Depression is a common issue among men.
In fact it’s more common than you might think.
One reason is that recognizing depression in men is never easy. Men often suppress their feelings. They hide them or even mask them with other behaviors. However, there are signs that might indicate you are someone you love is struggling with depression. These signs include asad mood, fatigue, lack of concentration, irritability loss of interest in hobbies and even work as well as sleep disturbance.
There are also some often overlooked symptoms, making identifying depression in men difficult.
These include anger, physical pain and reckless behavior. The depressed male might seems quick to anger or appear irritable. They might also express their depression through physical pain or discomfort. In addition, they might engage in maladaptive behaviors like substance abuse, drinking or excessive work as a way cope with their depression.
Men Under Report DEPRESSIVE Symptoms
Studies show that men under report their symptoms of depression. This often leads to depressive symptoms getting worse because these men do not seek effective treatment such as psychotherapy. There are several factors that lead to under reporting of depression in men:
- Inability to recognize symptoms of depression.
- Symptoms are not always obvious and vary from a person to the next.
- Ability to suppress feelings.
- Attributing depression to failures and career disappointments.
- Self-medicating with drugs and alcohol.
- Attributing symptoms to weakness.
Therapy and Depression Recovery in Men
In sum, therapy is a highly effective solution for treating depression in men. Unlike medications, therapy has little to no side effects. In fact, we know from the research that therapy is as effective as medication for treating depression. Unlike medication, therapy often resolves the core issues that are causing the depression. In some cases therapy and medication are required to treat complicated symptoms.
At Denver Men’s Therapy we specialize in working with male depression. Our unique approach uses the strengths all men have within them in combination with evidence based treatments to resolve depression.
