How utterly absurd to say women are more miserable than men
Please, stop sobbing into that tea towel. Crawl out from under the bed. Put on a happy face, girlfriend. smile, it might never happen. Too late, it already has! according to reports of a large NHs survey, women are more miserable than men for almost every moment of their lives. They are only happier after the age of 85, and psychiatrists say this may be because so many are widowed by then.
should we deduce from this that the single thing that makes women unhappy is men? Or that once we get to 85 and beyond we are strapped into the front seat of the doolally rollercoaster, so high on st John’s Wort supplements and remedial gin that we just don’t give a damn about anything any more, whee-hee.
Normally I don’t write about surveys, even NHs ones. That’s because they can mean anything, be interpreted in myriad ways and are often politically motivated. also, too much depends on the question asked rather than the answer given.
Indeed, in a recent survey, 88 per cent of people said that 75 per cent of surveys are 99 per cent utter bunkum.
Yet these findings are worrisome because they ignite all my concerns about conflating those who suffer from occasional down-in-the-dumpery with those who suffer from serious mental illness, to the detriment of the latter.
along with my suspicions that too many people are being encouraged unnecessarily to believe they are mentally ill, and then absolve themselves of personal responsibility by imagining they are the helpless victims of emotions and moods beyond their control.
Today, a tenth of all adults in england are on antidepressants, while in scotland, 17 per cent of the adult population were prescribed antidepressants in the past year, with nearly twice as many female patients as male.
(apparently, men are just as miserable as women but not so good about giving voice to their negative feelings. a lot of wives would beg to differ about that, but let’s move on.)
Participants in this survey, the results of which made it onto the front page of several newspapers, were asked to rate their general levels of happiness, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance and selfconfidence. To be honest, some days my score would have been fine, while on other days it would barely be three blips above wretched. It would provide a snapshot of my life, not a definitive statement.
Yet anyone with a score of four on a 12-point scale was deemed to have a ‘probable’ mental health condition. Yeah, emphasis on that ‘probable’.
In the meantime, Prince William, Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge continue with their highprofile mental health campaign to encourage people to seek help and discuss their issues.
KaTe even said she ‘would not hesitate’ to encourage her children to get therapy, should they need it. William and Harry have spoken about their own problems, as each struggled to cope with the death of their mother at a young age.
There is no doubt they went through a terrible time but they did not suffer mental illness — they were bereaved. This is something most of us encounter at some point. For life is not a perfect Disneyrama of cupcakes and laughter. It can be a dark place where you have to make space for the shadows and learn how to cope with death and disappointment.
This is not an illness, it is part of the human condition.
I can remember feeling incredibly lost and unhappy in my mid-20s, just swept away by desolation for reasons that now escape me. Then I read somewhere that if you got up every morning pretending to be happy, then, eventually, you would be happy. and I did and it worked.
Now, I would be given pills and endless therapy — even though there was nothing really wrong with me. I’m not telling you this to say how simply marvellous and brave I am, or how everyone on antidepressants is a charlatan. Far from it.
It’s more that I feel there is a mood in the air which makes mental illness a fashionable thing to have, alongside designer trainers and the latest must-have perfume. and the lightly troubled are being encouraged to believe they are full-blown mental patients who must constantly examine every negative feeling.
Valuable mental health resources are being gobbled up by the merely despondent at the expense of the clinically depressed, with happy pills dished out like smarties.
Meanwhile, the royals and others should note that talktalk-talking endlessly through your problems is not a panacea. People can get hooked on their own misery, instead of the healthier option of letting go and moving on.
You know, there are times when a little peace and quiet on earth doesn’t go amiss.