Personality : Finding Depression in Sex Difference

When looking into depression, we often see it hand in hand with personality types, gender differences and the FFM. Let's look into how gender differences play out depression and what possible outcomes could arise.

Studies has shown that there is no differences in depression at childhood. Children is well adjusted and unable to understand depression as their worldviews are simple and abstract. However, after puberty, woman show two to three times depression rate than man (Hoyenga & Hoyenga, 1993). This is probably due to the fact, that women in gender roles expectation in many cultures are expected to behave in an acceptable manner and inability to project emotional dissatisfaction physically causes onsets of depression.
It is also founded that roughly 25% of women have at least on depressive episode in their lifetime compared to only 10% of men in their lifetime.
Largest differences in depression shows between ages 18 – 44. After that both sexes starts to converge and see a lesser depression rate.


Below is a table that shows how different gender cope and act out in a depressive state.

Woman	Man
Excessive eating	Avoid eating
Cry	Aggressive behaviour
Likely, seek treatment	Men simply to miss work
Nervous activity	Inactivity
Hurt Feelings, decline self-esteem	Socially withdrawn, experience aches and pains
Suicide attempts “non-fatal”	Suicide “successfully”

By having an idea on how depression affects different genders, we can see tell tale signs of depression and perhaps help our friends or family to cope with such situation when it arises.