Why Are More Women Depressed Than Men
Researchers have defined stress as any major changes to the status quo that may potentially cause mental or emotional strain or tension. These stressful life events can include marriage, divorce, separation, marital reconciliation, personal injury or illness, dismissal from work or retirement.
Men are more likely to have depressive episodes following work difficulties, divorce and separation. Women, on the other hand, are more sensitive to conflict, serious illness or death happening in their close social network. In fact, research suggests that most of the stressful events that cause depression among women are related to their close social network, such as romantic and marital relationships, child-rearing and parenting.
Research suggests that compared to men, women tend to ruminate more about stressors and have negative thoughts that cause depression. And at least one study suggests that this explains the gender difference in the prevalence of depression. Rumination can make stress worse, and unfortunately, it is more common among women.
These findings suggest that psychosocial causes of depression may be at least partially gender-specific, and that these disparities are rooted in different life conditions social inequalities that men and women experience. And, in general, women tend to experience greater social inequality and social stress, and therefore depression, than men.
Unemployment And Sudden Life Changes
Losing your job or having sudden and extreme shifts in your employment status can cause serious financial consequences, not to mention wreak havoc on your confidence and sense of security.
The same can happen when a parent dies, or when a transfer moves you to an entirely new place.
According to research, men tend to derive more of their sense of purpose from their work, so this one can hit really hard.
Probably Not Because Life Is Worse For Women
Posted July 5, 2016
Women are more likely to be depressed than men about twice as likely here in the US, as I have been told. Its an interesting finding, to be sure, and making sense of it poses a fun little mystery . We dont just want to know that women are more depressed than men we also want to know why women are more depressed. So what are the causes of this difference? The Mayo Clinic floats a few explanations, noting that this sex difference appears to emerge around puberty. As such, many of the explanations they put forth center around the problems that women might face when undergoing that transitional period in their life. These include things like increased pressure to achieve in school, conflict with parents, gender confusion, PMS, and pregnancy-related factors. They also include ever-popular suggestions such as societal biases that harm women. Now I suspect these are quite consistent with the answers you would get if queried your average Joe or Jane on the street as to why they think women are more depressed. People recognize that depression often appears to follow negative life events and stressors, and so they look for proximate conditions that they believe disproportionately affect women.
Read Also: How Is Depression Different From Sadness
Reserve Your Energy For People Who Get You
Introverts need more time alone, generally speaking, but that doesnt necessarily mean you want to spend every moment alone.
Cultivating some connections can help prevent loneliness and improve overall well-being.
Yet spending time with one or two people who truly understand you and appreciate your personality may have far more value than pursuing superficial friendships with people who dont respect your needs for space and quiet contemplation.
How Can I Help A Man With Depression
If you think that a male friend or family member may be experiencing depression, you can offer them help and support.
Some men find it particularly difficult to share their emotions, but you can help them by starting a conversation about how they are doing, and showing them that you want to support them.
Sometimes men with depression might feel that they dont want to seek help because it is not manly. In such a situation, the best thing you can do is to remind them that depression is a serious but common mental health condition that probably wont get better by itself.
If they had a broken leg or a bad cut, they wouldnt expect that to heal without their doctors help, and its the same with depression.
Also Check: Is Prozac For Depression Or Anxiety
Vegetarian Men Are More Likely To Be Depressed
With all the hype that vegetarianism has received over the last couple of years, its no surprise that there are a hefty number of vegetarians in the world today. However, a study has recently discovered that vegetarian men are more likely to be depressed than meat-eating men. In one word , heres why: B12.
According to the July 28 study titled Vegetarian diets and depressive symptoms among men, researchers at the University of Bristol in the U.K. found that vegetarian men are twice as likely to develop depression because of the lack of B12 vitamins and iron, which often affects mental health.
The UK study was conducted on 9,668 adult men who identified as vegan or vegetarian. It showed that about 50 percent of vegan men and seven percent of vegetarians had a vitamin B12 deficiency. The longer they stayed on a vegan or vegetarian diet, the more likely they were to suffer from depression.
This is due to the fact that B12 isnt produced by the body or plants, hence we have to get B12 vitamins through animals and supplements.
This finding is backed by the Harvard Medical Health blog, which states that a severe vitamin B12 deficiency can lead to deep depression, paranoia and delusions, memory loss, incontinence, among other problems.
Of course, you dont have to start eating meat if it goes against your ethics. All you gotta do is take B12 supplements and youre good to go! Always remember, your mental health is your health!
Life Events Personality And Anxiety
A small 2016 study exploring the connection between life events, personality traits, and generalized anxiety disorder suggested that people scoring lower in extraversion also scored higher on measures of anxiety.
Researchers also found that people with anxiety tended to report higher numbers of undesirable or stressful life events, such as family of relationship conflict. The results suggested challenging life events may play a part in the development of anxiety.
