Baby Boomers Have High Suicide Rates

The June 3, 2013 Washington Post has this depressing article about how Baby Boomers have unusually high suicide rates relative to previous generations.  Some of the points really aren't surprising:

“There was a sense of rebelliousness, of ‘I don’t want to live the way my parents did or their parents did,’ ” said Patrick Arbore, director and founder of the Center for Elderly Suicide Prevention at San Francisco’s Institute on Aging. “There was a lot of movement to different parts of the country. With that came a lot of freedom, but there also came a loss of connections. It was not uncommon to see people married three or four times.”

But also:

“There was an illusion of choice — where people thought they’d be able to re-create themselves again and again,” he said. “These people feel a greater sense of disappointment because their expectations of leading glorious lives didn’t come to fruition.”

Instead, compared with their parents’ generation, boomers have higher rates of obesity, prescription and illicit drug abuse, alcoholism, divorce, depression and mental disorders. As they age, many add to that list chronic illness, disabilities and the strains of caring for their parents and for adult children who still depend on them financially. 

What a shock: a generation that was raised in extraordinary affluence, and that had never really had to go through tough times (except when their pot supplier was arrested), can't handle the rough aspects of growing old.