Common wisdom says that women become depressed twice as often as men. But research by University of Michigan psychiatrist and medical historian Laura Hirshbein, M.D., Ph.D., suggests that early depression research methods may have significantly overlooked men with depression. As Hirshbein explains, “Mid-20th-century efforts to describe depression excluded certain populations of patients, including alcoholics. Therefore, the research excluded from consideration a large number of men who might have been depressed and self-medicating with alcohol.”

While some debate which of the differences in depression among men and women are biological and which are cultural, most modern research illustrates that these are always interactive and should never be viewed as “either-or.” Hirshbein’s work on the history of depression suggests that social and cultural factors do shape how patients experience symptoms and to some extent how clinicians and families explain them.

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