A new report from the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that women in every single age group are much more likely than men to suffer from serious psychological distress (SPD). So, the weight of systemic oppression is actually having effects on our brain chemistry, who would have even thought that was possible?This is also the time when hormone and metabolic changes set in.
The study also found that SPD puts people at greater risk for a number of medical conditions including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and heart disease.
Still, the data is even more alarming when coupled with the fact that suicide has become the leading killer of teenage girls aged 15 to 19 worldwide.
Dr. Suzanne Petroni, senior director for gender, population and development at the International Center for Research on Women, was the first to put the data together, reports The Guardian’s Jessica Valenti.
“It was clear that from at least 2000, [suicide] was a leading cause of death in this age group,” Petroni told Valenti, noting that suicide only recently overtook maternal mortality as the top killer of teenage girls. “We need more research and evidence to tell us if it is actually happening for the reason we hypothesize it is — which is that gender norms and inequality have a significant link for suicide vulnerability.”
... The hypothesis would make sense since puberty is around the time where discrimination and oppression starts to kick in.
And estrogen alters insulin metabolism, so girls diverge from boys around this time.
The fact is:
There really is a real physiological explanation for why women suffer more from depression than men...
That has nothing to do with sex discriimination.
BUT-
Since Psychs have historically been men who do not experience this phenomenon:
They tell us we're hysterical. That we are imagining things. And that we need to shut our whiny pie holes and snap the hell out of it.
See how that really works?