The study authors emphasized that future research is needed to better understand the link between personality traits and anxiety. Whats more, the small sample size isnt very representative.
Also Check: How To Help Clinical Depression
A Quick Note On Sexual Coercion
Sexual coercion is unwanted sexual activity that occurs when you are pressured, tricked, threatened, or forced in a non-physical way.
It involves behaviour that is not always criminal, but it usually abusive in some way.
For help you can contact 1800 RESPECT, the national body for supporting people impacted by sexual assault, domestic or family violence and abuse.
Seeking Mental Health Support
Depression and other mental health issues can severely impact an individuals quality of life, hindering aspects of their life such as the efficiency of their own coping mechanisms, their relationships to others and their daily functioning. As the stigma of mental health continues to be challenged, more of those facing a mental health issue, whatever their gender, are turning to others for help.
If you ora loved one might be suffering from a mental health condition, please speak with your doctor, look intoavailable depression treatments that have beenrecognized for theirsafety and efficacy, and consider reaching out to online or in-personsupport networks.
Recommended Reading: Can You Get Depressed After A Breakup
Other Ways To Help Include:
- Offering him support, understanding, patience, and encouragement
- Listening carefully and talking with him
- Never ignoring comments about suicide, and alerting his therapist or doctor
- Helping him increase his level of physical and social activity by inviting him out for hikes, games, and other events. If he says, no, keep trying, but don’t push him to take on too much too soon.
- Encouraging him to report any concerns about medications to his health care provider
- Ensuring that he gets to his doctor’s appointments
- Reminding him that with time and treatment, the depression will lift
Men And Women: Statistics
This content mentions sexual assault, suicide or suicidal thoughts, self-harm, eating disorders, anxiety, abuse and violence, trauma, body image and substance abuse and addiction , and some people may find this triggering.
Mental health problems affect both men and women, but not in equal measure.
In England in 2014, one in six adults had a common mental health problem: about one in five women and one in eight men. From 2000 to 2014, rates of common mental health problems in England steadily increased in women and remained largely stable in men.1
In 2018, there were 6,507 suicides registered in the UK2, and in 2019, there were 5,691 suicides registered in England and Wales:
- Of these, three-quarters were among men, which has been the case since the mid-1990s2,3
- Three times as many men as women die by suicide.4
- Men aged 40 to 49 have the highest suicide rates in the UK.5
Men report lower levels of life satisfaction than women, according to the governments national wellbeing survey.6
Men are less likely to access psychological therapies than women: only 36% of referrals to NHS talking therapies are for men.7
Nearly three-quarters of adults who go missing are men.4
87% of rough sleepers are men.4
Men are nearly three times as likely as women to become dependent on alcohol and three times as likely to report frequent drug use.4
Men are more likely to be compulsorily detained for treatment than women.8
Men are more likely to be victims of violent crime .9
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Misogynistic Bias In Medicine
Misogynistic bias has impacted diagnosis and treatment of men and women alike throughout the history of psychiatry, and those disparities persist today.
Hysteria is one example of a medical diagnosis which bears a long history as a “feminine” disorder, whether associated with biological features or with “feminine” psychology or personality. For hundred of years in Western Europe, hysteria was seen as an excess of emotion and a lack of self-control, that would mostly impact women. The diagnosis was used as a form of social labeling to discourage women from venturing outside of their role, that is a tool to take control over the increasing emancipation of women.
Another instance in which such disparities emerged is in the use of lobotomies, popularized in the 1940s to treat a variety of psychiatric diagnoses including insomnia, nervousness, and more. Studies have found that US asylums disproportionately lobotomized women in spite of the fact that men made up the majority of asylum patients.
Social Anxiety And Introversion
Authors of the 2012 study mentioned above emphasized that low extroversion seems to have a stronger association with depression than with anxiety. They also noted, however, that low extroversion may play a part in social anxiety.
explored the connection between social anxiety and personality traits in depth.
The study authors compared 265 people with social anxiety to 164 people without the condition, dividing those with social anxiety into three main groups:
- Cluster 1 contained people with high neuroticism and low extroversion.
- Cluster 2 contained people with low extraversion and high conscientiousness.
- Cluster 3 contained with high neuroticism and moderate to high extroversion, openness, and conscientiousness.
The results suggested people from cluster 1 tended to have more severe social anxiety symptoms, but only about a third of participants fit the stereotypical anxious introvert profile.
The highest overall levels of social anxiety appeared in cluster 3, the group with moderate to high extroversion, described by the researchers as anxious extroverts.
These findings suggest a complex relationship between personality and mental health symptoms and thats before you even begin to consider any external factors.
