Men, women and stress

Dave and Lisa are married with two children. Both admit life can stress them out. Dave's work responsibilities and his commute often have him feeling wiped out and tense at the end of the day. Lisa always has a to-do list on the go that never gets any shorter. She works part time, is the main child carer and does most of the housework and shopping.

Dave doesn't tend to analyse his stress. He'll watch a DVD, go to the pub with his mates and forget about it.

"I wouldn't actually tell the lads if I was feeling stressed. We all have worries and situations to deal with so I prefer to switch off, there's no point dwelling on it."

It helps Lisa if she talks through her stress with her girlfriends.

"Sometimes it's good to have a moan, the kids are winding you up, your husband never helps out with the housework and you've got too much on the go! With my friends we get stuff off our chests, try to have a laugh and put things into perspective a bit."

Dave and Lisa's story isn't unique. There's evidence that men and women deal with stress in different ways.

The experts we spoke to suggest that men like to either focus on a solution or ignore the whole problem whereas women like to talk about it.

A study in 2000 published in the journal Psychological Reviewfound that women were more likely to deal with stress by so-called "tending and befriending", so nurturing their loved ones and developing social networks of people to help them.

The researchers found men leaned towards the "fight or flight" response when it comes to stress, either bottling it up and escaping, or fighting back.

Deep-rooted differences

"Absolutely men and women deal with stress differently. They have very different mental, physical and emotional perspectives," according to Neil Shah, director of the Stress Management Society.

"The truth is men and women's brains were designed slightly differently. If you go back 200,000 years when men were hunter gathers they had to focus on survival whereas women, according to research, were better at multitasking, looking after children in the caves and watching for dangers."

Neil says this relates to the way men deal with stress now: "Even though men and women are very different to 200,000 years ago, under the bonnet there's the same engine that's running."

"A man's more likely to deal with stress head on, to do something about it or, alternatively, ignore it. If a man had a stressful day he can talk about footy with his mates and turn off completely."

Neil, who's the author of The 10 Step Stress Solution says, "Women would still be thinking about an issue and the stress would continue to impact on them. They are more likely to want to explore the issue and talk about it with a friend."