Are All Finnish Women Insane?

A short post to celebrate the International Women’s Day and to push an unrelated agenda a bit.

Happy IWD girls, women. Hyvää naistenpäivää! Today I can safely say that it’s a damn great thing that you are women. Would be a damn shame if you weren’t. Celebrate it, enjoy it.

I recently looked at the statistics of the blog, and noticed that people had gotten here by searching on their local Google with the search term “Are all Finnish women insane?”

Short answer – No, but…

Longer answer – …the ones you’re trying to impress so they’d go out with you probably are. The old saying “Sexy, Single, Sane, pick two. Any two.” holds true here as well. Since you’ve set your standards on looks too high and wouldn’t dream of a person who already has a boyfriend… you’re out of luck.

In 2007, there were 37,000 Finns on disability pension because of depression. That year, 4,600 new people entered the pension system because of depression, making it the biggest single reason for entering the disability pension system. About 60% of these were women. (Statistics are a bit old and vague because I’m too lazy to find more recent and accurate ones. In fact, the hard work on mental healthcare has paid off some and I understand that the new cases / year has decreased some. But the numbers are still large.)

Sometimes I have this feeling that I know more people who suffer from depression or bi-polar disorder than people who are all “okay”. Add to that some BPD and things like severe phobias and anxiety disorders, and I can only repeat what I’ve said before – we’re living far too north for our own good. This land does not do good things to our mental health in the long run. The darkness of the skies and the solitude of the culture weighs heavy on both sexes equally.

And it doesn’t really help that we’re a country that has progressed from poor farming country to one of the high-tech centers in just a few instants. Our society hasn’t had time to cope with change. Our social norms are still adapting and suddenly everyone is rushing and no-one has any time to deal with anything. And sometimes it feels like the doctors here are way too eager to give you just a new set of pills instead of taking some time and finding out the cause for it all.

This year, the international theme for the International Women’s Day is “Equal rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all.”

If you’re not in position to help with that, I suggest that, instead of trying to figure out how to make it happen, you spend a moment reading up on depression. A lot of people have a lot of misconceptions about it, and knowing is really half the battle in this case. The about.com FAQ section, even if it’s filled with ads, is a good place to start.

And if you feel like you want to do something more concrete, call someone you think might be a bit down and ask how she’s doing and be a shoulder if she needs one. And don’t do it just because it’s the International Women’s Day. Do it because you care.

(And in case you’re in a relationship with a girl and forgot it’s the damn Women’s Day, call your better half now and tell her how you love her and tell her “Happy Women’s Day, dear” and that you’ll be making dinner tonight. And buy her flowers and chocolate on the way back from work. Damnit, do I need to fix every mistake you make? It’s less than a week to Steak and a BJ day, you don’t want to make her unhappy now!)