How grandmas around the world are helping the depression epidemic

[LittleFlower]

How grandmas around the world are helping the depression epidemic

The importance of seniors/grandparents in the community is seemingly undervalued.

Do you think that this idea could work in a parish setting? Perhaps not listening to problems or mental health issues per se but communicating and participating together?

As an example, my parish has a ladies group. However, it only meets once a month, on Thursday at 1pm. No working woman could really attend, and I’ve been told that the youngest participant is 50 years old.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

In USA you need to be careful that younger people are not taking advantage of the “grandmas”. My mother was friendly for a while with some younger lady she’d met through a parish group who was having some issues. To make a long story short, this woman started repeatedly hitting my mother up for money. Mom gave her some money once, but became suspicious and wouldn’t give her any more when she asked again, and I finally had to tell this lady myself to leave my mother alone and not come back.

I agree with you also that in cases of actual mental health issues like depression, the person needs a doctor, not just a grandma to talk to.

 

[LittleFlower]

I’m sorry to hear that you mother was badgered and made uncomfortable, and that you needed to step in.

Preferably, it should be done in a monitored and/or structured parish setting where no contact is maybe needed outside of it. However, I think maybe grandparents these days do feel undervalued—even when they are involved in a family setting. Many older people I have worked with who are grandparents say their children have a sense of entitlement towards their time. They are happy to help but don’t find that their time is respected or valued.

This development, which was happening before I walked this earth, saddens me.

 

[Rob2]

Do you think that this idea could work in a parish setting? .

I’m all for it happening in any setting, @LittleFlower , where people actually communicate on a face to face basis .

I don’t know whether depression among the young was called by another name when I was young , but the young of today do miss out on much I had , and one of those precious things was my relationship with my grandparents .

I am having trouble with a younger friend who disagrees with a conversation I had with her daughter . She sends me text messages , but she will not meet me to sit down and talk things over .

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

I’ve long suspected that our current social climate, where children are segregated by age, all the working age adults are segregated together at job sites far from home and the elderly are warehoused in care homes or isolated in their own houses has contributed to a lot of our current neuroses.

I don’t know how to get back to the earlier tribal or village type structure where all the ages interacted with each other naturally in the course of the day.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I don’t know how to get back to the earlier tribal or village type structure where all the ages interacted with each other naturally in the course of the day.

If you want to hang out with elderly people, just go to a Catholic daily Mass or to any sort of parish function after the Mass like coffee and donuts. They’re all there. Sometimes I chat with them there. I’m sort of practicing for becoming old myself. Also, I tend to like elderly people more than I like hanging out with young people/ kids.

My hometown also had a senior center with lunch and activities, where I used to volunteer and where my parents spent some time when they became elderly. That was another place to connect with older people.

I haven’t tended to see a lot of “warehousing” of elderly people or them being particularly isolated from society. They have social and family lives for the most part, even if their social life just consists of seeing their friends at church or McDonalds or saying hello to the yard man or the grocery clerks. I’m sure there are some who are more isolated but overall the families I know aren’t anxious to reject Grandpa just because he’s old. The ones in care homes are generally there because they need medical care beyond what a family member can provide.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

You have a good point.
I guess Im thinking g about how much the elders I take care of love to see babies and little children because they mostly see adults , such as other patients, and their nurses and therapists, etc.