Depression

Depressed Females

Note: This essay demonstrates why so much of the research into gender differences is both invalid and highly politically-corrected.

This even applies to important medical, social and psychological research.

..........

Chronic Stress Tied to Heart And Stroke Risks in Men The link was strong only among men, although a weak relationship between stress and cardiovascular ills was found in women. link now definct

So. Stress in men is linked to heart attacks and strokes.

But why should women not suffer from the same consequences of stress as men?

Why do women not get the same heart problems as a result of stress?

Could it be that women simply suffer less from stress than men? 

No. No. No.

After all, their reported stress levels would have been factored out in the statistics!

(In other words, the researchers would have compared the 'cardiovascular ills' of men only to those of women who reported experiencing the same amount of stress as those men.)

And the good doctor has not a clue why men should suffer worse effects from stress than women when they report the same amount of stress.

Here is what he says - apparently. ...

As for the weaker findings [i.e. the fewer negative side-effects from stress] among women, Ohlin said this is likely due to the fairly low number of heart disease and stroke cases among women, rather than a resistance to the health effects of chronic stress.

In other words, the doctor is saying that women suffer less heart disease and fewer strokes from stress because they, er, well, ... because they suffer less heart disease and fewer strokes!

But, of course, with it being unacceptable for the victimhood of women ever to be outshone by that of men, the good doctor basically tells us that women do, in fact, suffer the same negative effects of stress as men - they do not develop a 'resistance', or anything like that - it's just that they, er, well, it's just that they suffer less heart disease and fewer strokes.

But I have another explanation for why women might not suffer from so many 'cardiovascular ills' as men for any given level of reported stress.

And it is this.

Women - being professional victims - exaggerate their levels of stress, while men - being professional heroes - downplay it, when they are filling in their questionnaires.

In other words, the good doctor is not actually comparing men and women with the same stress levels at all.

He just thinks that he is.

 we are constantly being told how very different are men and women

You know; we are constantly being told how very different are men and women in the social and the emotional sense (for whatever reasons; biological, genetic, hormonal, environmental, etc etc) and, indeed, men are continually lambasted for all these differences. Men are more violent. Men are more abusive. Men are more controlling. Etc. Etc.

Women, on the other hand, are far more sensitive. They are more emotionally adept and socially skilled. And they are oh-so-much-better, both morally and verbally. And they are oppressed, discriminated against, and treated badly.

The two genders are a mile apart!

And yet, when people fill in the various questionnaires that researchers thrust under their noses from time to time, it is taken for granted that the responses from men and women will actually mean the same thing.

But how can it be that it is only in the area of questionnaire-filling that men and women are considered to be the same? - especially when it comes to questionnaires about 'feelings' - whereas in just about every other sphere to do with feelings, they are deemed to be so very different.

The whole idea is foolish.

So, for example, if a questionnaire requires people to rate such things as their levels of, say, pain, depression, anxiety, hurt, state of well-being, etc etc, then any gender differences supposedly found between men and women might, in fact, simply be generated by gender differences in the way in which they answer the questions.

It is often found, for example, that women are about twice as likely to rate themselves as depressed as men on questionnaires. But it simply does not follow from this that women are twice as likely as men to be depressed.

It could be, perhaps, that women are far less depressed than men but - because they are professional victims - they give higher scores on the questionnaires than men for equivalent levels of depression.

And given that women are far more likely to make a fuss about their own state of well-being than are men (and there is a mountain of evidence to support this contention) the notion that researchers can glean very much about the true differences in such matters between men and women from simple questionnaires is absolutely ludicrous.

Furthermore, if - in the above study - it had, indeed, been the case that women were found to be suffering more from 'cardiovascular ills' than men as a result of stress, you can bet your last dollar that this would have been taken as confirmatory evidence that women actually did suffer more than men from the ill-effects of stress because they were, in fact, more stressed.

But because it is men who demonstrably suffer more than women from the consequences of stress, the good doctor dares not suggest that this might be the case because men, in fact, have to put up with more stress.

November 2010

What did I tell you? ...

High-flying women with demanding jobs are almost twice as likely to suffer a heart attack, research shows.

