When someone comes to me seeking help I want to learn everything I can about them. I'm interested in their physical, emotional, interpersonal, social, sexual, economic, and spiritual aspects of their well-being. I want to know about their hopes and dreams as well as their stresses, fears, and challenges.

Looking at health through a gender lens is the first step to a more helpful and personalized approach to healing.

My own work on depression demonstrated that men and women often have different symptoms, with males often becoming more irritable, angry, and aggressive when they are depressed, while women show the more inward symptoms such as sadness, helplessness, and hopelessness.

Symptoms like anxiety, depression, aggression, alcohol or drug use, are responses to physical and emotional pain that has its roots in traumatic experiences from childhood and later in life.

If you plan to read one book this year I encourage you to consider, Find Your Reason to Be Here.

I've been a therapist for more than forty years and certainly there is a place for "wise elders" in the healing process. But most people, most of the time, can heal themselves and those they love, with the help of their family, friends, and community.

It was long assumed that heart disease manifested the same in men and women. But Dr. Legato found that men may experience the classic symptoms of chest pain that radiates down the left arm. Women often have symptoms including shortness of breath, nausea or vomiting, and back or jaw pain. A gender-neutral approach left many women under-diagnosed and under-treated and as a result many women died needlessly.