A new study, published in Translational Psychiatry, finds that “even low levels of criticism” from loved ones and friends make adults, over the age of 50, more vulnerable to developing depression.
Eric Dolan has a terrific write-up in PsyPost and you can read the full study here, but here are some bullet points that are particularly interesting and have super practical implications.
First, regarding methods, I’m sure you might be asking this question. Were the folks in this longitudinal 17 year study already somewhat depressed and the criticism just made them more depressed, or did they develop depression after the criticism?
Answer: The researchers only studied adults from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing who did not report depression at the beginning of the 17 year data set.
In other words, at 50 years old, they didn’t have depression. But this study followed self-reports at intervals of two years, for a total of 17 years.
Helpfully, the authors divided the study population into groups to see how criticism from spouses, children, and friends affected them, and further looked into differences based on sex — trying to account for (or “control”) potentially confounding factors.
So…
If you’re a married woman, does criticism from your children, friends, or spouse heighten your risk of developing depression?
If you’re a married man, does it do the same?
If you’re single, how do those factors affect your risk.
And so on.
So here’s what they found:
–Over the course of those 17 years, around 25% of older adults reporting even low levels of criticism were more likely to develop depression.
–The sex most at risk was women.
–Spouses who received “some” or “a lot of” criticism carried a higher risk of developing depression, but those reporting merely “a little” did not.
In other words, if your spouse criticizes you a bit, you’re not at higher risk for depression. But if they’re being Javert to you somewhat or a lot (think peak Javert), you’re at a much higher risk.
Makes sense.
-Older adults were much more sensitive to criticism from their friends, children, and loved ones than criticism from their spouses.
When reporting just a “small” amount of criticism from those groups, their risk for developing depression was elevated.
That also makes sense, doesn’t it?
If my spouse has an issue with me, well, look, we all know it’s our spouse and spouses have issues with each other quite a bit — especially if you’re looking at 17 years worth of data. I would have guessed the threshold of criticism from a spouse would be higher than that from a friend.
And this study offers some academic confirmation.
Anecdotally, that makes sense, doesn’t it? Does it ring true to you?
I’ve always wondered about this, in terms of a Christian perspective. Husbands and wives are in such a unique spiritual union that we’re considered one flesh, and Paul says that if we hurt our spouse, we are hurting ourselves.
But that theological reality doesn’t seem to offer much of a buffer, does it? We seem both more prone to criticize in a spousal relationship, and also more resilient to that criticism.
It’s the “we hurt the ones we love the most” thing.
So back to the study…
It offers a lot of things to think about.
First, we often think of older adults as more immune to criticism. I’m middle-aged and when I talk to my kids, I’d like to think that, over the years, I’ve developed as they say “tougher skin” to criticism. By this age, you’ve taken a lot, of varying levels, from all kinds of people.
You have a lot of battle scars and we all imagine ourselves as Hemingway’s famous piece of writing: “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”
But the truth of it is that I think we’re as vulnerable to criticism as a seven year old. Our pride just refuses to acknowledge that.
In some ways, we’re less jarred by it, but in other ways, human beings seem forever imprisoned to the chains of someone else’s opinion.
Blaise Pascal wrote of a man’s chains: “[Man] concentrates all his efforts on concealing his faults, both from others, and from himself, and cannot stand being made to see them, or their being seen by other people.”
Criticism can either detect our faults, or it can sadly assign them in places where we’re guiltless (for example, falsely accusing someone of an evil motive).
Regardless, it happens, and it’s hard at any age, but this study shows that it becomes particularly difficult to manage when you’re approaching and in your senior years. Remember: This study only included folks who reported no symptoms of clinical depression before reaching the age of 50. Thus, it tried to control for the possibility that, for example, “a lot” of criticism from a spouse in earlier years is a risk factor for developing depression, regardless of age.
There’s another reason why I think those on the back end of life might be more sensitive to criticism as a risk factor for developing depression.
It could be that as people grow older (particularly as they start encountering the medical problems common to that age), they’re often confronted with failing bodies that younger folks can only understand in clinical terms.
That confrontation is bound to shake your self-confidence and fundamental orientation in the world.
