Blues caused by too much leisure time

Press, 17 February 1986, Page 10

Blues caused by too much leisure time

From the Royal N.Z. College of General Practitioners

The American Family Physician reports that a New York psychiatrist thinks too much leisure time can lead to what he calls “Sunday neurosis,” a severe case of the blues caused by an inner compulsion to work. People who have this problem develop guilt feelings when they are doing nothing. Dr Alexander Martin believes that the moves towards a fourday working week will serve to aggravate the problem for its sufferers, many of whom have two and three jobs so that they can ward off the guilt of idleness.

Such enforced idleness could lead to depression and suicide, Dr Martin thinks we should give more though to the number of suicides at weekends and at holiday times. If these people are not helped to use their leisure time, the automated life of the future, with its enforced relaxation, may turn human beings into “sterile robots, alienated from life and from themselves, living vicariously and so deadened that they compulsively seek overstimulation from the extreme, the lurid, the bizarre and the macabre.”

Well, perhaps that is overstating the case just a little.

The “British Medical Journal” suggests that the best way to check whether you are at high risk of developing heart disease is to find out if you have first degree relatives under the ago of 50 with coronary heart diseases. If you have, you

should go to your family doctor and ask him or her to check your blood pressure' and your blood fats. Then you should give up smoking and sort out your lifestyle. Fat People A study of 21,000 Americans suggests that fat people eat no more than thin people, on average. Fatness is, for most, an affliction unfairly visited upon the overweight, who are no more self-indulgent, on average, than those of normal weight. Unfortunately, this does not help the person become thin. For a fat person to lose weight, he or she must eat less than thin people. Mammography The evidence is pouring in that regular screening of the breasts of women over the age of 50 by mammography (low-dose X-ray examination) saves lives. The American College of Physicians concludes that such examinations can be recommended for women over the age of 50, but that there is not enough evidence to justify the recommendation of regular mammography for younger women. In any

woman with a strong family history of breast cancer, or a past, history of breast cancer, regular examination is also recommended. There is a strong need in New Zealand for mammography screening facilities, and the women’s movement should promote- a campaign to provide them. Drinking Drinkers who skite that they can handle their booze could be at high risk of becoming alcoholics. A study recently showed that body sway measured after alcohol consumption was less in young men with alcoholism in their families than in others. There is perhaps a family, geneticallydetermined decreased intensity of reaction to alcohol that predisposes to alcoholism. “Jarming” An editorial in the American version of “Modern Medicine” suggests that people should drop jogging and take up jarming. (Why, jogging with your arms, of course). The editorial tells us that the greatest longevity is achieved not by runners, but by orchestra conductors, concert pianists and violinists, whose brisk and sustained arm exercises keep them aerobically fit Or could it be simply that these people lead relaxed and fulfilled lives? That in fact music (as we always knew) hath charm to sooth the savage breast?

Family Doctor