MONTREAL - I recently went to a conference in Toronto seductively titled: Sex, Age and Memory. Turns out the "sex" part was describing women, the "sex" gender, and not the actual fun activity. But never mind, it was a day of eyeopening presentations.
It was my first brush with the sponsor organization, Baycrest, an academic health sciences centre that studies aging and brain health and is affiliated with the University of Toronto. It is also interested in the impact of certain illness on us as we age.
One of the more interesting workshops I attended focused on depression and its prevalence. The World Health Organization claims depression is the leading cause of disability globally. By 2020, WHO predicts that depression will rank second in the world as the disability most likely to lead to shorter lives for all ages, both sexes. This is pretty sobering stuff.
If that hasn't depressed you, the Canadian statistics might. According to Baycrest, at any given time, one million women and 500,000 men are experiencing depression. By age 65, 90 per cent of women have suffered its signs and symptoms (makes you look around and wonder where those rare "cheerful" people are hiding). Keeping this statistic in mind, marry it with the fact that men die younger, leaving women as the dominant gender of the elderly, and then add in that the numbers of elderly are increasing as a percentage of the population. What vision comes to mind from this mélange? Hundreds of thousands of female seniors, shuffling around wondering, "Why bother?"
Before you throw down the newspaper, head back to bed and hide under the covers, let's dig ourselves out of this morbid picture. There are both psychological and physical reasons why depression lands at the door of women, more than men, when we are in our "next chapter." And most of these reasons can be kicked back outside with some effort.
Care-giving: Women are often more susceptible to depression because they are juggling too many balls at mid-to late life. You only have to list the possible responsibilities to see why we women are vulnerable: caring for any adult kids who have not left the nest; caring for aging, ill parents; the financial burdens of our lives in this recession-ready economy; holding it all together while working full time; no time for exercise, alone time or kicking it up with friends. These are huge burdens to carry and it's not hard to see why depression is often a side effect. But it is not inevitable. The answer is to start sharing the load with partners, siblings, children. The "super mom" route doesn't work after 55. Semi-retirement in care-giving starts now.
Menopause: I've always considered menopause a very nasty gift to women (oh yes, some women get through it smoothly, but they can never admit this in public for fear of being permanently ostracized). Just around the time we have finally survived teenagers, the same hormones that turned them into non-humans turn us into hotflashing paragons of weeping evil. Depression is part of the package, a "gift" of our reproductive hormones, laid at our feet in our teens and again in our 50s. The good news is that it usually leaves when the reproductive system accepts the fact that children are no longer a physical option. So if this is the only precursor to your depression, it disappears when the "pause" is finished.
Lifestyle: Here we go again with the "eat better and exercise" mantra. I am so bored with this message, but instead of it becoming redundant, and therefore dismissible, it seems to be growing in importance. The neuroscientists at Baycrest tell us that it can stop depression. How? Exercise and good nutrition encourage more blood and oxygen to our brain, which keeps it healthy and immune from the physical determinants of depression. Those two good habits give us more energy, which promotes a more positive attitude toward life, and - are you ready for it? - can give you seven more years of life (according to a study from Yale University). I don't know about the "seven more years" promise, but the increased brain health and decreased chance of depression seems like a good reason to love yoga and yogurt even more.
The Up side of Down: It's important, say the scientists at Baycrest, not to mistake all negative feelings as depression. They even cite a study from the University of Buffalo where people who had a moderate number of adverse events and negative feelings in their life scored highest on measures of well-being. So depressing events and feelings serve a purpose. Depression does not.
I know there's resentment out there about the number of baby boomers and how we're going to suck so many resources out of society. But the flip side is that our numbers are generating lots of research that will make old age better - not only for us, but for generations to come.