I felt shame when I wrote a few weeks ago in these pages about recently being tumbled into a year-long depression and now I feel the shame again, but I will go ahead and write anyway because I feel I have to, until the stigma has been defeated. That day is still a long way off.
I had dinner once with a famous agony aunt who laughed gleefully about all the meds she took for depression. She was utterly uninhibited about it, and I admired her greatly. She urged me not to be ashamed of my disability – for that is what it is – and she was right. But it isn’t easy.
The source of my feelings is mainly, I think, societal. To have troubles in the mind is considered to be in a different category to troubles in the body. It is to be on the spectrum of “crazy” or “weak”. Weakness seems more allowable for women since men have in the past constructed a (ridiculous) stereotype of women being fragile creatures. Nevertheless, such negative stereotyping can, ironically, have fringe benefits, just as childbirth and the oppression women have historically suffered have bonded them in a way that most men have denied themselves. “The sisterhood” is not an empty expression.Part of this stigma is thus attached to my being a man – because, in fact, Anna Mansfield’s death runs counter to the overall trend for suicide. Men’s suicide levels have been rising for years. Running above 6,000 a year, they stand an astonishing 4,000 higher than women’s levels, which are dropping.
Paradoxically, one in four women will seek treatment for depression in a year, compared with one in 10 men. But this does not necessarily mean that women are more, or more often, depressed then men – rather that women are dealing with the problem far more successfully.
There are many reasons for this. It is historically hard for a man to admit such “weakness” to himself – in my 20s I spent four years in the grip of a serious depression without visiting a doctor, believing that psychiatric treatment was for weirdos and losers. As a result I was pushed on to a very dangerous path that, thankfully, I never followed through and have never revisited.
Quite apart from my typical male reluctance to “seek help”, there were other factors in play. Men not only shun being thought of as weak, they tend to be socially isolated compared to women.
Intimate conversations between men may be had at the pub occasionally, but the real support, the love, the crying on one another’s shoulder, the support of a large informal network that many women enjoy, is largely absent. We are frightened of showing our weakness not only to each other, but to our children and our wives – many of whom still count “strength” as a prime virtue among their husbands and who may not want the burden of “another child to look after”.Not all women have these social networks, but they do generally feel able to be more open with other women. My husband doesn't really share his feelings with anyone, but does endless sporting activity which enables him to be distracted from his deeper self - in fact, it seems to be impossible for him to say what he feels as he tries very hard not to be in touch with his feelings. And some of us take pills that have the same effect. Oh well.
