In the last few days, the interviews of two famous people over 70 have captured the attention of the readers. These are Marcello Lippi, the historic football coach and world champion with Italy in 2006, and by Vittorio Sgarbi, art critic, political and controversial television character.

Sgarbi and Lippi’s past

Their stories and personalities are very different, but both have achieved great success in their respective fields. Now, reaching this phase of their life, they live their past in a sweet and sour way. They warn a strong nostalgia for the times gone and the adrenaline that marked their days, and suffer from a body that can no longer keep up with the frenetic lifestyle they were used to.

Melancholy

Millet is a complex and profound feeling, at the basis of which there is nostalgia: that slight sadness that arises from the awareness that something beautiful lived will no longer return. Nostalgia puts us in front of the inevitability of human existence, with its iron rules and its time flowing in one direction. However, it can turn melancholy when we begin to believe that the best part of our life is now behind and that the present and the future will never be up to par.

Nostalgia is a mocking feeling: it tends to bring to mind only positive memories or to make us re -evaluate even past sufferings, leading us to underestimate the beauty of the present and the possibilities of the future. When it turns into a deep melancholy, it can lead to a loss of existential sense, generating apathy and promoting the onset of depression. And the more the past has been intense, as in the case of Lippi and Sgarbi, the more melancholy can become dangerous.

“The days never go”

“There are many memories and I don’t send them away, also because they are almost all happy,” says Lippi. And then he adds: “The days never spend. Sometimes the days are a problem, especially the winter afternoons so long. You have to get to seven in the evening”. The former coach suffers above all of the drop in stimuli and the absence of a great goal. For those who are ambitious, this void is difficult to fill, despite the economic well -being and the affections.

Sgarbi’s depression

Sgarbi’s melancholy, on the other hand, seems to be even deeper, so much so as to lead to a hospitalization for depression. Unlike Lippi, his body is suffering more, among the physiological ailments of old age and serious pathologies, such as prostate cancer. ‘My current melancholy or depression is a moral and physical condition that I cannot avoid’, said the art critic in an interview with La Repubblica. He himself, therefore, closely associates melancholy and depression, almost as if they were synonyms.

The interviews of Lippi and Sgarbi should not be considered only media curiosity or gossip, but they can contribute to turning on the spotlight on a crucial theme: depression in the elderly. This serious psychopathology is in fact much more frequent in the final phase of life, both for cognitive factors and for contextual factors.

We should talk more about it.