Depression affects more women than men. Fact. Twice as many more. Every year an estimated 12 million women fall prey to the illness and one in eight will succumb at least once in her life time. Perhaps twice that again: one in four.
But why are women at such high risk? Inevitably, hormones are a suspected trigger. If in doubt blame it on the raging, temperamental, feisty cocktail of chemicals that make us what we are, a heady combination that implements physiological changes in our bodies and emotional upheaval in our minds. From menstruation to menopause we are trapped in a madly spinning 28 day (if you're lucky) cycle that begins and ends with cross moods and unfathomable tears. Yes, let's all point an accusatory finger at the little buggers: obvious scapegoats for a perplexing and poorly understood illness. Or our mothers, of course. (The jury's still out on the genetics debate, but if her blueness didn't stain your genes it's going to leach out and blemish your life by virtue of proximity, that's what the experts say.).
I don't know why the scientists and the mental illness authorities are surprised. I'm not. Because it not surprising. Not when you're a woman. Our route maps might as well be roughly sketched on the back of a cigarette packet: you could be any number of the following (the directions hastily scribbled) daughter, sister, career girl, lover, wife, mother, carer, grandmother ... or something like that ... roughly speaking ... if you see what I mean ... and not necessarily in that order either, by the way ... sorry I can't be more specific ...
But how do we know when we ought to shift gears, move from one to another: marriage to motherhood? From job to job? Career to career? One kids to two? Two to three? Is there a right time to change roles between career, say, and motherhood? Ought we work or stayathome?
Quick, desperate referce to the back of that packet of smokes clutched between trembling fingers: ... sorry I can't be more specific ...
Expected to be all things to all men (and children, and women ... actually, especially women: nobody wants to let the Sisterhoodside down) we are liable to lose track of what we're meant to be doing when. Or how. And then worry we aren't doing it well enough. (How else do you explain the plethora of life guides and parenting manuals at amazon.com?) We are expected to Do It All and to Have It All: families, careers, holidays abroad, happy homes, a healthily subscribed Facebook account and at least one designer handbag.
And its precisely in those concerted efforts to subscribe to societal standards of what conforms to Emancipation and Success (if you're a woman) that we lay ourselves wide open to the illness. Whilst our gaze is focused on the half dozen balls (the kids, the job, the marriage ...) that we are frantically juggling, Depression is wont to sneak in and, with its concentration-sapping, sleep-depriving, self-esteem-stealing weaponry will trip us up and make us drop one, two, three ... And even if we thwart it then, a well heeled foot pressed firmly against our (best address) front door, and battle on triumphant there will likely (one in four, remember, one in four) come a time when life snatches the most brightly colored of our juggling balls away anyway - even though we've been watching them so carefully - so that our rhythm is broken. And we are wrong footed.
And that's when Depression seizes the opportunity and slides a clammy hand into our own and leads us down a quite different, and much darker, path.
And that's why women are more likely to succumb to Depression than men: our directions aren't as clear.
