ABSTRACT
In recent years the concept of crisis has occupied an increasingly important position in psychiatric theory as a period in which an individual, subject to stress, reaches a crucial point of tension from which either adaptive integration or maladaptive disorganization must eventuate. The middle years of life also carry with them many increased economic stresses. Most significantly stressful are two additional factors which are usually unconscious, and which affect all middle-aged people. In the middle years of life women manifest psychiatric disorders three to four times as frequently as men do. In middle age, the functional role of a woman as a mother and a wife assumes less importance, with children becoming less dependent and the husband less attentive.
