Truths about men, women and depression
Adam Lane Smith, Attachment Specialist w/ MA in Psych, in the US, recently took to Twitter to bust several myths and reveal many truths about how humans operate in general when it comes to mental health and feelings, as well as how they function in particular as men and women.
“I worked for many years as a licensed psychotherapist, and these are some of the harshest realities that people refuse to talk about,” he tweeted. Here are some shocking truths the expert revealed.
Male depression vs female depression
”Male depression and female depression often present very differently, and they also tend to heal differently. But most therapy modalities are really only geared to help women recover. Many can actually make men more depressed,” he shared.
According to John Hopkins Medicine, as we age, women are more likely to experience stress, sadness and sleep problems when they're depressed. On the other hand, men tend toward feelings like irritability and impulsive anger.
Men and power
”Men need to feel powerful to be mentally and emotionally healthy. Powerless men feel broken and afraid. Emasculated. To help a man feel better, you must help him feel powerful,” he wrote.
Researchers have also found that men may find it difficult to seek help in the first place “because culturally dominant forms of masculinity are characterized by emotional control and a lack of vulnerability, while depression is often associated with powerlessness and the uncontrolled expression of emotion,” noted a study published in the journal Social Science & Medicine.
Why men commit suicide?
”The male suicide rate is not about wanting to die. It’s about feeling powerless, hopeless, and helpless for way too long. To fix it, we have to make life more appealing than the peace of death. We have to give men power over their lives,” the Attachment Specialist tweeted.
Love vs. power
”Male depression is nearly always a result of learned helplessness, but health providers treat it like female depression and try to make men feel loved instead of powerful,” Lane Smith claimed.
Recovering from traumatic experiences
Tweeting about recovering from sexual assault, the expert said, ”Most young women who experience rape only recover when they accept that the rape was actually NOT PERSONAL, because the attacker was incapable of connecting with other humans did not view them or anyone else as a human and only as an object. Women can then stop blaming themselves.”
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