Ethno-Cultural and Gender Factors Surrounding Mental Health and Aging

AGING
It is a generally known fact that some weaknesses in the body start developing that directly or indirectly affect one's mental health. Since physical health is related to its impact on the mental health visible in later stages of life, older people must take extra care of their mental health. This paper aims at first, graphically representing mental health conditions in older people in the form of Microsoft Word Excel bar chart for both males and females so that a better comparison could be made, and secondly analyzing the factors for one of those mental health diseases and explaining the reason for its gender disparity.
Task 1
The following graphical representation of the five mental diseases for the age group 65 years and older within the US population. The data is extracted from Statista.com (2020) from the most recent years, 2017 and 2020. The only slight difference in the data is for dementia disease, for which the percentages are 56 and 72 percent for death rate in males and females, respectively. The rest of the percentages are for the prevalence rates of the mentioned diseases in the US for the above-mentioned age group. Since the prevalence rate for dementia by gender was not found, the death rate was taken, assuming it to be the prevalence rate of the diseases by gender. The graphical representation has been formulated within the Excel sheet using the function of "Insert Chart." The chart is divided into two categories for the same mental diseases: both for males and females in the US. The prevalence of these mental health issues could be graphically categorized between these two genders clearly to make comparisons easily. The bar chart is used for easy interpretation of the percentages concerning gender.

Task 2
Since the highest prevalence rate among all the above-mentioned age-related mental health diseases is for dementia, it would be selected for analysis purposes in this part of the paper. As the prevalence rate among the living men and women aging 65 years and older was not found on online sources, the death rates of this age group in the US are the presumed severity of this disease. Most of the common factors leading to dementia are age, family history, excessive smoking and alcohol abuse, high cholesterol that might also lead to atherosclerosis, plasma homocysteine, diabetes, and even mild cognitive impairment (Stanford Health Care, n.a.).
It is widely accepted that age causes numerous diseases in men and women whose symptoms are not evident in earlier years of life. Most of the diseases are physical, especially high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and obesity that later take mental health diseases like depression, hypertension, and dementia, etc. Family history also is one of the major reasons for these diseases, particularly the mental ones that transfer from one generation to another from genes. People who have relatives in the family with Alzheimer's and dementia do not tend to inherit these diseases; however, those close within the family, such as children, inherit it from their parents. Family history plays a role in being the greatest risk factor in transferring mental disease from one person to another. Smoking is known to be highly associated with risking the chances of dementia (Alzheimer's Society, n.a.). Mild cognitive impairment is also strongly related to dementia. When the mental health balance is disturbed due to this impairment, the studies have shown that the person tends to develop dementia within the next three years of his life. This is increasingly seen among the old age people aging from 65 years and above and has been recognized as accounting for 40 percent of the population (Stanford Health Care, n.a.). Since smoking causes a great decline in cardiovascular health, it affects mental health; thus, it causes dementia in both males and females. Alcohol consumption is linked with dementia if consumed in larger quantities. Research has interestingly revealed that if alcohol is taken in moderate quantity, it reduces the risk of dementia, whereas it acts the opposite if taken in larger quantities (Sabia et al., 2018). As mentioned earlier, high cholesterol is one of the most prevalent diseases in older age, and it leads to dementia. Bad cholesterol accumulates in older people's bodies and causes clogging, leading to vascular dementia. When these fatty substances increase in a body, it also takes the shape of another disease known as atherosclerosis. The inner lining of the arteries is abundant with these fatty substances and cholesterol. Since they block blood flow, it causes less blood flow to the brain, resulting in dementia. Along with this, diabetes is a clear indicator of dementia; if it combines with cholesterol and high blood pressure, it is sure to result in dementia in both genders. A type of amino acid present in the blood, called homocysteine, also causes greater chances of dementia and Alzheimer's disease in later life stages.
On a global scale, women are observed to be in larger numbers than men who are victims of dementia. The ratio of dementia suffering is 2 to 1, which means it is double for women than men (Kiely, 2018). If medical researchers can identify the difference in leading factors that cause a difference in the disease among men and women, then the treatment plan for both genders would be specified in detail and separately for both sexes. One of the noteworthy facts is that with age, the rate at which the brain is dying in women is faster as compared to men. Even only age does not play a role in dying cells of the brain since women tend to live longer than men, but it comes with mental health risks as well, which is seen in the form of dementia.
