At a time when we’re increasingly aware of threats to women’s health, it may seem counterintuitive to focus on men. But doctors and social workers worry about older men because they have often spent years skipping doctor visits, and after they retire, many become socially isolated.
Jess Maurer, executive director of the Maine Council on Aging, sees this all the time. Maine is the country’s oldest state and its most rural. Independence is assumed. But the desire to fend for oneself can lead to problems later in life.
“We have a stereotype that men are OK,” she says. Yet plenty of men struggle as they age, in large part because they haven’t built a social support system in the same way women have. While women tend to maintain friendships and community relationships over many years, Maurer says, regardless of whether they were working or not, “men just had their career. If they didn’t have a robust hobby they can be really lost,” once they leave their jobs. This is especially true if the man was never partnered or has lost his partner.
Mental health experts see older men’s social isolation reflected in some sobering statistics: men older than age 75 have the highest suicide rates of any other group in the United States. Mary Gagnon is director of suicide prevention at NAMI Maine, a mental health nonprofit. She says it’s not just being cut off from others, and possibly lonely, that contributes to men in this age group committing suicide.
Older men also dread being a burden to others when they become ill, because they were raised to be self-sufficient providers. They haven’t been brought up to talk about their feelings, so their pain is internalized. Access to weapons also plays a part. But Gagnon is hopeful things can change. “The enemy of suicide is connection,” she says.
‘They haven’t been brought up to talk about their feelings, so their pain is internalized.’
Efforts exist around the country to address social isolation in men, and if you haven’t heard of them, it’s because most are small and run by volunteers.
Men’s lack of attention to their physical and mental health led to the founding of Men’s Sheds, a concept that first sprouted in Australia and has now put down roots worldwide. Men’s Sheds are gathering places for older men to hang out and in many cases tinker and build stuff—a bit like “shop” but with older guys. The tagline of the U.S. Men’s Shed Association is “shoulder to shoulder”—the idea being that men tend to avoid deep conversations face to face, but if they’re working on something side by side, conversations will evolve, including those about their physical and mental health.
In this country the Sheds are grassroots organizations with no public funding so they’re growing slowly, but they bring a lot of satisfaction to their members. And not all Sheds invite men to work with their hands. At one Men’s Shed in North Palm Beach County, Fla., where many of the men are retired executives, activities revolve around outings and talks, monthly breakfasts and cocktails. The leadership emphasizes that a Shed can be anything its membership wants it to be.
Some Men’s Sheds members say that what first got them into a Shed was a prod from their wife, and the realization that they were bored and spending too much time in front of a screen. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, men older than age 75 spend an average of four-and-a-half hours a day watching TV during the week, and longer on weekends, while a slightly younger cohort watches a little less. TV-watching far outstrips any other activity older men engage in.
The challenge for men once they leave the workforce boils down to one thing: a lack of purpose. The vast majority of today’s older men were raised to be wage earners. Many have based their whole identity on work. After a career ends, so can their sense of who they are, which in turn leads to depression.
Dr. Linda Fried, Dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, first noticed this a few decades ago as a practicing geriatrician. She was seeing a steady stream of patients whose main problem, she says, was that “they had no reason to get up in the morning.” She advised one retired executive to go out and do some volunteer work for an organization he cared about, to renew his sense of purpose. He later reported back to Fried that he’d done just that—only to be put in a corner stamping envelopes.
This inspired her to start Experience Corps, an organization where volunteers from ages early 60s to mid-80s spend 15 hours a week at elementary schools for at least a year. Fried says the program had two goals: to improve the academic success of children, and to improve the older adults’ health. The whole point was to get volunteers doing something that mattered, where the results would be tangible.
Fried says Experience Corps, which today is run by the AARP Foundation, changed the academic success of children in kindergarten through third grade in cities around the United States. It also helped volunteers. A study on the outcomes of the program in Baltimore showed that men in particular benefited.
Experience Corps asks volunteers ages early 60s to mid-80s to spend 15 hours a week at elementary schools for at least a year.
“Men who were volunteers demonstrated over a 2-year period an astounding increase in the size of their brain,” she says.
Growth happened in the regions related to problem solving and memory. Fried can’t be sure why, but believes it may be because older men socialize less than women to begin with, so the consistent volunteer work—and seeing that they were making a difference—gave men the biggest boost.
Yet just 10% to 15% of Experience Corps volunteers are men. This exemplifies a national trend: men are less likely to volunteer than women.
Jim Isenberg and Frank Williams of White Plains, NY, are keen to change that statistic in their area. Both men are in their 70s and together they run a group called Grandpas United, which taps men as volunteers to work with young men and boys who need mentors. (You don’t have to be a grandfather to join.) Williams has spent most of his career as director of the White Plains Youth Bureau and knew local boys were sorely in need of male mentorship, as many were growing up without fathers.
The benefit of a group such as Grandpas United, the two men say, is that it goes beyond bringing older men together to socialize. It taps into our need to feel we’re making a difference in the world.
“There is still so much work to do [after you retire] in terms of helping, serving, caring, being engaged with children, and with fathers and grandfathers being active in the community,” says Williams. The volunteers have regular meetings where they get tips on what it means to be a good mentor, and how to communicate with kids who’ve grown up in the era of cell phones and social media.
One of the volunteer Grandpas, Marc Sharff, says there’s nothing like seeing the effect their presence has on the group of fourth grade boys they meet with regularly at a local elementary school. The men play games with the kids and teach them a few social skills, including how to shake hands.
He enjoys his volunteer time immensely but says he hasn’t been able to persuade all his friends to follow in his footsteps. He considers this a shame.
“One of the things I think they miss, and one of the things I love about Grandpas, is it’s not only the kids,” he says, “it’s the camaraderie and building new friendships … I cherish that.”
While today’s older men may be uncomfortable with “reaching out,” Professor Dawn Carr, a sociologist at Florida State University, says things are likely to look different in a few decades.
“Younger generations of men don’t view work as the sole purpose in their life,” she says. “They don’t view their spouses as their sole social network and the pathway to their social network. They have their own relationships. They have things outside of work that they value and engage with.”
The older men of tomorrow could be much less socially isolated than their grandfathers.
Ashley Milne-Tyte is journalist and podcaster who reports for NPR and other national outlets on aging issues.
Photo caption: Frank Williams, left, and Jim Isenberg founded Granpast United in 2018 to encourage older men in their community to mentor boys and young men.
Photo credit: Ashley Milne-Tyte.
