Part of the 2024 Virtual Roundtable Series,
Minding the Gaps: Addressing Mental Health Through the Life Cycle

Erik Erikson outlined specific tasks associated with developmental stages across the life cycle. In Erikson’s model generativity, stagnation, ego integrity, and despair are all potential aspects of development in the second half of life. Aging brings a crisis and an opportunity to revisit and psychically rework all of Erikson’s eight stages. In this panel, three experts will examine the mental health challenges in the second half of life including: loneliness and the importance of relationships, loss of physical and cognitive capacities and adaptations to these changes, and spiritual concerns related to meaning, purpose, and approaching the end of life. A crisis may emerge when physical and cognitive health declines, when stigma increases isolation, and when persistent economic and healthcare disparities threaten the social safety net. Our three panelists will discuss these issues and ways to address mental health in later life.

Robert Waldinger, MD is the Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, author, and Zen priest. He will speak about what he has learned through the Harvard Study and the importance of social connections and relationships throughout the life cycle, but particularly in the second half of life. Willard Ashley, MDiv, DMin, DH, Rev, SCP, NCPsyA, CGP is both a psychoanalyst and Protestant minister. He will speak about developmental challenges in the second half of life and the importance of community and generativity in sustaining mental health. Nancy McWilliams, PhD will speak about the challenges of physical health, loss, transition, wisdom, and generativity in the second half of life. Through this roundtable, participants will learn about the developmental and mental health challenges in the second half of life and what research, clinical practice, and cumulative wisdom can teach us.

Panelists:

Willard Ashley, MDiv, DMIN, DH, REv, SCP, NCPsyA, CGP – Psychoanalyst, Consultant, and Motivational Speaker in New Jersey
Nancy McWilliams, PhD – Visiting Professor Emerita at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Applied & Professional Psychology with a private practice in Lambertville, NJ
Robert Waldinger, MD – Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for Psychodynamic Therapy and Research at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development