That study addressed the management of late-life depression.

Researchers then conducted interviews with 30 IMPACT-connected doctors, depression-care managers, and study recruiters. They also examined gender differences, referral rates and histories of depression treatment, finding that older men were less likely than women to endorse depression symptoms such as feeling depressed or down (39 percent versus 47 percent of women), report having lost interest or pleasure in things they usually enjoy (37 percent versus 42 percent of women), or report fatigue (62 percent versus 67 percent of women).

 

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Russian Olympic champion Yury Borzakovsky suffering from depression

Russian Olympic champion Yury Borzakovsky, whose stunning 800-metre gold medal win at the 2004 Athens games made him a national hero, is suffering from depression after his car hit and killed a pedestrian outside Moscow, Russian newspaper Trud reported this weekend. The pedestrian died in early October after being hit by Borzakovsky’s car on a dark road in the Moscow region, Russian media reported. Borzakovsky suffered a hand injury in the crash. “It’s difficult to say anything about his sporting future. His hand has not yet healed and psychologically he is very depressed,” Borzakovsky’s trainer Vyacheslav Yevstratov told Trud’s weekend edition.He said it was not clear whether Borzakovsky would take part in a planned training trip in November.

Borzakovsky will not face charges in connection with the accident as the pedestrian who died was found to be seriously drunk, Trud reported, citing an unnamed police official. “The question of criminal responsibility of the driver was not even raised,” Yevstratov said. Borzakovsky’s mother-in-law Vera Andreyevna said he had not said anything about his plans, Trud reported. “He has disappeared into himself. He is not talking very much at all, even with those close to him,” she said. Borzakovsky captivated the Russian public with a stunning victory in the final of the 800 metre at the Athens Olympic Games in 2004, when he came from behind with a brilliant sprint finish to grab the country’s first-ever gold medal in the event.

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