So analyzing and wallowing in emotion when distressed seems a likely explanation for why women are more depressed than men. This implies that men and women experience mild depression at the same rate, but in women, who dwell on the state, the mild depression escalates; men, on the other hand, dissolve the state by distracting themselves, by action or perhaps by drinking it away. We are left with two plausible views that have some support. One is that women learn more helplessness and pessimism, and the second is that women’s likelier first reaction to trouble—rumination—leads right into
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