The Middle-Aged Male

The patient, a 45-year-old salesman, was convinced that he was a pretty sick man. For one thing, he had become obsessed by the fear of death. Sometimes he imagined that he was losing his mind. He complained of a continuous ringing in his left ear, and his nose felt numb. He had no appetite, couldn't sleep, and occasionally felt as if he were about to faint.

Two psychiatrists at Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital diagnosed the patient's trouble as middle age.

Medicine has no cure for middle age, but it has learned to ease the symptoms. The sick salesman was given treatments of testosterone (male hormone). After eight weeks of this simple therapy, he emerged from his emotional slump.

Psychiatrists M. Prados and B. Ruddick believe that men, like women, go through a change of life in their 40s or 50s--but a man seldom recognizes what is wrong with him. When a man of 40 to 55 begins to feel tired, depressed, out of sorts and washed-out, the trouble is not necessarily in his job or a decline in his mental powers, according to the Montreal experts. The trouble is in his hormone production. In the current Psychiatric Quarterly, Prados & Ruddick describe some of the odd symptoms of the male change of life.

Most susceptible to the male menopause are active men "with important responsibilities." In acute cases, they may suddenly lose ambition and interest in their work, begin brooding about losing their jobs, feel swamped by indecision and the weight of their responsibilities. They may become sentimental, burst into tears for no particular reason, long to be babied, have less sexual desire and capacity, contemplate suicide. They may dream disturbing dreams, wake up more tired than when they went to bed, complain of aches & pains all over the body (a characteristic symptom: pains in the back of the neck that radiate to the shoulders). Other common complaints: hot flushes, heavy sweating, pains over the heart, stomach upsets.

Ordinarily, say the Montreal psychiatrists, there is nothing much wrong with the aging male that hormone treatments will not help. They tried this treatment on 30 patients and in most cases it worked; in more complicated cases, the psychiatrists concluded that middle age may plunge a man into so profound a mental and emotional depression that nothing short of psychiatry or shock treatments will pull him out of it.

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