“I think there’s a whole mixture of things going on,” says psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos. Just when we accept that, they begin to rise and people in their 60s feel more confident and happier than those in their 40s, who are still at the bottom of the U.” “For the first half of life we expect our happiness levels to rise, but they don’t. It’s not just women who feel this way, according to Prof Oswald. That’s where the confidence crisis came because I thought, ‘What’s happening to me?’ I didn’t feel ill. And my eyes were struggling a bit with the autocue. The most crippling for me was lack of sleep, which gave me horrific brain fog. Last year the TV presenter Davina McCall, 55, told an interviewer: “I felt like I knew how to do my job and then all of a sudden these things started happening. For women, these include the hormonal shifts that take place during the menopause. So why does this happen? “It’s a very good question and researchers all over the world are trying to find the answer,” he says, pointing out that there are plenty of theories. “And the suicide statistics are the bleakest way of viewing it.” In the UK, suicide rates among men are highest between 50 and 54, and among women between 45 and 49. “It’s a paradox, but midlife fright is very real,” says Prof Oswald. After all, as the study noted, as well as being at their earning peak, most midlifers “have extraordinarily cushioned and enjoyable lives”. Which, according to one of the study’s co-authors Andrew Oswald, professor of economics and behavioural science at the University of Warwick, is something of a paradox. “Something elemental appears to be going wrong in the middle of many citizens’ lives,” the report concluded. According to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the US, with input from UK researchers, midlifers feel more distress and self-doubt than other age groups and are more prone to sleep and alcohol problems, feeling overwhelmed at work (job stress peaks at 45), depression and suicide. I began feeling anxious and my sleep suffered, which turned out to be the perimenopause, and self-doubt crept into every area of my life.” I had a boss who hadn’t even turned 40 for a start, and colleagues who knew more about digital marketing than me. At 44 I returned to a workplace that felt different somehow. “But at 40 I went part-time for a while to juggle home life with two young daughters. “I always felt capable and confident in my 20s and 30s,” says Katie*, a marketing executive from Kent.
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