Well, that's the sort of interesting juxtaposition of disparate concepts usually reserved for lyrics.

At one level this result is not surprising, but expected. When case definitions are expanded to create overlap, more cases are found. I suppose one could say that the resulting similarity in gendered diagnoses is evidence of some there there...even if the notion of creating fuzzier edges around diagnosis is inherently unsatisfying.

Setting that aside, I find a couple of things interesting...

First, research is being done to try to get a handle on gendered differences in expression of symptoms of mental illness. I'm glad to see that.

The failure of psychiatry, and the criminal justice system because of its reliance on psychiatric constructions, to recognize these differences results in many punishing incarcerations rather than resolving treatment for a number of pathologies.

Anger, frustration, anxiety and fear are examples of emotions with similar if not fully equiterminal behavioral expression in males. And that shared behavior is commonly judged to be socially inappropriate and indicative of dangerous potential requiring isolation from society. An historic example of such differences include the diagnostic bias, and subsequent bias in arrest and incarceration, of borderline and anti-social personalities between men and women.


Second, the authors of this research come right out and state that the differences in symptoms of depression are an acquisition from society. Their argument being that society endorses a quite limited range for masculine behavioral repertoire. The importance of that is these behavioral limits are LEARNED and not innate. Anger seems instinctive and biologically based in fight vs flight physiology. So much so that anger may seem about as learnable as sneezing.

But...then...researchers have quite recently come to understand that the sound we make when sneezing is actually LEARNED and it varies with language and within a language within subcultures.

It seems to me, that open-mindedness of clinicians to the existence of learned differences in emotional expression of depressive symptoms, the most common mental illness in America, has potential to broadly impact the lives of men.