Recommended Reading: Understanding Depression In Your Spouse
Why Do Women Suffer More From Depression And Stress
As noted in a recent blog, women are twice as likely to experience major depression than men. They are also up to three times more apt to suffer from anxiety disorders or to attempt suicide. The reasons for these gender differences are not clear, and some believe such statistics are exaggerated because females are more sensitive and therefore more likely to report such symptoms. On the other hand, a variety of observations tend to confirm that these disparities are valid, such as the following half dozen.
1. Hormonal differences are usually cited as the major explanation. Compared to men, women experience much more fluctuation in hormone levels that are associated with symptoms of depression. In addition to premenstrual dysphoric disorder, up to 15% experience postpartum depression. Depression is so common during the menopause, that involutional melancholia was an established psychiatric diagnosis up until 1980. Women are also more apt to suffer from hypothyroidism, which is often associated with depression.
2. Women have a stronger genetic predisposition for depression than men based on identical and fraternal twin studies, as well as documented and detailed family history records.
4. Women live longer than men and extreme old age is often associated with bereavement, loneliness, poor physical health, and other factors that predispose to depression.
Paul J. Rosch, MD, FACP
Study Shows Men Just As Likely To Be Depressed As Women
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Depression can look very different in men and women. And many of its hallmarks rage, risk-taking, substance abuse and even workaholism can hide in plain sight.
Now researchers say that when these symptoms are factored into a diagnosis, the long-standing disparity between depression rates in men and women disappears.
That conclusion overturns long-accepted statistics indicating that, over their lifetimes, women are 70% more likely to have major depression than men. In fact, when its symptoms are properly recognized in men, major depression may be even more common in men than in women, according to a study published Wednesday by the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
The findings help unravel a mystery that has long puzzled mental health authorities: If men are so much less likely than women to be depressed, why are they four times more likely to commit suicide?
When it comes to depression in men, to some extent we have blinders on, said Dr. Andrew Leuchter, a psychiatrist who studies depression at UCLA. We have not been asking about and taking into account a range of symptoms that may be gender-specific.
Health policy researchers from the University of Michigan and Vanderbilt University set out to test the feasibility of two new checklists that might diagnose depression in men as well as women with greater accuracy.
The results of the analysis were striking.
Word choice matters, she said.
Also Check: Treatment For Postpartum Depression While Breastfeeding
Why Depression Is More Common In Women Than In Men
It has been widely documented that there are gender differences in depression prevalence, with women experiencing major depression more often than men. This risk exists independent of race or ethnicity.
One large-scale 2017 study found that these gender differences emerge starting at age 12, with girls and women being twice as likely as men to experience depression. Several risk factors have been studied that might account for gender differences in rates of depression.
Why Managers Are More Likely To Be Depressed
Youve taken the leap from front-line individual contributor to professional manager. How do you feel? Proud? Excited?
How about depressed?
The last emotion might strike you as odd, but its not unlikely. According to a new study, middle managers are the most likely people in an organization to suffer from depression. The study, led by Seth Prins, a doctoral student at Columbia Universitys Mailman School of Public Health, was recently published online in Sociology of Health & Illness. The researchers examined more than 20,000 full-time workers across a variety of roles. For their sample, they utilized 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey of Alcohol and Related Conditions , and narrowed that down to a set of 21,859 full-time employees. The researchers then segmented those individuals into four categories: owners, managers, supervisors, and workers.
Owners were defined as self-employed individuals who earned more than $71,500 . Managers were respondents who identified as an executive, administrative, or managerial role and possessed more than a 4-year bachelors degree. Supervisors likewise identified as executive, administrative, or managerial but did not possess a bachelor degree. . Lastly, workers were defined by various occupations in the NESRAC not equated with the above categories.
Further Reading
- Leadership and Managing PeopleBook24.95
And new managers might even find some cold comfort in this research. If your new job feels hard thats because it is.
Recommended Reading: Ways To Distract Yourself From Depression
Vegetarians Are More Likely To Be Depressed But Not For The Reason You Think
Vegetarians have around twice as many depressive episodes as meat-eaters, according to a new study.
The study, based on survey data from Brazil, chimes with earlier research that found higher rates of depression among those who forgo meat. However, the new study suggests that this link exists independent of nutritional intake.
It may seem straightforward to look at a link between a diet and specific health problems and assume that the former is causing the latter via some form of nutritional deficiency.
Yet the new analysis, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, took into account a wide range of nutritional factors, including total calorie intake, protein intake, micronutrient intake, and the level of food processing.
This suggests that the higher rates of depression among vegetarians are not caused by the nutritional content of their diet.
So what might explain the link between vegetarianism and depression? Is there some non-nutritional mechanism that makes the former cause the latter? Or is the relationship down to something else entirely?
First, it is possible that being depressed causes people to be more likely to become vegetarian rather than the other way around. The symptoms of depression can include rumination on negative thoughts, as well as feelings of guilt.
The depressed vegetarian, in this case, is not necessarily wrong to think this way.