Middle - aged Suicide
The decisive epicenter that made our country the 'No. 1 Suicide Nation' is the 'middle-aged men in their 40s to 60s'. According to the analysis of causes of death by Statistics Korea, looking at the suicide status by age in 2015, it can be seen that those in their 40s and 50s were the most numerous. In particular, looking at the analysis results, we see that the suicide rate for men is almost three times higher than that for women. Especially, the prospect that the 'suicide rush' of these '4060' men will accelerate as we enter a full-fledged elderly society is dominant, adding to its seriousness. What are the causes and countermeasures? Above all, it is important to understand them.
1. Characteristics of Middle Age
To know why there are many suicides in the middle-aged period, we must first understand their characteristics. Middle age is a transition period of life, a time to face the meaning of life again, trying to find one's reality, and facing a middle-aged crisis accompanied by skepticism about existence and emotional confusion and pain. At the core of this sense of crisis are feelings of mourning the disappearance of youth, awareness of the finiteness of life, and questions about existence such as 'Who am I?' and 'What have I lived for?'. Also, if one loses the sense of direction and purpose in individual life, one feels worthlessness, meaninglessness, boredom, loneliness, and anxiety about life, and experiences 'existential emptiness', a feeling of emptiness and hollowness. And in order to overcome this existential emptiness, it is important to have a meaning or purpose in life. Especially for middle-aged men, direct and indirect psychological burdens due to restructuring, early retirement, and unemployment caused by long-term economic recession and changes in social structure are greater than ever, and middle-aged women fall into depression due to menopause, physical aging, and loss of roles, and depression soon leads to loss of meaning in life. Also, middle age is a time of experiencing many changes in life such as changes in relationships between children and parents and marital relationships in the family, and if one fails to find the meaning or purpose of life at this time, one will experience great psychological difficulties. Especially middle-aged men are experiencing a lot of stress in this process, and mental problems such as depression may occur, or they may engage in behaviors that harm their health such as alcohol dependence or smoking, and in extreme cases, it may lead to suicide.
2. Role of Middle Age
Middle age is a transition period where meaninglessness and emptiness of life come due to the contradiction of realizing that the peak of life goals and achievements dreamed of in youth has limits, and the awareness of the fact that one is aging and the inevitability of death. Due to this, middle age is a time to develop the emergence of the latent self, internal integration of development, adaptation to change, and tolerance for ambiguity, re-evaluating the meaning and value of personal life. In this process, ego identity crisis and existential emptiness are also experienced in middle age.
From the perspective of individual development, middle age is a time when physical and biological aging begins, facing the finiteness of life and taking interest in reflection on the essential self. It is also a time when interest in the desires or growth and development of the self as an independent autonomous being increases along with the decrease in the parental role.
Looking at the entire process from birth to death of a human being, middle age has a longer period than any other cycle and faces various environments and events. Many middle-aged people fill the numbers in the church as well. Nevertheless, the reality of today's church is that research, interest, and activity programs related to middle age are insufficient compared to old age or adolescence. Since the life development cycle is influenced by physiological, psychological, and social environmental factors, the problem of setting the period of middle age is not simple. The reason why men, especially middle-aged men, choose suicide a lot lies in the fact that social, economic, and psychological pressures are relatively large. It is said that middle-aged men who took responsibility in traditional patriarchal thinking and role performance choose extreme methods when they face economic problems such as unemployment or business failure because they cannot get solutions from their families whom they have been estranged from under the pretext of earning money.
3. Ego Identity of Middle Age
Middle age is a time to re-evaluate family relationships, occupation, and social roles to find the meaning of life. In middle age, facing the problem of death, the prospect of time is reduced, introversion increases, and redefinition of existing values and goals and reflection on the self increase. Also, when reaching middle age, people feel that goals that once seemed eternal lose their meaning and begin to raise questions about the life they have lived. Ego identity is about who an individual is and where they are heading. This recognizes continuity for the past, present, and future, perceives oneself as a being with unique meaning, and is a comprehensive self-image including perception and definition of one's ability, position, role, etc. Therefore, ego identity can be said to be a comprehensive self-image including perception and concept of one's ability, position, and role. Ego identity includes personal identity and psychosocial identity. Personal identity means the homogeneity and continuity of the self maintained over the passage of time, and psychosocial identity refers to the sense of belonging of an individual to the values achieved by unique history as consistency with a certain group related to oneself, and the sense of belonging to the values of the small group to which one belongs.
