Up to a fifth of adults have mental health problems in midlife

Baby Boomers and Generation X are at the greatest risk of mental ill-health in middle age, finds new UCL research. The study, published today in Psychological Medicine, reveals that 20% of those born in 1970 - part of Generation X - 19% of Baby Boomers born in 1946, and 15% of Baby Boomers born in 1958, experienced their highest ever levels of psychological distress in adulthood when they were in their 40s and 50s, including symptoms of depression and anxiety. The researchers based at the  Centre for Longitudinal Studies  at UCL Institute of Education's (IOE)  Social Research Institute  analysed data collected over the past four decades on more than 28,000 adults who are participating in three of Britain's birth cohort studies. They examined participants' reports of their mental health between the ages of 23 and 69 to investigate rates of psychological distress during adulthood, and how they differed across generations. Among those born in 1958 and 1970, rates of mental ill-health decreased from their early 20s to their early 30s, then for all three cohorts, the prevalence of psychological distress increased from their early 30s to reach its highest levels in midlife - when participants were aged between 46-53. The 1970 cohort consistently had the highest rates of mental ill-health during adulthood. At age 26, 16% reported psychological distress, before rates fell to 14% at age 30.