Mental health is harder to attain in the age of longevity
- Juliana E. Arango
- Jan 27
- 7 min read
Updated: Feb 15
Scientific concepts for measuring individuals' lives in society include "life expectancy" or quality of life (QoL). Life expectancy measures the average number of years a person can expect to live in a given population, depending on sex, gender, year of birth, region, lifestyle, social class, education, quality of access to health services, clean water, etc. After more than 40,000 years of existence, our species has generally lived longer, but the price of this has been a gradual decline in well-being, human connection, and meaning, along with phenomena of work-related burnout despite the existence of numerous facilitating technologies (factors related to quality of life, QoL).
I propose that we analyze these issues in light of mental health (MH); that we assess the duration of different life stages separately, and that we reflect on the factors that separate them. This will allow us to better understand what our autonomy, our skills and activities throughout life, and our social roles have to do with the sustainability of our existence, and what this sustainability has to do with mental health (MH).
The phases of life have their own characteristics, due to what typically happens at different moments in our existence on a physical, social, and intellectual level, as well as at an occupational level, and in terms of the meaning of life, which, from many people's perspective, can refer to the spiritual level. Generally, we speak of four phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age . People generally imagine that childhood ends around age 12, that adulthood begins sometime between 18 and 24, and that old age begins around age 60. There are legal, medical, and even political bases for defining the boundaries between one age and the next, but in practice, this will depend on what individuals are actually able to do and experience at these different stages of life .
Until a century and a half ago, for the average Western world population, being an "adult" depended on having three capabilities: being able to work with one's hands and body, being able to bear children, and demonstrating the capacity to act differently as a man or as a woman within the family and the immediate social context to be considered an adult . Of course, each cultural context determined the specific ways in which people worked the land, cared for children, or followed daily routines and rituals, but adulthood was defined by these three requirements. People who had reached this stage already understood the meaning and purpose of their existence, because they already knew why and how they would live, until they died, more or less at the end of their 30s. That's right!
That's right: the vast majority of people in the world, until less than 200 years ago, knew they would die before reaching 40. There have always been octogenarians, but it was only with the development of public technologies (transportation, energy, electricity, clean water, etc.) and medical treatments for more people (vaccines, antibiotics, anesthesia, asepsis, contraceptives, etc.) that life expectancy democratically increased, to the point that today we find it surprising to think about the statistics. See more details at the link: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy
It is important to reflect on the effects that unusual changes in life expectancy have had on human social and psychological functioning, even to understand the purpose of this article.
Human MH today is much less attainable than before, and proof of this is that not every adult body with normal intelligence is a mind prepared for independence. This logic brings feelings of disorientation, confusion, fear, loneliness, inadequacy, and frustration, which prevent the development of a life with purpose, peace, and well-being.
The conquest of adulthood: an increasingly uncertain path.
At 18 or 24 (the age at which, in addition to being fertile, we have already reached our final height depending on sex), are the average healthy individual adults prepared for independent living, both materially, intellectually, and morally, and even with sustainable occupations that provide them with security and the possibility of caring for their family and meeting the everyday challenges of life? For millennia, the answer to this question was positive everywhere in the world. In our current globalized, cosmopolitan, urban, and virtual reality, it is no longer those who can work with their bodies, reproduce, and do specific things to fit into old social gender roles who have access to living an autonomous and fulfilling adult life .
I invite you to do some free research on what science says about the developmental time our species' brain needs to be sufficiently formed for the challenges of modern adulthood. Hint: it's around 30 years old . The phases of life are no longer what they used to be. Old age is no longer that phase of life in which a person will start caring less for others and receive care, or passing on their knowledge to loved ones, and participating in a privileged way in decision-making for the social group. All of this has an impact on the mental and physical health of contemporary human beings.
The uncertainty of our place in the world causes us great fear.
For some decades now, we have no longer been able to keep up with the consequences of changes at each stage of life using only common sense. In general, becoming an adult has required more time, more studies, socializing with more people in an increasingly broad social context, including a virtual one; it has become necessary to be more prepared and to actively expect much more. More and more laws have had to emerge with equally complex, transnational purposes, far beyond what the religion of our ancestors taught over millennia about what to do and what not to do. The constant feeling of insecurity, inadequacy, and frustration is the logical consequence.
Furthermore, to keep pace with the complexity of adult autonomy in today's world, we also need to leave many decisions in the hands of people with the authority to solve our problems . For example, we need a doctor to learn about a cure, and even to access it. Mental health professionals even give us answers about how we suffer: but not always answers to our questions. We live in an era where it is very dangerous to function in isolation, but at the same time, without an understanding of what we feel and need, and without the autonomy to determine the course of our well-being.
In fact, it's common for us to question the answers our traditions have given to everyday problems from the past, and even because of all this, to develop a degree of emotional maturity that previous generations never needed to achieve. Nowadays, there's always something new that "could" be done, studied, experienced, consumed, etc. Now there are many options, but also many individual needs.
Can you imagine what all this causes in the psyche or psychology of those who are aging, but also in the psychology of those who discover that their autonomy is under constant threat and at the mercy of what they themselves can do to adapt? We can no longer enjoy, like our ancient ancestors, the intuitive ease of fitting into the expectations of our parents and grandparents, since it no longer connects with the logic of our time. Indeed, the meaning and purpose of human existence depends on understanding how to live one's own life, differently at each stage, and for how long, more or less.
Mental Health (MH): what is it in the end?
Mental health (MH) does not mean that a person has access to psychiatrists, medication, or affordable psychotherapy, even though these may be related. Nor is it the absence of madness or mental disorder. In fact, MH means having things; for example, the ability to function in daily life or to relate to other people without suffering . But "functioning" or relating doesn't contribute to MH when these things become aversive demands. Now remember the graph at the beginning: Quality of Life (QoL) is related to MH because it enables it, since QoL refers to how easy or difficult it is to live a minimally dignified daily life in a given historical and geographical context.
"Functioning" and "relating" can be factors that produce mental illness in the absence of dignified conditions, space for individuality, pleasure, exchange or reciprocity, or the desire to feel at peace; that is, in the presence of relationships and functions mediated by everyday violence and imposition. In other words, mental health as a possibility of functioning and living depends on the possibility of experiencing an emotional life that helps and does not hinder daily life and the realization of an identity that makes sense in the individual's context. At this point, it is interesting to reflect that just because someone has a functional, healthy, and long-lived body, it does not mean that person will be happy.
Due to multiple individual reasons, conditions are not always in place for people to adapt to an expected or culturally "appropriate" social role that could "guarantee" an ideal framework of equal individuals. When it is still possible for MH to occur, there need to be ways for an individual to transform their relationship with the expectations that other people have about their life. MH is the pleasure of engaging in being and changing throughout individual existence, in order to participate in culture and the social group in some way that makes sense, that does not cause suffering, and that justifies transitory efforts and some calculated difficulties. Physical well-being will help, of course, but regardless of the number of years one lives and some hereditary conditions, for example, MH is about knowing oneself and discerning the options available to us.
Could you consider what feelings exist within you due to the complexity of current cultural, social, and technological life, into which our species has only very recently begun to immerse itself, and will still need millennia to adapt? These reflections have already guided my work in the Psi practice: towards the construction of understandings and individual solutions on a case-by-case basis. Build a dignified longevity by reflecting on its implications for the production of mental health.