12 - Anxiety and depression in women in old age

Summary

One is not born a woman: one becomes one.

Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxieme Sexe (1949)

Gender, age, ethnicity and class are major dimensions of social inequality in human societies. Mental illness adds to this inequality and to stigmatisation. Gender and age, although with roots in biology, are both understood within a social context. Women in later life may be seen as compounded of the negative myths which surround the feminine sex and old age.

In classical mythology the three Fates were conceived of as old women at a spinning wheel determining men's lifespans and destinies. Clotho draws out the thread of life, Lachesis measures it out and Atropos cuts it off. This duality of women, the weaker sex but with a dark and powerful side is evident in religions, pseudoscience, art and literature. Old age similarly attracts fables which emerge from and influence deeply ingrained fears and attitudes. Old age rarely attracts positive epithets, usually it is denigratory or patronising – grumpy old; boring old; sweet old............ We praise old people not for ageing well but for seeming younger than their years.

This negative perception is reflected in the way older people view themselves. Ageing is a wound to one's narcissism and self-esteem. To counteract it, it is possible to enumerate many who have overcome the barriers and handicaps of age, but an idealisation of a few biographies (Garner & Ardern, 1998) does not adequately redress the balance in a culture where most would fail by comparison with the youth centred norm.