Talk:Midlife crisis

message: This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 April 2021 and 23 July 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): MandyGuymon312.
I think that this article could use some work with their sources. There was one place that needed a citation. Additionally, there was some imbalance with the sources and it could use some more variety in the sources to increase its credibility. I also noticed that it could have been better at remaining more neutral. There seemed to be some biases and I think that it needs to have more simple facts that merely inform the reader rather than trying to convince the reader.Charliejo99 (talk) 07:13, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

message: There is some dispute here as to whether midlife crisis actually exists. Assuming it does:
The article begins by saying that the trigger is the realization that one's life is half over. This seems doubtful to meet. People have no sense of life being half over. I think people sense the youthful part of their life is over, and they happen to sense that at what is coincidentally the midpoint of their life expectancy so that's label that gets applied.
=== No such thing as a mid life crisis???? ===
Currently the article has been edited by someone that just doesnt believe in Mid life crises and is trying to make them out as nothing more then a half baked psuedo psychological buzz word. It calls Mid Life crises a 'notion in certain cultures', a 'popular belief', and says that there is no 'evidence that it exists'.
I am not sure why this person wants to discredit mid life crises. It is somewhat like saying there is no evidence that people get depressed by finacial problems. But some people (and i would guess if we are all honest that all of us) do at a certain point in their life look back at the loss of youth, and must come to grips with their own mortality.
Anyway, the wording should be changed and more refrences to studies in mid life crises should be added.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.5.88.10 (talk) 17:09, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Life half over? 

message: Currently the article has been edited by someone that just doesnt believe in Mid life crises and is trying to make them out as nothing more then a half baked psuedo psychological buzz word. It calls Mid Life crises a 'notion in certain cultures', a 'popular belief', and says that there is no 'evidence that it exists'.
I am not sure why this person wants to discredit mid life crises. It is somewhat like saying there is no evidence that people get depressed by finacial problems. But some people (and i would guess if we are all honest that all of us) do at a certain point in their life look back at the loss of youth, and must come to grips with their own mortality.
Anyway, the wording should be changed and more refrences to studies in mid life crises should be added.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.5.88.10 (talk) 17:09, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  No such thing as a mid life crisis???? 

message: It is related to golden age (menopause in) women or andropause in men.
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I'm only 36 but I'm definitely seriously panicking and haven't slept in months over major life regrets and the realization that I'm past the point where I can fix it all.  Too late to find love and have a family.  Too late to enter a certain profession and be successful.
Regardless, I want to point out something about the car.  Read the comments.  It is very clear to me that that was posted by someone taking a personal jab at someone he knows.  He's trying to publicly shame this person for messing with the brand on the car.  The license  plate is visible.   To me, that car serves no purpose but to publicly shame someone specific.
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I dont see why there should be a link to sports car in this page. I can only think that it has been added as humorous reference to sexist stereotypes. I do not think that is adequate for an encyclopedic article and I am deleting it.
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I'm at 47, and I don't want a sports car.  I want power.  I want to leverage my experience and wisdom in some way to hold more power over my life.  People look at me and see modest wealth, atrophy, gray hair and ambition adrift.  That's from the outside.  If they could see inside, they would see youthful ambition and imagination, tempered with two things:  the realism of my own limitations, and limitation imposed upon me by the subjective judgement of my peers.  My mid-life crisis is my realization of how thoroughly unfair both of these are, and how the effects of these two things imposes more on my life, with each passing day.--64.160.120.212 05:33, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Personal experiences 

message: I've made extensive edits the last two days (August 15-16, 2007) to reflect the current academic thinking about midlife crisis: that it's something that (at most) less than 10% of middle aged adults go through.
There is certainly debate about this. Psychologists and others who study massive surveys like MIDUS find no evidence of widespread midlife crisis. Therapists and other counselors will tell you that they see people going through them. These are not irreconcilable.
What's lacking in the literature -- and I've looked -- are large clinical studies of people going through a midlife crisis. What's out there are either very small samples or completely anecdotal (see Gail Sheehy's "Passages," which popularized midlife crisis thirty years ago). I have not updated the symptoms section with anything from these small group studies -- perhaps on another day.
There could also be more explanation of the findings that people who do suffer a midlife crisis are often people who have had crises at other turning points or stressful periods in their lives. In other words, their psychological issue is more generalized than a "midlife crisis."
Greg y 18:09, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Still needs work

