Nearly one-third of the population will have some sort of psychological disorder at some time in their life, Don Evans, assistant professor of psychology said. Depression is one of the more common disorders, especially among women. Unipolar depression is marked by extreme sadness or distress which causes unhappiness and withdrawal.
Bipolar depression is the more serious of the two types.
Victims of bipolar depression experience episodes of severe depression alternating with shorter manic episodes of extreme happiness. Bipolar depression is equally common in males and females and symptoms are identical However, twice as many women as men experience unipolar depression. Psychologists are not exactly sure why this is so, but three generally accepted theories have emerged. The first theory stems from the idea that women are more vulnerable to depression due to physiological and hormonal differences. This is closely related to the second theory which attributes the differences to the biological functions of females as opposed to males.