4. Stress of Middle Age
Looking at the life cycle, middle age is a process of normal growth and development, but one experiences changes in health status due to various physical, psychological, and social role changes. In the case of middle-aged men, they experience various stresses ranging from physical decline due to various role performances and physical changes physically and psychologically to physical disabilities. Male menopause does not have an event corresponding to female menopause, but due to the decrease in male hormone secretion and the influence of health status or individual adaptation, aging phenomena such as hearing impairment, presbyopia symptoms, gray hair, abdominal obesity, digestive function, sensory function, and reaction speed decrease begin to appear gradually. Especially, adult diseases such as heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, and prostate become frequent in middle-aged men. The psychological change of middle-aged men becomes a bisexual period as masculinity and femininity are integrated, and men change into more dependent and emotional beings. Also, middle-aged men have increased affiliation and re-recognize and value family members and social networks. Middle age, which seeks to achieve economic and psychological stability, experiences various family stresses such as the demands of children who have not become independent, the demands of economic, psychological, and social support for elderly parents, and having to adapt to one's own aging process. In addition, occupation is a very important area for men, and middle age is a time when achievement in one's occupation reaches its peak. One feels a sense of crisis due to increased pressure on work, limited possibility of job choice, boredom with repetitive work, sense of loss about upcoming retirement, promotion of young colleagues, etc., becomes sensitive to promotion or demotion in the workplace, and experiences stress by experiencing tension and burden about work. The problem is that if these various stresses experienced by middle-aged people are not managed, they fall into the suicide risk group. Churches, families, and social organizations must understand the characteristics of these middle-aged people and the stress situations they face, and seek ways to resolve them more actively.
5. Sense of Crisis in Middle Age
There are two views on middle age. One is the view of seeing middle age as a time of turbulence, chaos, and crisis like adolescence, recognizing it as a time of tension, conflict, and sense of loss. The other is the view of seeing middle age as a stable and mature time, recognizing it as a transition period requiring temporary adaptation. In middle age, interest that was previously directed to the external world turns to the inner world, and as interest changes from physical and material to religious, philosophical, and intuitive, one accepts parts of oneself that have been neglected and develops a harmonious personality. Middle age is called the 'empty nest period, or second adolescence'. In this period, children's independence begins, the role of child-rearing decreases, and one experiences psychological separation in the process of reorganization of the family structure, and the sense of crisis in middle age is the most highlighted problem. Middle age experiences various life events such as changes in appearance, children leaving home, death of parents, and changes in job position. If one does not adapt well to these changes, one becomes depressed and becomes more withdrawn due to worries about old age or health, concerns about unstable work life, and decline in sexual ability. Like this, 'middle-aged crisis' can be said to be "a radical change phenomenon within personality accompanied in the process of re-evaluating one's life goals, priorities, and degree of goal achievement when an individual's life reaches the middle."
6. Suicidal Thoughts in Middle Age
WHO defines suicide as an act of intentionally killing oneself, and this suicide is defined as a social phenomenon containing the reality of that society, not simply an individual's problem, and is becoming a subject of academic inquiry. Suicidality is a series of continuous concepts ranging from suicidal ideation, suicide plan, suicide attempt, to suicide. Although there are research results that there is little direct relevance between suicidal ideation and suicide, suicidal ideation is usually regarded as the same as actual suicide risk. The movement to understand suicidal behavior through research on suicidal ideation in the West began in the 1970s. Suicidal ideation is an important subject of suicide research as an important risk factor related to future self-harm behavior. Even if suicidal ideation does not necessarily lead to suicidal behavior, studying related variables affecting suicidal ideation is meaningful because it can be a predictor of suicide attempts later. Looking at statistics on the number of suicide deaths and suicide impulse factors by generation, economic life problems and family discord are cited as the 1st and 2nd causes in the reasons for suicide in the 40s and 50s. This explains where the church should place priority in pastoral ministry targeting middle-aged people.