Diagnosing melancholy
Conventional screening instruments for melancholy concentrate on internalizing signs, together with emotions of hopelessness and disappointment. Such surveys might miss melancholy in boys and males, which extra typically manifests externally as anger and aggression, irritability and risk-taking, Sujata Gupta reported in “The boys will not be OK” (SN: 7/1/23, p. 18).
The Male Despair Threat Scale screens for these and different indicators of melancholy, Gupta reported. In a 2020 examine, 11 % of 1,000 Canadian males met the melancholy standards on this scale however not on extra conventional scales. Reader Tom Harrison requested if commonplace scales might additionally miss melancholy in women and girls.
In brief, sure, Gupta says. “When the Male Despair Threat Scale was developed, researchers included female and male individuals. That exposed that some ladies additionally reported excessive irritability and anger, two feelings related to externalizing habits, although at a decrease charge than males,” she says.
Irritability can be a function of melancholy amongst youngsters and adolescents, no matter gender. That will counsel commonplace surveys may additionally miss melancholy in some subset of ladies, Gupta says.
Outstanding ants
In Tunisia’s flat salt pans, desert ants create towering anthills to assist foragers discover their manner residence, Soumya Sagar reported in “These desert ants head for the hills” (SN: 7/1/23, p. 16).
Reader Jim Schrempp is fascinated by ants. “Years again, I traced the extent of an ant ‘freeway’ on the street close to my residence. Every night, this path of ants would disappear, solely to reappear the subsequent day. I discovered that they have been touring a couple of quarter mile between two nests,” Schrempp wrote. “From their low perspective, the ants should have explored what they suppose is a big space. It led me to appreciate that an ant path on the opposite facet of our village might truly be populated with ants from my road!”
