The National Health Association estimates that any one year, 12 million women are clinically depressed. That’s about twice the number of men. Moreover, women typically experience these and other symptoms more acutely than men.
Women are especially susceptible to specific conditions such as seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Lack of wintertime sunshine sends them into a depression.
Atypical depression is also relatively common in women. Instead of sleeplessness and no appetite, the atypically depressed sleep all the time and eat ravenously, especially carbohydrates. Weight gain can also exacerbate this downward spiral.
Depression Symptoms In Women
- out of energy
- out of touch with things that they used to enjoy
- overwhelming guilt
- feelings of hopelessness, worthless
- suicidal thoughts
- sleeping out of balance
- excessive appetite
- lack of appetite
Woman Specific Causes Of Depression
PMS
As much as females may deny moments (sometimes days) of irrationality, only to find that all is well on the other side of the menstrual period, PMS, or Premenstrual Syndrome, has a lot to do with depression. It can be very depressing to have to face a period as a madwoman for three days just because your period is on the way. It comes 500 times in a lifetime, a bleak proposition if you suffer every month.
Reproductive Issues
The issues around reproduction in a woman’s life are very deep and different from a man’s. The ability to conceive, just as much as the frantic desire not to conceive, are elements in a delicate dance which plays on a woman’s psyche. Depression is a likely result of failure to conceive and bring offspring to term. In the event a woman is successful in conceiving, she faces the ‘baby blues’ after birth and the potential for severe, clinical postpartum depression.
Perimenopause and Menopause
In former days, there was such a mythology built up around these natural processes that many women feared. Looking ahead to the event is depressing for many women, who worry about aging.
Women tend to brood on their troubles, something that has been shown to prolong depression. Men get active to shake depression, which is good advice.
The best way to relieve oneself of depression is to get busy doing something, anything so long as it doesn’t involve resting on the couch. Just walking around the neighborhood in the evening has great positive and beneficial effects. Eating with more awareness of what you are eating will change you over time. All of the healthy behaviors a depressed person adopts will have a healthy impact; in time, the depression will lift. A person may need professional help or medication, but of all the things a person could do to improve his or her disposition, a walk around the block is top of the list.
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