Further on Men's Depression

As a follow-up to my previous post (Don't do it), which was inspired by Charlie Martin's article Bob Owens' Suicide, Dr. Helen Smith ("The InstaWife") has a related piece up, Men's Depression is Different | Dr. Helen.

When I heard about Bob Owens, I was heartbroken. Because as a psychologist, I know how much pain this man must have felt to have killed himself when he had two beautiful daughters. I have listened to men talk about these painful feelings for years, and I know that there is a good chance that some men will decide to do something differently than take their own life in the end. Some will not. What makes the difference? Someone who notices, cares and combats the distorted thoughts with the right words, therapy or both. Sometimes a difference can be made by changing an aspect of a person's life in one area or helping others to understand what a depressed boy or man looks like, or feels like.

One client I had was a young man who was extremely depressed. His tests showed his depression at over the 90th percentile but the teachers at his school had no idea. They thought that depressed people sat home and ate chocolate or seemed sad, not irritable and ill-natured like this kid. I explained to them the symptoms of male depression and it helped them understand that irritability, anger and defensiveness were part of this kids's depression. Once they understood what to watch for in this teen, we were able to work as a team with the school, his family and peers to help him to decrease his depression which in turn led to less anger and irritability and more success in school and at home.

Middle-aged and older men have a different set of problems but the solution is still the same: we must understand that men in our society get depressed, that the symptoms are often different than women's and that these men are deserving of our compassion, care, and medical intervention that needs to be tailored to men's issues and concerns and provided in ways that they can accept.

(Emphasis added.)

Look, just because you haven't won fame and fortune or medals doesn't mean you're a failure.

But in a society that hands out trophies for simply showing up, it can seem like it.

Worse, the values that we used to accept without hardly thinking are increasingly under attack. A man's word is his bond, a mans home is his castle...

Speak your mind, say your piece in disagreement with the Progressive narrative and riots break out.

Hell, the mere presence of a man, especially a middle aged white man, is enough to cause social justice warriors to start shrieking like air raid sirens. (Is "air raid sirens" a triggering phrase?)

 I'll close with this break down of suicide stats in Dr. Helen's article:

We say that there is a suicide crisis in our country but what we really need to address more in depth is male suicide. Men are 4-5 times more likely to take their lives. At the time I wrote my book, Men on Strike, the latest suicide statistics showed that of the 38,364 people who killed themselves in 2010, 30,277 were men. This is unacceptable. Bob Owens death is unacceptable. And face it, our biased, sexist society overlooks men's suicides because it is mainly white men who kill themselves. Some barbaric people even celebrate this fact.