Growing older males and social connection. Is there a disconnect? : NPR

MILES PARKS, HOST:

Self-reliance is a core American trait, and males specifically embrace it. So how do you supply assist to somebody who does not assume they want it? Ashley Milne-Tyte has extra from the coast of Maine. And a warning, this story mentions suicide statistics.

ASHLEY MILNE-TYTE, BYLINE: Maine has the oldest inhabitants within the nation. Jess Maurer is government director of the Maine Council on Growing older. She says getting older might be difficult for everybody, together with males.

JESS MAURER: We type of, as a stereotype, have this concept that males are OK. That is a stereotype that is fallacious.

MILNE-TYTE: Males over 75 have the very best suicide fee within the U.S. There are numerous causes for this, says Mary Gagnon of NAMI Maine, a psychological well being nonprofit. Amongst them are loss, illness, the notion of being a drain on others…

MARY GAGNON: For males, being a burden is actually troublesome for them.

MILNE-TYTE: …And social isolation. However, she says…

GAGNON: The enemy of suicide is connection.

MILNE-TYTE: One effort to attach older males with others is going on in Harpswell, Maine, a coastal group the place volunteering is huge, particularly round meals.

SURREY HARDCASTLE: After which we have American chop suey right here, if you would like to see that.

MILNE-TYTE: It began when this volunteer-led group, Harpswell Growing older at Dwelling, observed males had been lacking from numerous their actions. Then drivers for his or her home made meals supply service encountered many single, older males who did not get out or prepare dinner. Here is volunteer Surrey Hardcastle.

HARDCASTLE: In order that they’re consuming cereal or sizzling canine or a peanut butter sandwich, and that is not an excellent long-term answer.

MILNE-TYTE: She grabbed one other volunteer, Tom Mahoney, and tasked him with arising with one thing that will get males out and socializing with different guys. Mahoney says he needed to be cautious how he framed the thought.

TOM MAHONEY: If we mentioned it was a assist group for males, they don’t seem to be going to come back (laughter) as a result of it will point out or say to them, I am weak, I would like this. And we do not wish to be perceived as being weak.

MILNE-TYTE: He and others landed on a month-to-month lunch named ROMEO – retired older man consuming out. He received the thought from different grassroots ROMEO teams across the nation. The most recent lunch had round 55 guys in attendance. One among them is Sam Powers. He is traveled all around the world. He is now 80, lives alone, and he had a stroke final summer time, which has affected his voice.

Would you describe your self as fairly unbiased?

SAM POWERS: Oh, yeah, stubbornly, stupidly unbiased.

MILNE-TYTE: Powers says he is met two or three new individuals at every lunch, and that is as shut as he’ll get to saying the lunches assist him. As we drive away from Powers’ residence, Mahoney says there’s nothing fallacious with males being self-reliant.

MAHONEY: However we nonetheless have a necessity, like anybody else, to be linked to individuals. That is what he was lacking however wasn’t saying.

MILNE-TYTE: Jim Hays is not going to say it both. He is a lifelong Mainer and retired harbormaster of close by Bailey Island. He now attends the free ROMEO lunches, too.

JIM HAYS: We males – we have labored all our lives, and it is laborious to get out of the chair and to get entangled with one thing. You understand, we lose our contacts with the skin world, and it takes one thing like this to drag us again in.

MILNE-TYTE: However he says the pulling goes properly. Surrey Hardcastle agrees. She says the ROMEO males are occurring to get collectively at different occasions.

HARDCASTLE: It is very, very thrilling. It is doing simply what we needed it to do and simply what all of the analysis says is required.

MILNE-TYTE: To encourage older males to grow to be more healthy and fewer remoted by means of human connection. For NPR Information, I am Ashley Milne-Tyte.

PARKS: In case you or somebody you recognize is experiencing a disaster, you may name or textual content 988 – simply these three numbers, 988 – for the Suicide & Disaster Lifeline.

(SOUNDBITE OF SEAN ANGUS WATSON’S “WALTZ IN SWEATERS”)

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