Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Men and Depression Essay

Essay on Depression and Men

In the last couple of decades depression became a widely discussed topic within public and medics. Such raise in the level of people suffering from depression and depression related illnesses can be explained by many factors. First of all, it is so because the modern world puts one in front of many problems and hardships that were unknown to the previous generations. Today people are continuously under pressure to earn money, the amount that exceeds the sufficient one, working long hours, moreover, the way people build their relationships has also changed, thus it tends to be harder and harder to find a loving and honest partners that leads to dissatisfaction and depression. The second reason for this raise is that “being depressed” and “treating the depression” turned into some kind of fashion.

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One may say that depression is a lot of weak women. However, as I will show in my paper, depression is an illness that affects both men and women. Moreover, it can even be said that men and women are equally affected by this ailment. Though, as men tend to be more self cautious and find it very hard and even mortifying to share their feelings, the medics have much bigger record of women’s depressions. A very interesting thing is that when it comes to depressions men are even more sensitive than women. This is due to the fact that men, since early ages, are entitled to a particular position in the society and family, and failing to fulfill what is required from them at these positions can be intolerable for them (Cochran, Rabinowitz, 2000, 5-6).

The symptoms of depression within men are the same as the regular depression symptoms, though with some peculiar traces. These symptoms include feeling sad or unhappy, having high levels of anxiety and low energy, having troubles to concentrate, feeling worthless and losing interest in the every day activities and people. The special men-depression symptoms are loss of weight, sex drive, appetite, descend in personal hygiene and thoughts of suicide (Polak, 1998, p. 66).

Men tend to cope with depression rather different from women. Men may be more willing to admit exhaustion, irritability, loss of interest in work or hobbies, and sleep disturbances rather than feelings of grief, insignificance, and excessive guilt. This way of thinking tends to be rather unhelpful. However, this is the nature of men and it seems inappropriate and humiliating for them to admit that they need professional help and require somebody’s support and assistance to straighten out the life. Those men who manage to overcome this fear may be treated successfully with antidepressant medication, psychotherapy, or a combination of both (Men and Depression, 2005).

In my opinion, there have to be done many changes in order to assist men that are depressed. It should be popularized that there is nothing embarrassing and humiliating for men in having a depression and treating it.  Expectantly, such a change will lower the level of suicide within men and save marriages that may be ruined because of male depression.

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