Elizabeth Parvex, & Dr. Lindsey Trimble O’Connor
Male geriatric depression is a ubiquitous social issue that can have serious consequences ranging from anxiety and emotional detachment to the extreme and catastrophic act of suicide. Researchers suspect that this is partly related to definitions of hegemonic masculinity which includes independence, strength, and dominance, characteristics typically lost in the aging process. Since some men accept diminishment better than others, it calls into question the colloquialism, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.” I hypothesized that men who occupy stereotypical hegemonic masculine roles will experience more depression as they age and diminish than men who occupy less stereotypical hegemonic masculine roles. I conducted a secondary data analysis using the Aging, Status, and Sense of Control (ASOC), 1995, 1998, 2001 [United States] survey operationalizing hegemonic masculinity in terms of prestige, both through educational attainment and income, and restricted the sample to retired, diminished men. The resulting sample size was 79. Running Pearson’s Correlations between educational attainment and depression, and income and depression, I did not find support for my hypothesis with these data. Perhaps this is because older men expect diminishment and are therefore less inclined to experience depression, regardless of how “manly” they were in their prime. Further research is needed, and a data set that measures hegemonic masculinity in better terms, or a survey with a larger sample size that only includes retired, diminished men, might show a correlation between prestige in one’s prime and male geriatric depression. Understanding the origins of male geriatric depression could improve the quality of the remaining years of life for aging men, and this research must be made a priority.