What Is Clinical Depression, And What Does It Look Like?

Note: This is a guest post I wrote that previously appeared on Prairie Health’s blog.

As someone who has lived with clinical depression for almost a decade, I’ve learned a lot about what depression is, what it means to me, and how it looks in my day-to-day life. One of the most important things that’s helped me manage my clinical depression is to do research on what it is, why it’s different from other forms of depression, and what that means for me.

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A Look at Mental Health During Men’s Health Week

As I’ve leaned more into the mental health space and got to know people in the community, I’ve recognized subtle differences and undertones when certain people discuss mental health. I’ve also recognized less subtle differences in part of this discussion, and that usually involves how men talk about mental health. I can’t understand some of the nuances and differences of mental health outside of my own cishet male experience, but by looking at statistics and data alone, something is clear: men need help with mental health just as much as any group of people.

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Mental Health and Masculinity

When I first began experiencing symptoms of depression, I (quite naturally, I might add) shrugged it off. I assumed that most people felt the way I was feeling at the time, and chalked it up to any number of reasons: I was in a transitional period in my life, going through a lot of change and facing plenty of uncertainties. I was shocked when, the more I began to share my experiences with others, the more I saw that they were more unique than I thought. But I also found it interesting that women were far more open to discussing my issues than men were. I don’t believe that was a coincidence.

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