"The way I think she’d put it is that, when bad things happen, women brood — they’re cerebral, which can feed into the depression."

"Men are more inclined to act, to do something, plan, beat someone up, play basketball."

A colleague summarizes the work of Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, who died this month, at the age of 53. Many more women than men are diagnosed as depressed, and depression was associated with "rumination, the natural instinct to dwell on the sources of problems rather than their possible solutions."

She wrote that many women "are flooded with worries, thoughts and emotions that swirl out of control, sucking our emotions and energy down, down, down. We are suffering from an epidemic of overthinking.”

You might guess that someone who studied depression and died at age 53 succumbed to suicide, but that was not the case. She had a congenital heart problem and died after surgery.