2023-12-30 20:45:42
Toasts and sequins, fireworks, kisses and wild dancing: this is the New Year’s ‘mood’, the one that reflects the state of mind of many people who choose to greet the new year with big parties. But not everything is always so bright. There is also a share of people who get carried away by what the Anglo-Saxons call ‘New Year’s blues’. Those most at risk, considering the factors that predispose to New Year’s Eve melancholy? Over 65 alone, and women, explains Claudio Mencacci, emeritus director of Neurosciences at the Asst Fatebenefratelli-Sacco in Milan and co-president of Sinpf (Italian Society of Neuropsychopharmacology) to time.news Salute.
There are various components that contribute to this way of feeling. The winter season also plays its part. “The so-called ‘Winter blues’, i.e. the ‘seasonal affective disorder-Sad’ affects 5% of the population, more so the female gender and people over 65 and in conditions of loneliness”, she highlights. “We often forget it, but the end-of-year celebration – reflects the expert – was dedicated to the god Janus, a two-faced god who showed two faces, one facing the past and one facing the future. Hence the absence of the present. This it helps us understand people who have a somewhat melancholic inclination, a tendency to look to the past, linked to recalling the losses that have accumulated”. An approach that “causes this return to the past to cast a long shadow on the future, which facilitates this perception of melancholy”.
We have two conditions that are contemporary, Mencacci points out. “In fact, we must never forget that all these things happen in a biological context that is linked to the winter solstice: we are in the period with the lowest amount of sunlight and with temperatures that tend to drop. Shorter days, with less light and colder, are conditions that can facilitate these seasonal changes and depressive reactions. On this level, the female gender is particularly sensitive. The other element is loneliness. The most affected are obviously always the elderly. In our country there are 2 million individuals who live in conditions of social isolation, that is, people who in a normal week don’t meet anyone, don’t hear anyone on the phone and don’t take part in any activity. Let’s start with a lot of loneliness , from situations of people who have lost loved ones and friendships and find themselves surrounded by a context dedicated to joy, sharing, cheerfulness, the idea of having to celebrate the beginning of the new year in every way”.
On New Year’s Eve “we celebrate – continues Mencacci’s reflection – the material and immaterial beginning, we celebrate the passage. However, the passage seen through the eyes of people who are in a condition of solitude, fragility or illness, tends to accentuate a condition of depression and lowered mood is amplified. Let’s go back to the data: it is estimated that approximately 17 to 20% of our population, when interviewed, say that they feel very alone or quite alone, according to the latest studies Numbers that tell us that this feeling weighs heavily not only on the social context. In fact, loneliness has a very heavy impact on people’s quality of life and physical health.”
And then there is another factor. “A moment at the end of the year, which is that of the balance sheets – the expert points out – of closing the balance sheet of what has been left behind and what awaits us. If the balance sheet has been particularly negative, regarding the realization of from a professional, emotional, sentimental or parental point of view, it is clear that the state of mind can only be a less than optimistic state of mind or at least little inclined to the idea of partying. The people” who experience this situation “they are not happy, they are demotivated. There is no great emotion for this beginning. Because the theme is: beginning of what? If it is projected in a negative sense, it seems like an extension of what has been”.
Ultimately, concludes Mencacci, these “are particular days, in which the environmental context pushes very strongly towards a new beginning. It is precisely the nature of New Year’s Eve, a pagan festival in which everything is renewed and everything is projected again into the future. Well, there are those who experience this phase with more suffering, both due to the conditions of solitude and the budget conditions they have drawn and the fact of no longer having loved ones close to them, and they certainly draw a better balance from it. negative. Without forgetting the biological aspect of our specific individual sensitivity to the photoperiod and temperatures, and obviously all this generates reactions in our organism, of which the Winter blues is the most important. We are in a phase in which the days end with less light and we move towards a lengthening. All this is always a rite of passage. And then – he glosses – we say goodbye to San Silvestro who, poor thing, died on December 31st and was unable to see the dawn of the new year”.
#Years #Eve #party #heres #suffers #psychiatrist