Disorders in Women by Kate Rapp

In my Abnormal Psychology class today we talked about mood disorders such as depression, the types of bipolar disorder and before today we had talked about the multiple anxiety disorders. As we were talking about them and their characteristics there was a common theme among them all. On each slide I kept seeing statements like:  “more prone to women”, “majority of female sufferers”, “75% of females suffer from agoraphobia”, and my favorite “Females outnumber males 2:1 in anxiety disorders.” It looks like women don’t stand a chance in the world without developing an abnormal behavior/disorder. Other students in my class asked my professor why these disorders are more common in women, and my professor simply explained that it’s all about the society. And again when talking about the mood disorders today on the topic of depression that same question was brought up again and today he went into a little more detail about his thoughts on why it affected women as much. He brought up what Jean Killbourne talked about and what we have been discussing in our class since day one; the unrealistic demands that women have from society and the pressures from the “olden days.” It was so interesting to hear from a man outside of our women’s studies class to understand and recognize the problems that women face today. And maybe with these staggering statistics more support will come to women and a reformation will happen in our society to ignore those social demands… until then we’re on our own.