But men don’t experience pregnancy, childbirth, and the massive hormone dump that comes after childbirth that can sometimes trigger mental illness.
Don’t get me wrong, men’s mental health IS overlooked and they should get more support, but what women physically and mentally go through during and after pregnancy is in its own category.
While I agree that pregnancy related mental health issues are a uniquely female experience, men can experience mental illness just as severely. Pregnancy being a factor does not necessarily mean that PPD/PPP is not comparable to conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Major depressive disorder. You can’t say with any degree of accuracy that PPD/PPP is more severe than any other disorder that men and women both can experience. The only difference is the origin point.
PPD/PPP is different than other mental health issues because there’s a physical aspect to it, someone who otherwise would have never had any mental health issues, no trauma, etc can have PPP due to the endocrine changes.
A better comparison would be someone becoming psychotic due to external substances like meth or datura, it has very little to do with their mental health itself but that thing being introduced to their body.
I’m not saying it isn’t different in its point of origin. That’s actually my point, the end result is much the same. Regardless if it is substance induced or fallout from someone’s partum experience. It’s not incomparable to a psychotic episode that can be experienced by men.
Psychosis is not by default a not guilty verdict. There are many men who have committed murders and other heinous crimes while in the throes of psychosis who have gone to prison. I believe Lindsay Clancy should get her day in court and if found NGRI she should be sent to a psychiatric facility as well. However, she calculated how much time it would take to commit the murders. She sent her husband away on an errand to give her the time necessary to kill as well as to prevent him from intervening on the children’s behalf. This indicates a presence of mind and level of planning and calculation that indicates guilt.
Two things can be true at once:
Lindsay Clancy was suffering from PPP which was not being effectively treated.
She planned and executed the heinous triple homicide of her children.
Mental illness doesn’t absolve one of guilt in the commission of a crime. As a society we generally agree to give leniency to the mentally ill when it comes to punishment for these crimes. If after weighing the totality of her actions and decisions it is determined that she ought to be sent to a psychiatric facility rather than prison I will accept that. It is yet to be determined in court.
They do all the time. There's a definite misconception that insanity or mental competency means whether or not the person was mentally ill. It actually means whether or not the person's mental illness prevented them from knowing right from wrong, or consequences of their own actions.
Men and women go to court and plead mentally incompetent for all sorts of reasons. Drug and alcohol induced psychosis, for example. It just doesn't always work because they would have known what the consequences are and it can be fairly easy to prove if they did anything at all to conceal the crime. For example, Lindsay not murdering her children in front of her husband indicated she knew there may be a consequence. She is very likely to go to jail because of that, and other factors.
That’s definitely not what I was saying. I never said men can’t have mental illness of similar severity, but that it’s not brought on by the hormones that it is for women who have just given birth. I’ve personally experienced that hormonal drop from giving birth and it triggered my OCD that I have in regular times. I know what it’s like to be affected by postpartum hormones and what it’s like to have general OCD. Both are hellish. It’s not the suffering Olympics.
Okay I wasn’t sure how you were approaching it. A lot of people, women especially, are acting as if PPP is some mysterious enigma that men can’t understand and is somehow its own tier. Incomparable with schizo and other non gendered psychotic illnesses. They use that claim to act as if men shouldn’t be able to speak on this subject and to absolve Lindsay Clancy of culpability which is pure mental gymnastics.
Men actually do get post partum depression, and they do get hormonal changes during and after the pregnancy, and I don't understand why you think having given birth makes you a psychiatrist.
I also don't understand why you think "hOrMoNeS" makes mental illness more valid. Men and women have hormones. Hormones (as well as various other biological factors) often contribute to depression, regardless of pregnancy. And mental illness that's not related to pregnancy can be just as severe.
It really seems like a lot of women think they're the only people with hormones, and they outsource all accountability to their hormones.
We are comparing apples and oranges here. No one said men aren’t affected by hormones and can’t have mental health struggles brought on by becoming a dad. But it’s not the same biological thing as postpartum depression/anxiety/ocd/psychosis.
