A new study suggests that men also experience the same level of depression that women go through in terms of non-traditional symptoms.
Lisa Martin, lead author of the study from the University of Michigan, and her colleagues found out that one out of three both men and women both suffer from violence and sleep problems for both traditional and alternative symptoms of depression.
The researchers studied the data of 3,310 women and 2,382 men from the national mental health survey National Comorbidity Survey Replication.
Using a scale designed to identify the depression symptoms common among men, they discovered that 26.3 percent and 21.9 percent of the women met the criteria for depression. They also observed a small difference when they assessed the traditional and alternative symptoms, 33.3 percent for women and 30.6 percent for men. However, men showed higher rates of violence, substance abuse, and risk taking behavior compared to women.
The researchers admitted that will need further study to fully establish that the symptoms displayed by men were really related to depression.
Depression affects over 32 million of the U.S population. There were previous studies claiming that women are twice more vulnerable to depression than men regardless of the ethnicity. However, there were disputes about the validity of the earlier study because men are unlikely to admit their sadness to defend their masculinity. Another was that there were symptoms listed on the study were not applicable to men as men express it differently than women.
Men under emotional pain express it by anger, self-destructive behavior, self-distraction, overuse of alcohol or drugs, womanizing, gambling, and overworking. Women, on the other hand, express it by crying and showing sadness.
The researchers also aim to propose changes on the community surveys which the researchers consider “biased toward detecting symptoms that are more common in women.”
The study was published in the Aug. 28 issue of JAMA Psychiatry.