Depression And The Social Group

Depression is the most common mental health disorder; it affects over 17 million American adults each year. Depression is a mood disorder characterized by at least four symptoms such as changes in sleep, appetite, weight, and psychomotor activity; decreased energy, feelings of worthlessness or guilt; difficulty thinking, concentrating, or making decisions; or recurrent thoughts of death or suicidal ideation, thoughts or attempts. “Women are approximately two times more likely than men to suffer from major depression” (Research Agenda for Psychosocial and Behavioral Factors in Women’s Health, 1996) and it has been called the most significant mental health risk for women. Women are more likely to suffer from depression during marriage

Men and women have different levels of risks of getting mental illnesses such as alcohol dependency. This is “more than twice as high in men than women. In developed countries, approximately 1 in 5 men and 1 in 12 women develop alcohol dependence during their lives” WHO 2015. This clearly shows that men and women have different risks when it comes to health and illness. Men are also twice as likely to have personality disorders, but women are more likely to have anxiety and depression than men are. Women have more accounts of sexual harassment and rape and this has a knock on effect to the amount of people with depression.

Although depression is more pronounced in females, men have a higher rate of feeling angry and irritable , which can make it harder to recognize depression in men (American Psychological Association Task Force, 2010).The reason women are much more likely to suffer from depression can be linked to a number of sociological factors such as divorce, domestic inequality, the sexualisation of females, and the gender wage gap experienced by women. Understanding the determinants of depression among Canadian women is an important problem to investigate because it is linked to suicide (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 2012), lower GPAs, and lower political efficacy (Ro*co Films Educational,

According to the World Mental Health Survey Initiative (2011), woman in the United States are six times more likely than a man in China to have experienced a depressive episode. The report concluded that

The female population makes up the other half of the entire human race, how depression affects them should not be glazed over. He touches on the topic very briefly, and makes valid points but not enough to capture all of the knowledge. “And urban North American women, the most affluent demographic of the study, were the most likely to experience depression” (Junger, 20). While he does touch on the topic, this is one of the few quotes that focuses on women and depression in North America, not even regarding that this applies to women in most societies as well. Kastrup wrote an article called Cultural Aspects of Depression: “It is well documented that women run a greater risk in most cultures: overall, women have a 1.5-2 times greater risk of suffering from depression compared with men. In the Cross-National Collaborative Group, women in all countries had a higher prevalence with a female:male ratio varying from 1.6 in Lebanon to 3.1 in West Germany.” Again, Junger did include a brief mention of women, but narrowed it down to North American women, when it clearly expands to other

Women are diagnosed with depression twice as much as men. Often stereotyped as being more emotional than men, women are thus more vulnerable to depression. Emotions are taught and influenced and develop early on in life. The definition of depression varies with common factors in all being consist of time, severity of the emotion being felt/expressed along with consistency. A valid definition of depression would be: a feeling of hopelessness and/or sadness or little self worth. This is shown with a lack of interest in everyday activities and/or relationships and is consistent for several or more weeks. There have also been studies done of seasonal depression in certain areas.

.Depression is one of the psychological disorders that influence 15-25 % of adults in United States every year. Women are twice as likely as men to experience symptoms of depression. In women, most common period of occurrence of depression is between 18-44 years and this happens to be the prime childbearing years. Women who are at risk for depression are very vulnerable during pregnancy and after child birth because of hormonal fluctuations. Postpartum depression is a clinical term associated with a major depressive episode associated with childbirth.

It has been discovered that women are suffering more than men with the psychological disorders such as depression. There are many reasons behind it such as interpersonal violence. There are many intervention methods that have been introduced to manage this issue. One approach is to target the symptoms and biological factors that cause depression. The outside environment of any person, along with intensity of circumstances and incidents play a crucial role in determining mental health. It is necessary to investigate how an

Men and women are biologically similar in regards to the hormones and chemicals involved with depression. However socially, each gender encounters different social afflictions that can often lead them into depressive states. In this essay, we will explore the common struggles that each gender experiences and how these realities effect their contrasting developments of depression.

