Women are More Likely to Suffer Depression than Men
Depression: the world’s most common mental disorder. Over 300 million people worldwide suffer from it. Depression as the highest incidence of mental illness, at its worst, it can be fatal…
In recent years, depression has gradually become a hot topic worldwide. There are various kinds of reasons that can result in depression- academic pressure, school bullying, occupational stress, etc. Sometimes people might fall into depression even because of a trivial thing, but maybe it’s a big thing for them. No doubt, depression surrounds us. I’m not saying that all of us are covered by depression. Surely we all have a friend with depression. You may not know that people who often smile may also be experiencing great pain and suffering. That’s just a sad truth.
According to research, women are about twice as likely as men to suffer depression. Female depression has become a separate topic and there are lots of studies on female depression. So why is depression more prevalent in women? Here I want to divide the reasons into three parts: physiological, psychological and social factors.
Physiological factors
You might have previously heard about serotonin which is an important brain chemical that helps boost mood and prevent depression. According to a study on differences between males and females in rates of serotonin synthesis in the brain, male brains contain more serotonin than female brains. For example, after a couple fight before bed, the husband falls asleep quickly while the wife stays angry all night. Therefore, it can be inferred that a boost in serotonin will raise people’s happiness.
Meanwhile, there are many physiological phenomena that are specific to women such as periods, antepartum depression, postpartum depression and climacteric and so on. During these periods, women tend to be agitated and panicked. My mom once told me that when she was pregnant with her first child, she was always worried that she would miscarry, also accompanied with various anxieties such as “my baby will have a birth defect”, “I’ll never lose the baby weight”, “I won’t make it to the hospital in time”, “I’m not going to be a good mom”, etc. This is actually because estrogen levels become too low. According to the study, estrogen deficiency may cause a decline in serotonin that contributes to mood swings or depression.
Psychological factors
Here, I have to mention the learned helplessness, which is a term introduced by Martin Seligman. Learned helplessness is the act of being pushed around due to repeated failure or punishment. For example, students who often fail in an exam, as time passes, will lose confidence in learning and this could even lead to a fatigue for learning. The other term, called ‘Depressive Explanatory Style’, was proposed by Lynn Abramson and colleagues. Depressive explanatory style is “a habitual tendency to attribute negative events to causes that are stable, global and internal”. For example, it refers to people who are accustomed to attributing mistakes to themselves, like the person who always says, ‘it’s my fault’.
Women are more ruminative and emotional than men. That is to say, they tend to think about things more and overthink what has happened. Writing this here, I feel like i’m writing about myself… I’m exactly the person who overthinks something that has already happened. I know that it’s unnecessary and impossible to verify but I’ll keep thinking about it anyway. This will cause me to fall into a bad mood. I can’t stop thinking whether something I did was stupid or if there were a lot of people laughing at me, and if they were still talking about me behind my back.
Social factors
In social life, the inequality between men and women tends to bring a lot of hurt to women. Imagine that, not only do women have to go work just like men, but they may also be expected to bear the brunt of bringing up children, caring for older relatives, and putting up with sexism. Even if a woman does well at her job, she will still be questioned occasionally. And still in the workplace, women are recognised as incompetent.
Women are more frequently the victims of rape and sexual assault than men. Especially for young children who experience sexual violence, the damage can be devastating. There are too many reports of childhood sexual assaults happening in schools. Girls are not safe even when they grow up, quite simply because women are often physically weaker than men. When a man wants to rape a woman, the woman is often unable to resist. This kind of disaster happened to women tend to result in a ruin. The rate of falling into depression is high.
I would like to appeal to everyone to pay more attention to people with depression, no matter their gender. We should respect them, understand them and let them feel the warmth of the society.
