Indian Boomers in The USA: Getting Old, Depletion Melancholia, and Adaptive Strategies

Fresh sources of suffering arise as the mostly successful and affluent Indian immigrants face late middle age, empty nest, retirement, death of peers, and getting old. Having actualized the dreams of professional and financial success does bring them contentment, but with a gnawing sense of renewed geocultural dislocation. Bodily changes, diminished sexuality, letting go of children, lack of familiarity with the prevalent normative patterns of parenting adult offspring and engaging with grandchildren, losing friends “back home” to illness and death, and getting old themselves in their adapted homeland leads them to experience “mental pain” and “disorienting anxiety.” These can turn into “depletion melancholia.” This paper describes the syndrome, the desperate defenses against it, and the possibility of thwarting it by the powers of creative sublimation and reparation offered to the good internal objects damaged by the process of immigration.