Women experience depression at twice the rate of men. Gender differences emerge first at puberty and occur mainly in the common mental disorders such as depression, anxiety among others. These disorders, in which women predominate, affect approximately 1 in 3 people. The frequency of major depression in adults is estimated to be 7 to 12 percent in men and 20 to 25 percent in women in a community and this constitutes a serious public health problem (NIMH, 2006). Several and variable factors in women contribute to depression, such as genetic, hormonal, developmental, reproductive, and other biological differences like premenstrual syndrome, childbirth, infertility and menopause. Factors associated to social issues may lead to depression

Depression and anxiety is vastly dominated with women as to men due to the life changing factorsin the past that women have been through (Robinson, 2006). Depression is seen as a form of mental illness that are generally suffered by women. According to (National Institute For Clinical Excellence, 2003) 1 in every 4 woman are being omitted in hospital because of depression

Depression is a disabling mental disorder that is related to mood and characterized by persistent feeling of sadness, poor sleep and suicidal ideation in severe forms. As a topical issue, emphasis is often reserved for those with evident symptoms, with little emphasis on vulnerability. For women, the nature of sex hormone production makes them particularly vulnerable as they grow older and by the age of forty five to sixty years, depressive symptoms are quite common and they are closely related to menopausal symptoms and the quality of spousal relationship. In some population, more than three quarters of women in midlife have depressive symptoms, with almost half of these women having moderate to severe symptoms. These observations may appear frightening, but they should motivate a peculiar interest in looking inwards and asking the inevitable question; am I vulnerable to depression. Every is as long as we are human, but gender plays an important role in vulnerability to depression and women are particularly vulnerable because of the sudden drop in sex hormone production with advancing age. The dominant female hormone, Estrogen is vital to the regulation of substances that control human affect such as Serotonin. After forty years, there is a huge decline in the function of the ovaries, the main site for Estrogen production. This decline represents a normal physiological aging of the ovaries as the eggs within it become exhausted. The precipitate fall in hormone levels are

Retrospective study conducted on women with bipolar disorder showed that women experienced intense mood symptoms during menopausal transition (Ellen, 1996). A study by Dalal and Agwaral (2015) found that 20% women who had never experienced depression during their life become depressed at one point during menopause. Whereas it is difficult to isolate the effect of age on the occurrence of depression among menopaused women, many studies on mood during menopause reveal increased incidence of depression during peri-menopause and it eventually decreases in later postmenopausal years (Dalal & Agwarl, 2015). A study conducted by Harvard Study of Moods and Cycles selected premenopausal women aged between 36 and 44 years without a history

According to Smith (2013), depression can be described as a low mood and unwillingness to undertake activities due to mental and physical exhaustion. This is common to people who engage in demanding activities that require high concentration and long working hours. Eventually, it leads to poor health, strained social connections as well as low performance and engagement. Notably, the impacts and rate of depression development vary significantly between the genders. In fact, Legato & Tucker (2005) argues that women are more prone to experience depression in comparison to men considering they experience hormonal fluctuations. This is a gap is even more pronounced in case the level of stressors is high in certain environment such as working places. Moreover, women are likely to multitask and it requires concentration and devotion to duties. Ultimately, this causes job burnout which is a major cause of depression among women. Furthermore, there are noted cases of gender discrimination in the workplace and it is often directed to women; therefore, in the process of working to attain freedom in a male dominated society, it increases risks of developing depression due to unreasonable demands.

Although men and women experience same symptoms, women may show some other signs like atypical depression in which they tend to eat more, sleep excessively and gain weight. Seasonal affective disorder (low sunlight in winters makes females depressed) is another symptom. Various biological, psychological and social factors are associated with the experience of melancholy in women, such as infertility, pregnancy, premenstrual problems, postpartum depression, menopause, focus on negative feelings, marital problems, discrimination at workplace etc.