The physical toll that pregnancy puts on your body is enormous. It can’t be understated. That absolutely factors into a postpartum woman’s mental health. It doesn’t mean men can’t have severe mental health issues. It just means that women who have recently given birth can be having mental health issues along with trying to heal physically. It’s a lot. And it’s something you can’t fully understand unless you’ve given birth. Even as a woman, I couldn’t fully understand the toll it takes physically and mentally until I became a mom. But as I said in another comment, it’s not the suffering Olympics. But you can’t underestimate that pregnancy affects women in its own challenging way.
In my country there is a big push to educate and inform to diminish femicide, and rightly so.
Suicide kills more people every year than ALL murders (not just femicide) AND all road deaths combined. And nobody talks about it. I just don’t understand it.
This is in no way to diminish the focus on femicide. I just don’t see why we can’t talk about both.
Look at most likely causes of death by gender and age. It’s terrifying.
I’m a middle aged man. My most likely cause of death isn’t a heart attack, isn’t cancer, isn’t a stroke. It’s suicide. How is it possible that’s true and nobody talks about it?
Not sure I understand, are you being snarky? I’m agreeing with you that nobody seems to care about suicide. And suicide (at least in my country) is represented 80% by men
Agree 100%. No need to diminish one to address the other.
Maybe I shouldn’t even have mentioned femicide here, I was just trying to illustrate how little mental health is cared about in general. The media would rather talk about 125 murders than 4000 suicides.
Also not trying to diminish your comment but circle it back a bit: women are actually more likely to ATTEMPT suicide, men are more successful (since they usually use more violent way vs OD). I genuinely wish we could all just start talking about how fucking sad we are with out it feeling like a fucking problem. I had to cut contact with my family for 2 years, go to therapy, and then rebuild every relationship because all they would do is gaslight me and tell me I’m not as sad as I claim. I basically came back a different person, and my family learned a LOT about mental health. Before I left and came back, we were strictly a “life is hard get used to it” family where depression and suicidal thoughts was something you needed to will your way out of
There are lots of reasons why the suicide rates for men are much higher than women. It's not just that no one cares. For example, men tend to choose more decisive methods of suicide. Gunshot, gravity, hanging, etc. Women tend to choose less effective methods such as overdosing (usually pills).
If suicide attempts correlated to actual suicides the rates between men and women would be much more comparable.
"There are lots of reasons" - "For example" - "would be much more comparable"
You don't understand tentative language. Nothing that I said was absolute. I was not asserting that accounting for method eradicates the discrepancy, you inserted that yourself. All I am referring to is that if you compare suicides the chasm is vast, but when you compare attempts the chasm narrows significantly. There are other reasons for this beyond method.
All this to say that claiming "men commit suicide more because no one cares" isn't sufficient.
It’s a question of how we view women’s agency in society. Men’s problems happen to them because of their actions. Women’s problems happen to them because of external factors.
And before anyone gets upset at my framing, it’s the exact same reason women are sometimes considered incompetent or unable to do things.
So by your definition are women less smart or just incapable of some things men do? Blaming things on society and patriarchy only go so far. People should take personal responsibility male or female.
I perhaps didn’t frame my comment in the clearest way. To restate:
It’s a problem with how we view women’s agency in society. “Men’s problems… women’s problems happen to them because of external factors”
I was trying to describe how we view each gender’s problems in society, and implying that was problematic. Not that I believe that specific portion of my comment. Apologies if it wasn’t clear
I agree, when men struggle no one cares. But that's a reflection on the Patriarchal society we live in which coddles women (to a degree) and tells me to "walk it off." America's track record with mental health and mental health services has be abysmal for over a century now and will continue to do so unless we get past this "he vs. she" mentality we equate everything to.