message: Have the problems with spam been addressed? I didn't see any evidence of spam (except a heavy reliance on lifetwo.com as a source). Without understanding the history of this article, I was hesitant to remove it.--Ishi Gustaedr (talk) 12:31, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup spam tag

message: I have no references to back this, but in my experience, what is colloquially coined a "midlife crisis" in the United States has little to do with blaming others. Just the opposite is true. It seems to be a realization that what is done is done and that only by pulling oneself up "by the bootstraps" can things be changed. Someone who always wanted a sports car but couldn't buy it--because of obligations to bills, the wife, and the children--now suddenly finds that it's possible. Someone who grew fatter and fatter because of poor choices now finds that getting thinner is only a matter of eating less and moving more. To quote the article existential crisis, such a crisis may result from "awareness of one's freedom and the consequences of accepting or rejecting that freedom." 
I'll be removing this line in the article shortly, and it should only be replaced with an appropriate reference. kevinthenerd 16:15, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blaming others? 

message: The article states, repeatedly, that fewer than 10% are affected. 
References would be nice.  
Popular literature would seem to indicate a much higher percentage.
WriteManWriting (talk) 16:44, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Percentage of Population Affected? 

message: Thirty is still relatively young and it is kept on here despite me fixing it. Administrators please read the articles that are cited. It almost seems like you guys are purposely trying to turn me into an old man on here long before my time. (Bjoh249 (talk) 20:08, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi. Upon reading the cited ref, I now am OK with your edit, because although the ref doesn't specifically state 40-60 as the range, the gist of the ref doesn't disagree with your edit. Just to provide perspective on my earlier reversion, I wanted to share these points (to reassure you that Wikipedia isn't as bad as it may currently seem to you on the surface). (1) The edit is not about you in particular (age-wise)—just about the topic and defending what I figured was probably sound existing text, in line with the cited refs. (2) You may see people like me reverting edits that seem dubious to us on the surface, even if we haven't read the refs in an article, and that's not wrong of us to do—it just reflects that most of what we revert is vandalism and personal opinion. Reversions of edits like yours are just the minority false positives of the process, but rest assured that the process works well overall, and it's not aimed against you in particular. I could see how my edit summary might seem to someone not used to watchlisting on Wikipedia. Like "didn't you read close enough before reverting?" But it's really just based on sound heuristic clues (± anon, ± no edit summary, ± possible test edit or personal opinion, ± apparent contradiction of existing referencing), which are accurate more often than they're wrong, and we volunteers do quick first-line defense of random articles tangentially related to our primary interests even if we're not delving into the topic deeply. The thing to do if you are one of the minority of people who are actually coming here to contribute constructively (as opposed to just winging in to drop vandalism or opinion, which is what most people do) is to have patience, always give descriptive edit summaries, and understand that heuristic quality defenses are not aimed at you personally. Thanks for bringing your concern to the talk page and being patient about it. Happy editing! — ¾-10 23:45, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

text: Article refers to the middle of Adult Life, not total lifespan, i.e, Childhood, Early Adult, Middle Adult, Old Adult.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.120.30.140 (talk) 00:55, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: That would still imply a life expectancy of ~90. The middle of adult life would be more around 45–50, but not 55–60. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:04, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Article on number 5 cited clearly states 40-60 and not 30-60

message: I think this article should talk something about the treatment of a midlife crisis.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.172.133.176 (talk) 19:14, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Treatment 

