DEPRESSION: LET’S TALK

According to Springboard, depression can be defined as an illness characterised by persistent sadness and a loss of interest in activities that you normally enjoy, accompanied by an inability to carry out daily activities, for at least two weeks.

I would like to define depression as something that can happen to anyone, it is not a sign of weakness! Depression can affect men and women differently. While depression in women is often manifested by feelings of sadness and worthlessness, when depression occurs in men, it may be masked by unhealthy coping behaviour. For a number of reasons, male depression often goes undiagnosed and can have devastating consequences when it goes untreated. While male depression usually gets better with treatment, it is only those who seek help that get treated.

Last week Friday, I was invited to a debate at Swaziland Christian University, where psychology students deliberated on issues of depression. One of the speakers was Dumsani Mamba, who is the Programme Director at International Mental Health Resource Services (IMERSE). Dumsani shared very troubling statistics. According to the statistics; depression new cases in females in 2016 were 381, while follow ups stand at 3 529. In males, new cases in 2016 were 149, while follow ups were 1 244. These statistics clearly show us that there are more women who seek help when depressed than men.

The difference in REPORTED cases does not tell us anything about comparisons of depression in general (including unreported cases) and I will explain this shortly. Now here is the scary statistic – of all the new cases and follow up cases of depression for both men and women, suicide cases related to depression stand at 102 for men, and 23 for women.

One would expect a larger number for the women, based on logistics but it is not the case.
This can be due to many reasons, but one of them is patriarchy - a social system in which family systems or entire societies are organised around the idea of father-rule, where males are the primary authority figures. The idea that men are these supernatural beings has led to a phenomenon referred to as toxic masculinity, which is a critique of the way society has created men to be dominant, aggressive (sexually and otherwise), and unemotional, both collectively and as individuals. Toxic masculinity is closely related to hegemonic masculinity and patriarchy. This is the reason why, when men are faced with situations that can lead to depression, they do not seek help, which explains why new cases and follow-up cases of depression for men are much lower than that of women.

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