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  3. Baby Boomers Are Killing Themselves at an Alarming Rate[

Baby Boomers Are Killing Themselves at an Alarming Rate[

游客2024-04-04  8
问题                        Baby Boomers Are Killing Themselves at an Alarming Rate
[A] It has long held true that elderly people have higher suicide rates than the overall population. But numbers released in May by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show a dramatic rise in suicides among middle-aged people, with the highest increases among men in their 50s, whose rate went up by nearly 50 percent to 30 per 100,000; and women in their early 60s, whose rate rose by nearly 60 percent (though it is still relatively low compared with men, at 7 in 100,000). This is an alarming trend among baby boomers.
[B] There are no large-scale studies yet figuring out the reasons behind the increase in baby boomer suicides. Part of it is likely tied to the recent economic downturn. But the trend started a decade before the 2008 recession, and psychologists and academics say it likely stems from a complex series of issues.
[C] "We’ve been a pretty youth-oriented generation," said Bob Knight, professor of gerontology (老人医学 ) and psychology at the University of Southern California, who is also a baby boomer. "We haven’t idealized growing up and getting mature in the same way that age groups have." Even as they become grandparents and deal with normal signs of getting old, such as hearing and vision losses, many boomers are reluctant to accept the realities of aging, Knight said. To those growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, America seemed to promise a limitless array of possibilities. The Great Depression and World War II were over; medical innovations such as the polio vaccine (脊髓灰质炎疫苗 ) and antibiotics (抗生素) appeared to wipe out disease and disability; the birth-control pill sparked a sexual revolution. The economy was thriving, and as they came of age, boomers embraced new ways of living—as civil rights activists, as hippies, as feminists, as war protesters.
[D] "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."
[E] How did a generation that started out with so much going for it end up so desperate in midlife? It could be that those very advantages made it harder to cope with setbacks, said Barry Jacobs, director of behavioral sciences at the Crozer-Keystone Family Medicine Residency Program in Pennsylvania. "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 realization."
[F] Instead, compared with their parents’ generation, boomers have higher rates of weight problems, prescription and illegal drug abuse, alcoholism, divorce, depression and mental disorders. As they age, many add to that list of chronic illness, disabilities and the strains of caring for their parents and for adult children who still depend on them financially.
[G] Perhaps a little more adversity in youth could have helped prepare them for the inevitable indignities of aging, Knight suggested, adding that "the earlier-born are sort of tougher in the face of stress." Despite the hardships of life in the first half of the 20th century, he said, older generations didn’t have the same kind of concept of being stressed out.
[H| Older generations also had clearer milestones for success. "They won the Great War, they saved the world," said David Jobes, a professor of psychology at Catholic University and a clinician at the Washington Psychological Center in Friendship Heights.
[I] Baby boomers, on the other hand, have struggled more with existential questions of purpose and meaning. Growing up in a post-Freudian society, they were raised with a new vocabulary of emotional awareness and an emphasis on self-actualization. But that did not necessarily translate into an increased ability to cope with difficult emotions—especially among men. Women tend to be better connected socially and share their feelings more freely—protective factors when looking at their risk for suicide. And African Americans and Hispanics tend to have lower rates of suicide than whites, possibly because of stronger community connections, or because of different expectations.
[J] Combine high expectations with a weaker economy, and the risk goes up. "We know that what men want to do is work—that’s a very strong ethic for them," Arbore said. "When their jobs are being threatened, they see themselves as still needing to be in that role; they feel ashamed when they’re not able to find another job. The idea that so many of us in this country have been brought up with—that you work hard, you get your house, you get your American dream, everything is sunny—hasn’t worked out A lot of these boomers aren’t going to earn as much money as their parents did.
They aren’t going to be as secure as their parents were. And that’s quite troubling for the boomers."
[K] Mike Murray of Rising Sun, Md., struggled with major depression for most of his adult years, even as he married, raised two children and owned a successful grass-mowing business. His wife, Becky Murray, who ran the business with him, describes him as a perfectionist. "He always did well in school, he was a straight-A student; anything he did, he did well," she said.
[L] But in 2004 a back injury forced him to go on disability—and on powerful pain medications. In 2010 he made two attempts to overdose, and in early 2011, two days after his 49th birthday, he killed himself with a shotgun. "He was handsome, he was smart, people loved him," Murray said, but added that he felt increasingly depressed. And while he was grateful for his disability checks, she said, "It was very hard for him to accept this and to not contribute to his family."
[M] Nor are women immune. When Liz Strand’s 53-year-old friend killed herself two years ago in California, her house was underwater and needed repairs, she had a painful ankle that was made worse by being overweight, and although she had tried to find a partner, she was unmarried, like one-third of baby boomers.
[N] "When everything started exploding on her it was too much for her," Strand said, adding that as a boomer she herself recalls the shock of realizing that the good times were not eternal. "I just thought everything was going to continue to improve. I remember hearing at one point in a college class that, ’No, it’s a pendulum.’ It was a real wake-up call."
[O] What makes boomers’ anxiety worse is a sense that the world is more hazardous than when they were young, Arbore said. Then, the atom bombs seemed large, but they were distant and abstract; attacks like the ones on the World Trade Center and the Boston Marathon have changed the pattern. "These events used to happen 6,000 miles away; now they happen here," He said.
[P] It is unclear whether younger generations will follow or resist the boomer trend as they age, or if boomers will continue to kill themselves at such high rates as they move into retirement. [br] The reality that baby boomers fail to reach their expectations of leading a splendid life leads to their great despair.
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答案 E
解析 根据fail to reach their expectations定位到E段。该段首先提出疑问：最初怀着那么多追求的一代人是如何在中年时变得如此绝望?接着加以具体分析。末句提到，这些人倍感失望，因为他们过上辉煌生活的期望没有得以实现。题目句子是对末句的同义转述，great despair与末句中的a greater sense of disappointment对应，fail to reach their expectations对应末句的their expectations…didn’t come to realization。
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