Bottling things up: why don’t men talk about depression?

What women want and what men think women want are two quite different things. That’s according to recent research in the UK which I think would also apply here.

What women want in a man are honesty, a good sense of humour, care and compassion. Men tend to put confidence, physical attractiveness and financial dependability at the top of the list of what they think is required of them.

This plays through into everyday life. More men than women feel under pressure to be the main earner in the family. That’s hardly surprising but this demonstrates how a man can feel under pressure when the woman earns more or when he knows that his earning prospects are relatively low.

Men strongly identify themselves as workers. About one in four said he would feel he was less of a person if he lost his job, whereas fewer than one in five women felt that way. We live in an era in which permanent and pensionable jobs are less and less the norm, so this identification of men with the job has serious implications for our well-being.

Simple act

I mention above that men think that what is wanted of them are confidence, physical attractiveness and financial dependability. About a quarter of men think they are not sufficiently attractive physically while a quarter also feel that they lack confidence. One in five men feels he cannot provide financial dependability.

We know that talking to somebody when you’re feeling down is generally a good idea and that keeping everything bottled up is a bad idea. Sometimes the simple act of talking to somebody about your problems lifts the weight off your shoulders, a weight that could lead to self-harming if you tried to keep it to yourself.

There is only a 50 per cent chance that a man who feels very depressed will talk to somebody else about it. For women there is a 67 per cent chance. Their GP is the first person men and women are likely to talk to.

This has implications for mental health in a situation in which we are facing a shortage of GPs, especially in more sparsely populated parts of the country.

I think the GP is often seen as a friendly face, as somebody who is on your side and to whom it’s safe to talk about things that you won’t tell anybody else. The absence of that friendly face could, in extreme cases, be fatal.

There are, of course, alternatives to the GP but men are less likely than women to confide in friends or family members. After the GP they are most likely to confide in the partner about mental health issues but even there the percentage is low: fewer than one man in five does so.

In fact as many men (17 per cent) are willing to confide in a therapist as in a partner which is an astonishing figure.

Is this is why it sometimes comes out of the blue to the partner when a man takes his own life? And among those who do not take their own lives I wonder how much silent suffering is going on?

Sign of weakness

If men talk to each other about work, sport and so on, one can see how this would make it difficult to introduce the topic of depression. But what is going on with the conversations between men and their partners that prevents this sharing from taking place? I don’t know the answer but something is not quite right. Perhaps men dread showing any sign of weakness or perhaps women don’t want to see signs of weakness.

To make matters worse, women are somewhat more likely to confide in a therapist than in their partner. This is further evidence that there is something wrong with the conversations between men and women.

While about half of men in the UK survey had felt very depressed at some stage, that percentage rises to more than 60 per cent among gay men and to 67 per cent among men in their mid-20s to mid-30s.

I found that figure for depression among gay men very interesting. It is easy to get the impression from television that people will stand around and applaud if you’re a gay man. That’s just nonsense.

For at least part of their lives at any rate, gay men – and gay women too, I expect – can go through a period when their sexuality isolates them. This is either because they themselves have not yet come to terms with it or because people who are important to them have not done so. That’s leaving aside the issue of bullying.

That about two-thirds of men in their mid-20s to mid-30s have felt very depressed at some stage is important from a public health viewpoint. We tend to focus, and with good reason, on the mental health problems of younger men but we must not ignore that slightly older group of men who in many cases have not yet learned how to navigate their way through emotional issues.

The survey jointly carried out by the Campaign against Living Miserably (Calm) and the Huffington Post in the UK. You can find more details on the Calm website: http://bit.ly/calmresearch

Padraig O'Morain is accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness for Worriers. His daily mindfulness reminder is free by email

Email: pomorain@yahoo.com. Twitter: @PadraigOMorain