Depression: Are Women Sadder Than Men?

May is National Mental Health Awareness Month, reminding us all to keep our stress in check, and deal with signs of depression. But is all of that women’s work? This Pristiq commercial seems to say so. The prescription antidepressant advertisement features a mom-type watching her family play while she repeatedly winds up a sad toy lady, then lets it crawl across the picnic table.

“I feel like I have to wind myself up to get out of bed, and well, I have to keep winding myself up to deal with the sadness, the loss of interest, the trouble concentrating, the lack of energy,” the woman explains. By the end of the dreadful commercial, we get the idea: Mom used to be a gloomy automaton of a woman. And now, thanks to Pristiq, she’s not.

Anyone who has been through a major depression knows that the illness isn’t child’s play, and emerging out of a black hole isn’t just the work of suburban soccer moms. Why, then, is depression looked at as a woman’s disease? It may be as simple as the power of advertising. Women as consumers – especially when it comes to their health – are more responsive to advertisements.

“Women are more likely to seek help if they’re depressed,” says Dr. Dennis Lin, a psychiatrist who treats both men and women for clinical depression at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. He notes that relationship difficulties appear to be the main trigger for women’s malaise, while men tend to get especially blue over their jobs, finances, and good old existential sense of identity.

The National Center for Health Statistics reports that depression strikes one in four women and one of every eight men during their lifetimes, but these numbers are only based on reported cases who’ve received treatment through the mental health care system. “Whether the number is double that of men because men hide their depression and do not seek professional help is a matter of speculation,” notes Susan Polis Schutz, a mental health advocate whose documentary The Misunderstood Epidemic: Depression will air on PBS in May for National Mental Health Awareness Month.

Even so, many experts argue that biology is a factor in developing depression. According to the Mayo Clinic, girls and boys before puberty experience depression at the same rate. It’s not until the hormones start raging that women are at a higher risk because of their production of the mood-fluctuating sex hormones estrogen and progesterone.

“A woman’s limbic system in the brain (the area of the temporal lobe that is responsible for emotion) is actually different – it is hardwired to go into a worry loop,” explains Debbie Mandel, author of Addicted to Stress: A Woman’s 7-Step Program to Reclaim Joy and Spontaneity in Life. The combination of endless worry and an endless to-do list is a surefire recipe for a major case of the blues, says Mandel.

Susan Shapiro Barash, a gender studies professor at Marymount Manhattan College agrees. “Women are expected to be young-looking and beautiful, successful as career women, friends and mothers. They can get overwhelmed and feel depressed, all the while presenting as happy and content,” she says. This could be why depression often manifests as extreme anxiety for many women.

Still, data on suicide rates in this U.S. have long pointed out that men are more likely to take their own lives. According to statistics collected by the Men’s Health Network in Washington, D.C., men are at least five times more likely to commit suicide than women – especially as they age – which may very well mean that men resist treatment, are less equipped to recognize symptoms of their depression, or perhaps even enter the wrong kind of treatment.

Psychologist and author Dr. David Eigen notes that men usually handle depression by focusing on a single task, even to point of obsession. Tasks can be work, going to the gym, or in some cases, more troublesome activities, like those that landed Tiger Woods and Jesse James on the evening news. Dr. Eigen sees these celebrities’ recent sex-ploits as typical examples of male depressive behavior, who cope by “stuffing it in.” Woods and James have received treatment for sex addiction, but that’s not getting to the underlying problem, explains Dr. Eigen. It’s depression.