Looking at the women in my own immediate friendship group, ranging in age from 50 to 63, we have lived through every flavour of chaos. Apart from the haywire hormones and feelings of invisibility, there are also the life-changing events that happen at this life stage – post-divorce relocation, caring for a parent with dementia, a breast cancer diagnosis, redundancy. Some of my friends are also supporting adult children with mental health problems, who are still living at home. When the singer and memoirist Tracey Thorn referred to this life stage as “sniper’s alley” she wasn’t kidding.
A survey by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) reported recently that almost two-thirds of women over 50 struggle with their mental health. Underlying factors included anxiety, sleep problems and bereavement, as well as the glaringly obvious: menopause. Nine out of 10 of the 2,000 women surveyed had not sought any help.
