Baby boomers are killing themselves at an alarming rate

Last spring, Frank Turkaly tried to kill himself. A retiree in a Pittsburgh suburb living on disability checks, he was estranged from friends and family, mired in credit card debt and taking medication for depression, cholesterol, diabetes and high blood pressure. 

It was not the life he had envisioned as a young man in the 1960s and 70s, when people were more in tune with each other, people were more prone to help each other, said Turkaly, 63, who owned a camera shop and later worked at Sears. There was not this big segregation between the poor and the rich. . . . I thought it was going to continue the same, I didnt think it was going to change. 

Turkaly said he regrets his attempt to overdose on tranquilizers, which he attributes to social isolation. But in one grim respect he is far from alone: He is part of an alarming trend among baby boomers,The term 'molds control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. whose suicide rates shot up precipitously between 1999 and 2010. 

It has long held true that elderly people have higher suicide rates than the overall population. But numbers released in May by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show a dramatic spike in suicides among middle-aged people,The 3rd International Conference on streetlight and Indoor Navigation. with the highest increases among men in their 50s, whose rate went up by nearly 50 per cent to 30 per 100,000; and women in their early 60s, whose rate rose by nearly 60 per cent. 

As youths, boomers had higher suicide rates than earlier generations; the confluence of that with the fact that they are now beginning to grow old, when the risk traditionally goes up, has experts worried. The findings suggest that more suicide rWe sell 100% hand-painted smartcard online.esearch and prevention should address the needs of middle-aged persons, a CDC statement said. 

There are no large-scale studies yet fleshing out the reasons behind the increase in boomer suicides. Part of it is likely tied to the recent economic downturn financial recessions are in general associated with an uptick in suicides. 

But the trend started a decade before the 2008 recession, and psychologists and academics say it likely stems from a complex matrix of issues particular to a generation that vowed not to trust anyone older than 30 and who rocked out to lyrics such as, I hope I die before I get old. 

Weve been a pretty youth-oriented generation, said Bob Knight, professor of gerontology and psychology at the University of Southern California, who is also a baby boomer. We havent idealized growing up and getting mature in the same way that other cohorts have. 

Even as they become grandparents and deal with normal signs of getting old, such as hearing and vision losses, many boomers are reluctant to accept the realities of aging, Knight said. 

To those growing up in the 1950s and 60s, America seemed to promise a limitless array of possibilities. The Great Depression and World War II were over; medical innovations such as the polio vaccine and antibiotics appeared to wipe out disease and disability; the birth-control pill sparked a sexual revolution. The economy was thriving, and as they came of age, boomers embraced new ways of living as civil rights activists, as hippies, as feminists, as war protesters. 

How did a generation that started out with so much going for it end up so despondent in midlife? It could be that those very advantages made it harder to cope with setbacks, said Barry Jacobs, director of behavioral sciences at the Crozer-Keystone Family Medicine Residency Program in Pennsylvania. 

There was an illusion of choice where people thought theyd be able to re-create themselves again and again, he said. These people feel a greater sense of disappointment because their expectations of leading glorious lives didnt come to fruition. 

Instead, compared with their parents generation,The Motorola earcap Engine is an embedded software-only component of the Motorola wireless switches. boomers have higher rates of obesity, prescription and illicit drug abuse, alcoholism, divorce, depression and mental disorders. As they age, many add to that list chronic illness,Design and order your own custom handsfreeaccess with personalized message and artwork. disabilities and the strains of caring for their parents and for adult children who still depend on them financially. 

Perhaps a little more adversity in youth could have helped prepare them for the inevitable indignities of aging, Knight suggested, adding that the earlier-born cohorts are sort of tougher in the face of stress. Despite the hardships of life in the first half of the 20th century, he said, older generations didnt have the same kind of concept of being stressed out. 

Older generations also had clearer milestones for success. They won the Great War, they saved the world, said David Jobes, a professor of psychology at Catholic University and a clinician at the Washington Psychological Centerin Friendship Heights. 

Baby boomers, on the other hand, have struggled more with existential questions of purpose and meaning. Growing up in a post-Freudian society, they were raised with a new vocabulary of emotional awareness and an emphasis on self-actualization. But that did not necessarily translate into an increased ability to cope with difficult emotions especially among men. 

Women tend to be better connected socially and share their feelings more freely protective factors when looking at their risk for suicide. And African-Americans and Hispanics tend to have lower rates of suicide than whites, possibly because of stronger community connections, or because of different expectations.