Among the myriad differences between men and women is the manner in which they are influenced by and respond to depression. From environmental to social and cultural to chemical, the divergent factors that categorize depression as having separate indicators and consequences.
Among other methods, organizational therapy employs the use of clarification between people and events in order to ascertain a basis of the depression; as a means by which to establish a relationship between the issues and the individuals who bring them to light, organizational therapy is a way to correlate the association between “life cycle events and the onset of problems” (Stanton, 1992, p. 331). As well, the fact that depression manifests itself differently between men and women draws upon research for such conclusions, which clearly demonstrate the physical variances.
Chemical imbalance in the brain has long been thought to be the cause for depression. But researchers at Washington University have discovered possible structural abnormalities in the brain as well. The prefrontal cortex has been found to be smaller in the brains of the depressed person. In fact, depressed patients have been found to have a drastically smaller volume of a section of the left PFC that sits behind the bridge of the nose.
In some cases this section is up to forty percent smaller in depressed persons. When researchers looked into what might cause this shrinkage, it was found that it could be the result of having loss of glia, which are small cells that do important or even critical housekeeping of the brain. The glia might also play a part in the development of serontonin in the system. Additionally, it may be that a defect in the neural development of the prefrontal cortex could be the initial abnormality in depression.
“People who suffer from either major depression or manic depression and who also have family members with these mood disturbances display strikingly low numbers of glial cells–but not neurons–in a brain area implicated in emotional behavior and stress responses” (Anonymous, 1998, p. 296). The entire subject of depression and gender is one that is widely misunderstood by the public. Depression is often thought of as simply a sad mood, or as a problem that people should be able to ‘snap out of”; on the contrary, depression is now known to be a physical malady.
Antidepressant medication is sometimes compared to being a mood elevator that it definitely is not. The medication only serves to remove the bleakness or hopelessness that may be felt by the patient in his or her illness. And while the physical needs may be met by an antidepressant medication in most cases, the truth is that the whole body is affected by depression in significantly divergent ways depending upon gender.
John Gray understands the vast separation between the male and female gender. His best-selling book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, has helped countless people to overcome the inherent friction that exists between men and women due to their uniquely opposite characteristics. However, emotional relationships do not represent the only differing aspect between the genders, inasmuch as virtually everything about the male/female mind hinges upon contrary viewpoints. Depression is among this contrary.
Research has shown the incidence of this difference to begin in childhood; without realizing it, parents address their male children differently than they do their female counterparts, which serves to establish a significant disparity in the manner each gender ultimately views his or her social and emotional environment. Experts in the field of child development have consistently found that this incongruous approach parents have toward their children begins at quite a young age, insofar as the mother and father — individually as well as collectively — “communicate one way to baby girls and a different way to baby boys” (Anonymous, 1996, p. PG).
As the child grows older and is continually addressed in a contrary fashion, this helps to greatly influence how that particular child develops lifelong impressions. “Now, just how this difference between boys and girls evolves is a nature-nurture contest. Part of the reason why parents talk differently to girls than boys… is the tendency to adhere to social conventions and gender stereotyping. But the other part… is that the biology of a baby boy or baby girl may propel parents toward gender biasing from birth” (Anonymous, 1996, p.PG).
The social aspects of being either male or female also play an integral role in how depression manifests itself in each respective gender. For example, men and women handle work-related stress in significantly different ways, inasmuch as women become more outwardly and emotionally distressed, while men often internalize their dissatisfaction. As an antagonist for depression, Dugan et al (1996) notes that “occupational stress and its causes and effects have been areas of research interest for many years” (p.46).
Yet another example is that a gender-based mentality has been found when examining the fear of crime and the measurement of crime against particular gender. While a crime may be the same, it affects each gender differently. This is based on societal nuances as well as the different fear of crime phenomena as interpreted by each gender. In looking carefully at the combined literature on fear of crime and risk of victimization, one is left with a curious gap in this consideration.
Men, by and large, continue to report significantly less fear of crime than women do. Yet it has been found that in most instances while men report physical assaults to police and seek emergency medical attention for injury, there is almost never a sense of how they feel about these experiences of assault. Nor do is there an understanding about how different men, with their varying relationships to and engagement with hegemonic masculinity and with the state, respond to violent victimization (Stanko, 1993).
In other words, while men do report crimes conducted against themselves, rarely do they give more than the facts relating to the crime. They do not go into detail involving their feelings about the crime; however, neither do the law enforcement agencies tend to request information regarding such. With the instance of many men who might be perceived to be gay or are in fact homosexual, they prefer to not release information regarding inner feelings inasmuch as this tends to mark them as weaker. This is an unfortunate causation of society’s outlook on gender related factors.