D'ya see?

When women have to undergo more stress in real life, they do, in fact, get more 'cardiovascular ills'.

But when they are simply filling in their questionnaires, they exaggerate; so the correlations with their cardiovascular ills evaporate.

Anyway. It has now been decided that women suffer more from depression than men, but, once again, most of the methods used to measure 'depression' are suspect. ...

 ... Depression Between the ages of 11 and 13, female rates of depression climb sharply, and by the age of 15, girls are twice as likely to have experienced a major depressive episode as boys. 

... The question of how depression is actually measured by researchers has a major bearing on the issue.

Presumably, much, if not all, of the data comes from questionnaires.

And, presumably, at least some of the questions have something to do with 'feelings'.

Ah yes. Feelings. Apparently only women have them.

Ah yes. Feelings. Apparently only women have them.

How are they measured, eh?

Well. Here are a few facetious guesses about the questions that are asked by researchers that might explain how young females are reckoned to be more 'depressed' than males.

Do you cry more than once a week?

Have you got an eating disorder?

Do you ever read depressing books?

Do you often find yourself watching depressing soaps or chat-shows filled with tales of woe, violence and abuse?

Do you constantly worry about getting pregnant?

Does the perpetual gossip of your friends depress you?

Do you find your moods alternating on a monthly cycle?

Do you paint your toenails with a dark colour?

If you answer Yes to three or more of the above, then you are depressed.

Well, you get the picture.

Males who are depressed are simply far less likely to respond YES to any of the above questions. And, as such, on the basis of such questions, researchers would undoubtedly conclude that females were far more depressed than males.

On the other hand, if they asked the following questions in order to assess depression, males would likely be seen as more depressed than females.

Have you ever succeeded in committing suicide? (Well, you get the point; given that males commit suicide some four times more often than females.)

Do you often feel aggressive and irritable?

Do you think about sex a great deal?

Do you often absorb yourself in video games and sports to take your mind off things?

Do you often take illicit drugs?

Do you often get drunk?

Etc.

And so my overall point is this.

It is not possible to assess how different the genders are when it comes to 'feelings' because, firstly, the genders might respond differently to the questionnaires themselves (with women more likely to exaggerate their feelings) and, secondly, the questions themselves are likely to be far more pertinent to one gender than to the other - and there is, currently, no effective way of 'weighting' the answers to them appropriately in order to 'equate' them across the genders.

As such, how one measures differences in levels of depression between the genders can easily be influenced by sexist bias. 

when it comes to research based on questionnaires, the validity of any psychological research on gender differences falls at the very first hurdle.

And after thirty years of such overwhelming and unmitigated sexist bias in the research purporting to throw light on gender differences - and this occurs especially when politically-corrected researchers wish to suggest that women suffer more than do men -  it is very difficult indeed to have any faith in what is published nowadays on various matters that purport to differentiate between the genders. And when it comes to research based on questionnaires, the validity of any psychological research on gender differences falls at the very first hurdle.

And look at this! ...

Boys Are Vulnerable Men treated with kid gloves as young babies are more likely to succeed in work and relationships, according to a UK psychiatrist.

According to this article, males, not females, are more vulnerable to depression; the complete reverse of the alleged findings above...

[Boys] got poorer examination grades, were more vulnerable to depression and were more likely to commit crimes than girls, he said.

So there you have it.

As I said in the piece above, there is just no way that you can figure out which gender gets more depressed, or more stressed, or more whatever.

When it comes to ... feelings, questionnaires are no damn good.

When it comes to matters to do with feelings, questionnaires are no damn good.

And, to put it bluntly, whenever you see psychologists or social scientists pontificating unrestrainedly over how different are the genders when it comes to their inner states and feelings, you can bet your last dollar that they are talking hokum - and, usually, politically-corrected hokum at that.

...

Revenge More Satisfying For Men

Revenge More Satisfying For Men Men appear to get greater satisfaction than women when witnessing retribution, research suggests.

Basically, this experiment discovered that men were less likely than women to show empathy towards someone who had cheated others out of money, but they showed the same amount of empathy as women towards those who had played 'fairly'.

