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Showing results for tags 'depression'.
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(This is a post I wrote for my romantic advice blog for men — The Leading Man.) An article on the Harvard Medical School's website titled "Astounding Increase in Antidepressant Use by Americans" reveals that while the rate of these types of drugs being prescribed to both men and women has skyrocketed, women are two and a half times as likely as men to be on antidepressants. The Huffington Post reports that one out of four women takes some kind of medication for a mental health condition, compared to 15 percent of men. While the reasons for these statistics are debatable, one thing is abundantly clear . . . There are an awful lot of deeply unhappy women today. Whatever successes can be attributed to the feminist movement, one thing it has not been able to do is to make women happy. Do you think that the women who haven't been issued prescriptions for antidepressants by a doctor are bursting with joy & enthusiasm for life? A key aspect of depression is a feeling of emotional emptiness. Depression is not mere sadness — in fact, for a depressed person, being able to feel sadness or sorrow would be a step up for them. Depression entails feeling dead inside, feeling "blah" & unmotivated. The motto of a depressed person is "What's the use?" silently spoken in response to the challenges of life. A person in the grip of depression often feels that he or she doesn't have much of a future, so why bother doing anything? It won't matter anyway . . . I don't need to point out that these kinds of feelings of hopelessness can easily go hand-in-hand with thoughts of escaping from life altogether. In a recent Webinar, in partial answer to the age-old question "What does a woman want?" I said that a woman wants to FEEL. What specifically does a woman want to feel? All sorts of things: Joy, excitement, elation, a sense of wonder and beauty . . . She wants to feel turned on by life, connected to people and things . . . successful, strong, empowered, adventurous . . . She wants to feel that she faces a magnificent future — that she is fully and actively participating in life — that a smorgasbord of delicious possibilities is spread out before her . . . In short, a woman wants to feel ALIVE! Women will frequently say when they're in love with a man: "He makes me feel alive!" Older women who find romance will say: "I feel young again!" Women (at least heterosexual women) are at their happiest when they are deeply in love with a man. Don't ever let anyone make you doubt this fundamental fact. Women want to be in love with us — because women want to be in love. As men, we cannot cure all that ails women. But we have a nearly-unbelievable power to bring positive emotions into a woman's life — to make her feel vital and vibrant and beautiful and young and free. When we succeed at this, we experience happiness. There is no tonic in the world (and certainly no prescription medication) that can inspire & motivate us the way a happy woman who is in love with life and with us can! © 2013 Kevin Delaney