Featuring Dr. John Ogrodniczuk, PhD

Duration: 1 minute, 34 seconds

Men typically don't present with the characteristic signs and symptoms of depression as described in the DSM.

Men often will present with other signs and symptoms, such as irritability, aggression, addictive types of behaviors. What are those? They could be excessive drinking, drug use, they often engage in escaping types of behaviors.

Those could be things like working too much, promiscuity, maybe driving really fast often, when that's not typically they're like. And when men come to the physician's office, they often don't talk about feeling sad, "I'm kind of hopeless."

They often talk about stress, "I'm stressed," and the things that they present with again not necessarily what we would expect to see in a depressed person per se, but something more like I'm always pissed off at people, really angry.

It could be they're more angry; they might say "I seem to be getting in fights with my mates at work, I'm arguing a lot with my wife lately, my kids you know I just don't seem to have patience with them anymore."

So those are some of the things that we look for in men, when we suspect that perhaps they're suffering from depression.

Presenter: Dr. John Ogrodniczuk, Psychologist, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Psychologist