OK, so I admit it, I haven’t spent a whole lot of time thinking about gender’s relationship to depression. I know the basic pieces of information: more women are diagnosed with depression than men, and more women attempt suicide while more men actually commit suicide. But there is a lot to understand beyond that. Did you know that men are up to 15 times more likely to commit suicide than women?

What I know about the brain is a fragment of what is known about the brain. What we know about the brain is a fragment of what there is to know about the brain. That being said, what we do know is worth taking a look at. In the 1960’s scientists discovered that increasing levels of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin in the brain reduced depressive symptoms. This suggested that a depressed brain didn’t have enough of these chemicals and this is where the chemical imbalance theory came from. It was quite reasonable and made perfect sense, but we’ve learned a lot since the 1960s.

I mentioned in my last post how it is the best of times and the worst of times for mental illness and treatment education. There are no shortage of online sources of mental illness information: websites, discussion groups, blogs, news, self-assessment tests and everything else in between. It's as if we can diagnose ourselves and pick our own treatment all without leaving the warmth of our laptop on our thighs. But the anonymity of the internet means that everyone you meet might just be a 12-year-old girl with a big vocabulary and no idea what she's talking about. So just who are you supposed to trust for mental illness information?

The internet is a fabulous place where everyone gets to share their story for all to see. The internet is a horrible place where everyone gets to share their story for all to see. It is the best of times; it is the worst of times, and nowhere is this more evident than in the deluge of mental health information.

We're all different. There is something fundamentally true about this statement. Red hair, black hair, blue eyes, brown eyes, cat lover, dog lover - see, all different and most of us are mature enough to think that's OK. But with bipolar, our symptoms vary wildly and for reason, people don't think that's OK.

Ah myths, we love them, don’t we? Friday the 13th is unlucky, Canadians live in igloos and drinking Coke and eating Pop Rocks will make your stomach explode. (Your stomach might not, but your pancreas is another matter.) People buy into myths all the time. When enough people say them, especially if the people are holding microphones or best-selling books, people assume they must be true. But as a good friend of mine always says, trust, but verify.