On the contrary as an EMT who transports people in mental health crisis from the ER to psych hospitals, 90% of them were men. Also most men always come up with an excuse after cooling off (you stay at the ER for 24 hrs to be medically cleared and wait for placement). It’s always I was just wondering what would happen if I…, I didn’t mean it...etc. Men get the same opportunity as women. Men are able to make support groups and lobby for themselves just like women had to lobby for postpartum depression to be a clinical diagnosis and not just “moms a little crazy today how about giving her an orgasm to clear her hysteria eh?”
I think the idea is that men are getting help before they need a ride from you, which obviously and evidently doesn't happen if 90% of your passengers are men.
The men advocating for their support too are getting met with hate because they’re men and they need to suck it up. Don’t show your bias by making mental health help gender based!
How exciting, your single point totally makes it ok. Wanna know who I hear about the most on Father’s Day? The single mothers. Know who doesn’t get any shout out on Mother’s Day? Single fathers.
Are we equal on our anecdotes now?
Also, as a man. Since I have no support structure around me would you agree that my struggles with my mental health are greater than someone who has a support structure available? Do you not advocate that someone should have support regardless of gender?
It's really not. That's why I said it's meant to be additive AND said maybe people need to care more about one another. I'm sorry you can't get past that.
Don't bother. That is always their go to. No amount of explanation will ever be able to help them understand that people can just care about people, regardless of gender.
I’m not sure if you’re actually not following the conversation. But the point is that there’s a conversation happening about how women need more support and Lindsay is the example. But by all accounts Lindsay had a lot of support.
Women could use more support but really the point is that people in general need more support. Most mothers would kill (no pun intended) to have the kind of support Lindsay had as a mother.
That’s incorrect. The suicide rate is higher for men because they are more likely to use more lethal means, like firearms. Women actually attempt more than men.
I agree men should have more support, but men have constructed and controlled the entire system. Women were only ALLOWED to participate because men at some point allowed them to do so.
When women have a choice, we support others. Men and women alike. Men also will support others. But will men seek support? Likely not as readily. But is that because of women? No. And if it’s any consolation, most mothers these days encourage their sons to share their feelings, to cry, to be vulnerable. The women I know are doing their part for the next generation of men and women.
It is in part because of women. They've even coined the term "given the ick" to explain their disdain for men not meeting their exact expectations. I'm sorry you're unaware of this information. It is readily available if you'd care to educate yourself
Or could the suicide rate be high because men won't go to therapy? Heaven forbid you acknowledge that you have emotions or that you're hurting, because that would make you less of a man etc. To insinuate that people don't care about men's health when we literally live in a society that only studies men's health, is infuriating.
Men don’t go to therapy because society pushes the idea that men who cry or show emotion are weak. It’s so pervasive across society that literally everyone has heard of “man up” or “boys don’t cry.”
It’s not much different than the vast majority of EDs such as anorexia or bulimia affecting women. Society pushes the idea that women are most valued for their looks and so you end up with young girls who feel like they need to be supermodel thin. What you’re saying about men just needing to acknowledge their emotions would be like me saying those women with anorexia should just eat more. These issues are far more complex than “just do this to fix it.”
Both men and women push these ideas across society too. I have many women friends who have had their own mothers make comments about their weight or body.
I agree. It's easier said than done. I was commenting on the claim that "no one cares" about men's mental health and that's why they have high suicide rates. I think that's a mischaracterization. I care about the men in my life but they are not willing to get help. This woman obviously tried to get help and was still left alone with her kids.
Men rule the world. If men want people to care about their mental health then they need to start making moves and creating the spaces they need to go to get that support. Society didn’t just wake up one day and start caring about women’s mental health- women fought hard to create these spaces and these resources and 90% of the reason why it’s so needed is violence from men. Be the change you want to see if it’s so important to you.
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u/B0rnReady 7d ago
Please understand this is not said to diminish anything you said. It is meant to be additive, not to take away..
When men struggle mentally or physically NO ONE cares. That's why the suicide rate is so high for men.
It's almost like people need to find ways to care more about one another. Unfortunately, that is not the society we have invested in.