Mental Health Benefits of Neighborhood for Older Mexican American Men | Aging In Action

by John Davy on March 28, 2011

For all the positive steps we can take for our health—exercise, social engagement, diet—much of our wellbeing is out of our control. A growing body of research demonstrates that factors such as stressors we experience, our parents’ income and education, and the neighborhoods we grow up in can all be risk factors for our health. Research has shown that economically disadvantaged neighborhoods lead to a greater risk of mortality and morbidity. At the same time, neighborhoods can also provide protective benefits. A recent study in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society showed that, for Mexican American men aged 75 and older, living in a neighborhood with a high density of Mexican Americans is associated with a lower risk of depression (Gerst et al 2011).
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Journal Article

Getting Dad to Talk About It - NYTimes.com

Image via CrunchBase
By KAREN STABINER

My widowed father-in-law didn’t tell anyone about his symptoms — not his doctor, and not his grown son, who found out only when a member of the extended family called to say my husband needed to fly across the country immediately to see his dad.

By that point, the kidney cancer that would have been easy to treat if detected early had passed the fail-safe point. My father-in-law was not the kind of guy who liked to depend on people, so he made sure he had to for only a very short time before he died.

He was an extreme example of a familiar dynamic, which Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, calls “the guy’s view.” Dr. Tannen, the author of seven books about how we communicate with one another, says that many older men consider keeping difficult information to themselves a badge of courage. In this view, it’s what men are supposed to do to keep from upsetting the womenfolk.

But that often leaves caregivers struggling to improve communication, particularly in the doctor’s office.

Fortunately, there are things adult children can do for the many parents — men leading the pack, but some moms, too — who are reluctant to talk about what’s bothering them.
In a study of 12,000 Medicare recipients published in The Archives of Internal Medicine in 2008, Debra Roter, a professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University, and her colleagues found that elderly patients who were accompanied by someone reported greater satisfaction with their doctors’ visits than those who showed up in waiting rooms alone.

“Having a companion made those who were more ill or less educated on a par with people who were better off on those variables,” said Dr. Roter. An adult child accompanying a parent to a doctor’s appointment, she added, can help in very specific ways:
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Older Men Gain Re-Employment, But at a Lower Wage

"Median hourly wages for reemployed men, age 50 to 61, are 20.1% lower on the new job than the old job and 35.6% lower on the new job for men age 62 or older," according to a 2011 analysis of SIPP data by the Urban Institute.

Urban Institute Report