I have written some version of this so many times, but it seems we need to keep repeating it. From the article below:
Like Jason said during our first meeting, many male clients struggle to find providers who understand men’s mental health. Instead of being sad or tearful, symptoms often seen in women, Jason’s mental health symptoms have often manifested as anger and aggression, which I find is common for men, largely due to how they are socialized.
I have found it interesting learning about how we spent many years treating heart problems based on treatments that were used on male patients, and didn’t bother to expand the testing, because it was thought that heart attacks were a male problem. Heart problems in women were missed because they didn’t look the same as what we had been diagnosing. We are still dealing with that.
In the mental health field, I would agree with the experts quoted in the article. We treat mental health and trauma recovery based on the symptoms shown most often by women, because it is most often women who are seeking help. We define the symptoms based on what we see in those women, which are not the symptoms that every woman would have, let alone others. Someone who is abusing a substance, dealing with anger, taking risks, etc., isn’t typically what we consider “depressed,” but that might be the reality.
When someone shows up like that and we miss it, we add one more hurdle between them and getting the proper help for mental health. There are too many hurdles already. No one needs additional ones created because they don’t “look” depressed.