The gender disparity can also be linked to the female hormone that has to be connected with female bodies all their lives called estrogen. This is the hormone that impacts the mental health of females, brain, memory, liver and cardiovascular system, etc. It is also researched that estrogen is known to protect the cells of the female brain. It is studied by the researchers that females who have high levels of this hormone within their bodies till later stages of life are less likely to develop dementia (Peralta, 2018).
If females get their periods at the early stages of life and then get married and have babies, their estrogen levels fluctuate. It is also inferred that if hormone replacement therapy is started at the early stages of a female's life, especially when she experiences menopause, it is likely to control dementia earlier effectively. However, there has been less evidence on this assumption that early hormone therapy would give positive results about dementia in females.
The memory skills of women have also been known to be contributing to dementia. For instance, results have been extracted that women are stronger memory skills tested in various dementia and verbal memory tests than men. A strong memory is linked with higher levels of estrogen that is not there in men. Strong cognition was seen in women compared to men with estrogen therapy, and dementia was seen decreasing (Tokar, 2011). However, this was seen changing when estrogen levels were low in women, and their memory started affecting negatively. This led to the causes of higher dementia prevalence rates in women as compared to US men.
Heart diseases are seen as more predominant in women than men, including cardiovascular diseases and diabetes mellitus (Mosca, Barrett-Connor & Wenger, 2012), thus leading to the fact that weak heart conditions might lead to dementia. High blood pressure causes a high risk of heart disease. In various studies, it has been deducted that in middle ages, high blood pressure is more prevalent among men as compared to women; however, in later stages, especially after when a woman experiences menopause, in old age, the blood pressure levels are even higher than those of men of that age (Reckelhoff, 2000). It contributes to the reason that dementia can be higher in women aging 65 and older than men of the same age.
One more study was conducted to investigate the effect of education and psychological distress, along with gender, for having developed dementia in older people (Hasselgren et al., 2020). Though the study was conducted in Sweden based on the sample taken from Sweden population register and their birth dates, this provided a foundation for analyzing the sex difference in dementia. It was deducted that education was not related to having dementia; however, psychological distress was closely related to having dementia. Psychological distress was seen greatly evident among the females as compared to men. The most common reason for psychological distress was a low socio-economic status that led to tension and later dementia. The individual's sense of belonging to society was affected negatively, and self-esteem was hurt badly.
References
Alzheimer's Society. (n.a.). Smoking and dementia. Retrieved from https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/about-dementia/risk-factors-and-prevention/smoking-and-dementia
Hasselgren, C., Ekbrand, H., Hallerod, B., Fassberg, M.M., Zettergren, A., Johansson, L., Skoog, I. & Dellve, L. (2020). Sex differences in dementia: On the potentially mediating effects of educational attainment and experiences of psychological distress. BMC Psychiatry, 20(434). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-020-02820-9
Kiely, A. (2018, September 20). Why is dementia different for women? Alzheimers.org. Retrieved from https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/blog/why-dementia-different-women
Mosca, L., Barrett-Connor, E. & Wenger, N.K. (2012). Sex/gender differences in cardiovascular disease prevention what a difference a decade makes. Circulation, 124(19), 2145-2154. DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.110.968792
Peralta, J. (2018, August 13). Can estrogen help protect women against dementia? Health line. Retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/health-news/can-estrogen-protect-women-against-dementia
Reckelhoff, J.F. (2000). Gender differences in the regulation of blood pressure. Hypertension, 2001, 1199-1208. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1161/01.HYP.37.5.1199
Sabia, S., Fayosse, A., Dumurgier, J., Dugravot, A., Akbaraly, T., Britton, A., Kivimaki, M., & Singh-Manoux, A. (2018). Alcohol consumption and risk of dementia: 23-year follow-up of White hall II cohort study. BMJ, 2018, 362. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k2927 
Stanford Health Care. (n.a.). Risk factors for dementia. Retrieved from https://stanfordhealthcare.org/medical-conditions/brain-and-nerves/dementia/risk-factors.html
Statista.com (2020). Alzheimer's disease and other dementia- statistics and facts. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/topics/3722/alzheimer-s-disease-and-other-dementias/
Tokar, S. (2011, February 1). Estrogen therapy's link with dementia risk depends on age when taken, study finds. University of California, San Francisco. Retrieved from https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2011/02/98174/estrogen-therapys-link-dementia-risk-depends-age-when-taken-study-finds