Gender has become an increasingly hot-button topic as the years go forward. There is no denying that problems still exist — and serious ones. The necessary work of the #Metoo movement, the still-persistent wage gap (which, as the pandemic showed us, is still tightly tied to some dated takes on who is responsible for childcare), and other social issues continue to push their way to the front of the news cycle.
There is yet another way where inequalities seem to exist, as well. Mental illness affects one in five adults in the United States, and yet, it is so heavily stigmatized that it can impact your relationships, your job prospects and every other aspect of your life. Maybe unsurprisingly, gender is also a factor when it comes to how mental illness is perceived — that is to say, regardless of gender, how society perceives you determines how and whether your mental health is taken seriously.
Gender Can Affect Behavior When Mentally Ill
An interesting study by the American Psychological Association in 2011 found that mental illness in any gender can be differentiated by behavior.*
In women, for example, they tend to internalize their emotions and struggles as a result of social pressure. This leads to what we might consider the “classic” signs of depression, anxiety, and other related symptoms. Because of those symptoms, they are diagnosed accordingly.
Men, however, have a tendency to externalize their emotions. This externalization leads to acting out, aggression, substance abuse, and instability, which in turn leads to the treatment of these symptoms — without necessarily establishing the underlying diagnosis.
What struck me most about this study was not that it was showing a difference between the genders — most of us were socialized that way, after all, and these symptoms aren’t exclusive to gender experience. It was what the study could potentially point to as a cause.
What Gender Inequality Means In Mental Illness
Most of the time, when we talk about inequality for the genders, we focus on one gender or the other and how they work with or against each other. In the world of mental illness, however, it appears that our social perceptions of gender itself present a large challenge when it comes to accepting or assessing severity. In some ways, we have ascribed symptoms of mental illness to gender experience.
Speak to almost any woman, for example, and she will probably tell you that her experience in society has been to take on the majority of emotional labor in life without complaint. They are expected to be professionals, nurturers, domestic goddesses, caregivers, mothers, lovers, managers, and everything in between.
When a woman does not perform to the standards of those titles, she is shamed, directly or indirectly, into thinking she is less worthy than other women who do it all. Guilt is a key component to the female experience, and is taught from such an early age that it is ingrained. It is no wonder they internalize their stress and unhappiness.
Meanwhile, most men are taught to be tough. From the time we are little boys, we are told not to cry, to work and sweat, to fight emotions and enjoy only the simple pleasures of life. In short, we’re told to become “men” the moment we hit our teens. We are supposed to be providers, protectors and stone-cold in our ruggedness — emotional labor is, for many of us, a foreign concept. The fact that our mental illnesses often display themselves as aggressive and external is hardly a shock if this is how men are culturally trained.
What this leads to for men and women is an expectation that women will become sullen and moody and men will become angry, perhaps even violent, as a matter of course — and nobody seeks help. Worse still is what it means for those whose gender experience is outside of the gender binary, who may feel that they have absolutely no place in their communities or the world, to say nothing of actually seeking help for themselves as who they are.
Perhaps most troubling of all is that these societal norms of gender expectations are taught, passively or intentionally, to our children, leading new generations of teens to suffer from depression, aggression, and other struggles.
There are some questions as to the role biology plays in the prevalence and presentation of mental illness across genders, but I argue that this is, essentially, irrelevant. In spite of whatever differences we may perceive in the details, one thing remains the same: man or woman or otherwise, we are hurting. We are struggling. We need help. Yet in one way or another, we’re all ashamed for needing it. Even after the pandemic showed us how urgently we need mental healthcare support, there are many who carry internalized guilt and externalized anguish, too embarrassed or confused to admit and seek the help they need.
Isn’t it time we ended the stigma? Maybe the first step is understanding that gender shouldn’t be a factor in how we are seen for what we can’t control.
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* —Editor’s note: While this study is from 2011 and only considered those within a gender binary, we don’t feel that the experiences of those outside of the gender binary are any less worth consideration. We hope that as awareness of the need for mental healthcare increases, greater diversity will be represented in future studies.
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This story has been republished to Medium.
Photo Credit: Pixabay