message: It is astonishing that article omits hormonal and other changes (ie., Dopamine levels associated with aging) (mainly deterioration) in 1) Understanding "why" people become aware of their aging and the consequent expression psychologically as is virtually exclusively focused upon here, and 2) Its treatment.  Diminishing levels of thyroid and testosterone level in males, for example in "andropause."  Similarly, for both sexes, declining growth hormone levels, and in the brain, dopamine levels.  Other neuro-chemical changes might play here as well, I am not familiar with those though.  While I am conversant to bring these issues up, someone with the legitimate expertise should address the sub-topic.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.84.118.124 (talk) 14:28, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biological Underpinnings 

message: There's some odd images somebody has added with some decidedly unobjective captions in this article  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.87.181.59 (talk) 00:06, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Odd Edits 

message: The section 'Monetary costs' contains a lot of top-of-the-head blather, stereotypes, myths and not one citation. Would somebody please excise it?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.120.30.140 (talk) 00:48, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Monetary costs" section 

message: I recently made edits to include information on the effect of a midlife crisis on a spouse. I found the information from a reputable source who is noteworthy in the field and has her own Wikipedia entry as she has been covered by multiple international media outlets and meets criteria for notability. Three user accounts were created, immediately removed this update, and have made no other entries. I suspect this person is not a fan of the source and I suspect this to be Wikipedia:Sock puppetry. To avoid going against the edit warring rules, I am reporting the issue there to administrators.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Eric1985 (talk • contribs) 16:21, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Effect on Spouse 

message: Can we get a source on the 3rd paragraph under "Crisis vs Stressors"? Specifically the line stating education level correlates to likelyhood if a midlife crisis? Seems like pure speculation especially with the wording making it sound like it's a hard fact. Samnotanonymous (talk) 21:13, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Education level 

message: I have a problem with the word "feel" here:
"This may produce feelings of intense depression, remorse, and high levels of anxiety, or the desire to achieve youthfulness or make drastic changes to their current lifestyle or  the wish to change past decisions and events."
Is it a verb or noun? The word "feel" is clearly connected with some other word in this sentence, but I do not know which one. 
If it is a verb, connected with the verb "desire", then "the desire to  the wish to change past decisions and events" does not make much sense. You would rather wish to change something than feel the desire to. Let's look at the sentence in detail (the indentations matter):
This may produce
: feelings of
:: intense depression,
:: [and] remorse,
:: and high levels of anxiety,
: or the desire
:: to achieve youthfulness
:: or make drastic changes to their current lifestyle
:: or  the wish to change past decisions and events.
But if it is a noun, connected with "produce", then "produce  the wish" is ungrammatical:
This may produce
: feelings of
:: intense depression,
:: [and] remorse,
:: and high levels of anxiety,
: or the desire
:: to achieve youthfulness
:: or make drastic changes to their current lifestyle
: or  the wish to change past decisions and events.
I understand, that you, native English speakers, acquired your language completely mindlessly, but - as a rational beings - you could (and should) do something about it. After all, you have some ideas to convey here, as clearly as possible, right? 85.193.252.19 (talk) 16:05, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unclear sentence. 

message: I was curious in the "treatment and prevention" section, if it would be better to lengthen this section. I believe adding information about CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) would be helpful to individuals struggling in this area of their life.  QualityContent24.7 (talk) 01:04, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Treating those going through a midlife crisis/preventing it from occurring  

message: Apparently the first article added on this revision (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Midlife_crisis&diff=prev&oldid=753676530) is a fictional article made for a book called "Critical Thinking About Research: Psychology and Related Fields"  (2018) by authors Julian Meltzoff PhD and Dr. Harris Cooper PhD. Specifically for the second part of the Book called "Critical Thinking Using Practice Articles".
It has a big footnote saying "NOTE: This is a fictional article to be used only for purposes of research education" Sunaipatieftu (talk) 21:48, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number 1 reference leads to fictional article 

message: — Assignment last updated by Charliejo99 (talk) 21:58, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: Adult Development Fall 2023

message: — Assignment last updated by Lilasmith44 (talk) 22:34, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: Adult Development winter 2024

message: I've noticed that the occurrence age range in the lead is different to the age range in the occurrence section. Does anyone know what happened here and how it may be fixed? —Panamitsu (talk) 08:33, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discrepancy