Men and Depression: What to Watch For
One of the more memorable things I learned when I was studying psychology in college was about men and depression, and how males can express depression in ways that conceal from others the fact that they suffer from the disorder at all. An important thing to remember about men is that we often have a difficult time expressing our emotions.
This stems from generations of men that have been told that to do so is weak, or a character trait considered to be more feminine in nature. Consequently, a lot of men do not show the emotion of sadness by crying or appearing to be down. One of the things I learned about men and depression is that males often express their feelings of depression in the form of anger.
What some people may mistake as a hot head can often be symptomatic of a much deeper issue in that the person is simply depressed and does not know how to express that to others. The difficult thing with this is that anger is an emotion as well, and just because somebody is angry does not necessarily mean that he is depressed. I think the best way to tell the difference is to determine whether or not that person is angry all of the time. Another way that men will express feelings of depression is by becoming withdrawn or non-communicative.
With men and depression, we typically don’t want to burden our families with our problems, so we will shut ourselves off from the rest of the world and try to resolve the issue ourselves. The problem with this is that it is never good to internalize your feelings and try to hide them from your loved ones, because they can manifest themselves in other destructive behaviors, such as alcohol consumption, rage, or something else that can harm the depressed person or others. Drinking too much can also be a sign of depression in men, because it is a way to temporarily escape from the underlying causes of depression. Again, having a few drinks in the evening does not necessarily constitute depression, but if done excessively, there may be a problem.
With men and depression, it is often more difficult to determine whether or not they are depressed because they won’t tell you what is bothering them. Sometimes they will even act as though everything is fine when it is obviously not.
The most important thing to remember with men and depression is that just because males do not always express symptoms of the disorder in a way that most of us think is typical does not make their problems any less real or their depression any less painful.