From this finding the researchers concluded that men are more prone to seek revenge.

But this is just politically-correct nonsense.

All that this experiment really suggests is that women have more empathy with those who cheat others out of money. In other words, this experiment simply suggests that women do not think particularly badly of those who cheat others out of money.

Indeed, they empathise with them.

No surprises there.

Furthermore, if the experiment had instead looked at how 'empathic' were women towards, say, those who cheated in other matters, then their 'empathy' figures might well have been lower than that of men. And so the idea that this experiment reveals some fundamental differences between men and women when it comes to 'revenge' and 'empathy' is completely wrong-headed.

Furthermore, in their paper, the researchers suggested that this experiment was not designed to look at sex differences in empathy, but it seems that given that they could spin the results in a way that cast women in a more favourable light than men, they clearly decided otherwise.

And there are no surprises there either.

Indeed, had the experiment dared to suggest that men were more empathic than women then, quite simply, it would not have gotten published - and the research grants would have dried up.

That's the way that it works out there.

And you must understand this.

Nearly all the gender studies 'research' conducted by social scientists these days is nothing but hokum. It is very very heavily biased - mostly against men, and mostly in furtherance of an agenda arising from left-wing, feminist-based politics of the politically-correct variety. And the aims of the researchers are mostly ideological and/or based on climbing career ladders.

The 'truth' has precious little to do with it.

As such, I can assure you that if the results of this experiment had been reversed - i.e. if it had been found that men had more empathy with cheats - then the researchers would have attracted further funding simply by arguing that this was an indication that men had more empathy with 'cheats' because they could easily see themselves as being 'cheats'.

the only way to keep attracting the funding is to keep coming up with ideas that portray men in a relatively unfavourable light.

And they would do this because the only way to keep attracting the funding is to keep coming up with ideas that portray men in a relatively unfavourable light.

Well, if anything, the results of this experiment indicate that women and cheating are close allies, whereas men do not have much sympathy with those who cheat.

Hmm.

Good experiment!

+ Two new studies find that women may be genetically predisposed to cheating on their partners.

(MRAs should read this section carefully.)

Research into Male Suicides Not Funded ...

An extract from Sorting Out the Puzzle of Male Suicide by Joan Ryan - San Francisco Chronicle January 2006 ...

My underlining  ...

... In a recent column about a UC Davis freshman who shot himself, I included a statistic from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Boys commit 86 percent of all adolescent suicides. 

Eighty-six percent. 

The number floored me, particularly as the mother of a son. Yet not a single e-mail, phone call or letter about the column mentioned the striking statistic. 

It occurred to me that if 86 percent of adolescent suicides were girls, there would be a national commission to find out why. There'd be front-page stories and Oprah shows and nonprofit foundations throwing money at sociologists and psychologists to study female self-destruction. My feminist sisters and I would be asking, rightly, "What's wrong with a culture that drives girls, much more than boys, to take their own lives?" 

So why aren't we asking what's wrong with a culture that drives boys, much more than girls, to take their own lives? Even in academia, where you can find studies on the most obscure topics, there is little research explaining why boys are disproportionately killing themselves. The Center for Adolescence at Stanford, a nationally recognized clearinghouse on teen behavior, has no one on its long roster of experts who can speak on the topic. Neither does the American Association of Suicidology, an organization dedicated to suicide prevention since 1968. 

"As much as I would love to lead the charge (in finding out why boys kill themselves), try to go out and get funding for it," said Lanny Berman, the executive director of the association. He is frustrated that funders aren't interested in studying boys and men. 

"If there is no research money available, no academician is going to go that route," he said. "As executive director, I have to pay attention to fundable projects." 

So the association has an expert on female suicide but none on male suicide, even though suicide is an overwhelmingly male issue well beyond adolescence. Of the 30,622 Americans of all ages who took their own lives in 2001, 24,672 were men. I have been thinking about the people I know who committed suicide. My grandfather. My Uncle Tommy. Two of my of father's closest friends. And, most recently, the UC Davis freshman who is my friend's son. 

All men. 

I had never noticed.

Joan Ryan

Also see, ...

Fathers Who Kill

Is Everybody Conscious?