When that’s disrupted, when you’re suddenly limited in ways you weren’t, when “older age conditions” is “now age conditions,” younger people can’t possibly grasp the onslaught of increasing physical and emotional pain that might accompany it.
And so the criticism from others that you could once shake off with a familiar coping mechanism now throws you off the semi-equilibrium you’d managed to find in your middle-aged years (well, the middle-aged years are its own thing confront).
Younger folks can’t know what increasing frailty is like because they’ve never been there before, and it’s as though the elder has gone ahead on a trail and it’s full of White Walkers in the forest that you’re the first to encounter, and the younger folks are miles behind — close enough to yell slights like “Why are you slowing down? Why are you groaning? It’s not so bad. Get a better attitude!” — but far enough to be hidden from a face-to-face with those blue eyes of death.
Your unique spot on the trail exacerbates the emotional loneliness, and when we’re criticized, we feel even lonelier, and scientists know that loneliness is a risk factor for depression.
The practical takeaway is that Christians should pay close attention to the Biblical command to “stand up in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God.”
Often, we think of that verse and say, “Okay, got it” and imagine Gandalf. Well, it’s pretty easy to revere a Gandalf, regardless of the magic, but we forget the hunched ones who’ve lost their Gandalf gray hair are just as worthy of honor as the wise elder from Middle Earth, or Old Heart, or Hobbit Earth, or whatever that thing is.
In failing to honor the aged, we not only violate God’s repeated command, but also violate the ubiquitous “don’t judge others” motif running throughout the New Testament: “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself.”
I’ve seen middle-aged children treat their parents almost as babies. And, in a way, the really sick elderly do return to a more dependent physical and mental state as medical conditions hit them. But they’re still the ones who went through all this first, loved along the way, sacrificed themselves for us, and are now experiencing something we’ve never experienced.
At 45 years old, I’m not even in the cohort studied, but after I developed my sudden and totally unexpected disease a few years ago as a 43 year old guy, I instantly found myself far more vulnerable to criticism for quite awhile. When you’re weakened, when you’re going through something that’s isolating, when you’re confronted with a world that was (for me, literally) night and day different from the evening prior — man, that does a number on you.
And when others criticize you in those fresh moments (even, let’s say, “soft criticism” that you could once easily absorb), it ain’t easy.
Considering I just inserted myself into this, that brings up a question you might have, at this point.
Wouldn’t all these results apply to people younger than 50 years old, too? After all, if you’re criticized by your spouse “a lot,” wouldn’t that raise the risk of developing depression?
Hard to say, definitively, but this study did try to account (“control”) for that by only including those who didn’t have clinical symptoms of depression, beginning at the 50 year old mark. In other words, they’d weathered the weather for the first 49 years without developing depression.
So what’s the clear sum of all this?
Let’s be gentle to everyone, of course, slow to criticize, and let’s keep that in mind, particularly, for the elderly (children and adolescents, as well, who are sensitive to criticism in their most formative years).
I appreciate the eminent neuroscientist Dr. Matthew Stanford’s book Grace for the Afflicted so much (read my interview with him about it here) because he looks at the brain, how mental diseases ravage it, how time degenerates it, and when you see all that, it makes you a little slower to judge.
The novelist Graham Greene got it exactly right when he wrote in a novel (forget the name, sorry), “Hatred is a failure of the imagination,” which I’d amend for our purposes to “Christian judgment of others is a failure of the imagination.” And the church (and myself!) judges a lot.
Plus, there’s another minor detail about the whole judgment thing 🙂 It’s also a sin to stand in the seat where only God can.
So the church needs to honor our elders, no matter whether they’ve got Gandalf or Gandalf’s wife’s status, and in doing so, we honor our Lord.
And… make their unique challenges a little easier to absorb.
If you struggle with depression, anxiety, or any other such disorders — for readers in the United States…
Find a psychiatrist here.
Find a therapist here.
For readers, internationally, seek help from a local resource.
For salvation, Christ and Christ alone.
PS. I can imagine some might view this post as ageist, and I’m sorry if it came off that way, but the empirical numbers are what they are, and the research study — while acknowledging limitations — comes from a pretty great journal and team of academics.
[Painting: A Maine Fisherman, Edward Henry Potthast]
