The Gender Differences of Depression for Men and Women

It's certainly a wild exaggeration that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but the point that men and women are different holds true in a variety of ways. Sports and shopping quickly come to mind for most of us, and the way each is connected to babies on a physical and emotional level couldn't be farther apart. The list goes on but are there differences in mental disorders for things like depression?

As it turns out, there are a lot of research studies that show men and women have quite a few gender differences when it comes to depression. Several studies in the 80s and 90s have shown that women are twice as likely as men to suffer from depression.

The differences between the sexes relating to depression also show that there are specific reasons for the variations as well as the way in which each gender deals with depression. For example, many women experience post-partum depression related to hormones, among other things, while only about 1 in 10 new fathers suffer from post-partum depression.

The suicide rate for men is four times that of women, representing one of the largest differences as illustrated in the infographic below.

However, the biggest gender differences related to depression are the ways in which men and women deal with the problem. Women more often than men feel sad, helpless, sleep more and eat more.

Men on the other hand, are more aggressive in dealing with depression, and tend to become angry, turn to drugs and alcohol, and actually sleep less. For some people, it's difficult to tell if depression leads to drug or alcohol abuse, or if the substance abuse leads to depression. Either way, the two go hand in hand, and the numbers are much higher for men than for women.

Both men and women sometimes attempt suicide, but women usually fail while men are more successful.

The inforgraphic below from About Depression Facts breaks it all down into easy to read sections to get the full scoop.

Learning about depression and some of these differences may help people understand they should seek help if they're having trouble, before they experience more serious problems.

Because depression is treatable with medication, counseling, and/or psychotherapy, there's no reason for anybody to suffer through it alone or without help.