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 associate

The relationship to the course was strong. The majority of our course has dealt with the development of children and adolescents. We have learned that one, if not the most, important influence on a child’s development is his parents. It is thought that when men reach mid-life and is a parent that he reinvests in a father role in a kind of “sex-role convergence”. But this study and others seem to show this time as more a conflict within the middle-aged person and outwardly with his adolescent child(Julian and McKenry 1991). Apparently, the changes occurring physically and psychologically in both the adolescent and middle-aged male spark a conflict. The father desires to take more control while the child needs and desires more autonomy (Julian and McKenry 1991). A surprising fact about the study was that it found that the lower quality of marriage (as viewed by the subject), the less stress there seemed to be between adolescent and father (Julian and McKenry 1991). I would probably attribute this to the desire for happy parents to please each other. Often, mothers are secretly jealous of the time fathers spend with their children. And when restrictions are set in the family, the father may set even more to appease his mate’s desire for control over their child.

d 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 themselves as depression or anxiety include thyroid disease, infection, cardiac disease, pulmonary pathology, sleep apnea, pancreatic cancer, anemia, and stroke. So, tests must be performed to verify that the problems are purely psychological. “Major depression in mid-life is common, with a prevalence of approximately 2.2%” (Samuels 1997). Some would say that it is like living with eight or more diseases. The article goes on to explain that alcohol can be a contributing factor in major depression. The solution to this is to dry out the patient before medical or other treatment begins. The patient should also be weaned from any other medications that could have potential conflicts with anti-depressant medications. Psychotherapy from a qualified psychiatrist, social worker, or psychologist is recommended as a complement of the anti-depressants prescribed by the doctor(Samuels 1997).

In this article, the indication is that few middle-aged adults experience any height in crisis over any other time period in their life span (Shek 1996). The other indication is that women seemed to be more concerned with their position in life. Does this mean that there is no such thing as midlife crisis? I doubt it. Rather, I believe that this just shows that the midlife crisis may be more of a cultural phenomenon rather than being common entrenched in human nature. From the other articles I have examined and many other studies mentioned in this particular article, there clearly exists the phenomenon of midlife crisis. I think that is very likely that in America, the stress of competition and failure could influence how people look at their lives, and therefore could bring out a crisis. As far as women being more stressed about life than men, this probably deserves more investigation. It would make sense that both genders would come to a point of reflection in their life.

In conclusion, one can draw a couple of things from looking at these

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