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Most studies
Worldwide report higher rates of depression
among women than men. But these have also found inconsistency
among the
seven depression symptoms used in the major diagnostic systems, thus
prompting this investigation of gender variation in the symptom profiles
of depressed
persons.
Individuals evidencing
two weeks of core depression (depressed mood and/or loss of life’s interests)
were selected from a large survey of adults in the Alberta, Canada workforce.
Analyses involved the comparison of gender profiles across the seven DSM-IV
secondary depressive symptoms.
As shown in the accompanying figure, gender profiles were nearly
identical. Notably, the seven secondary symptoms were all more common among women, but
the differences were not large.
Gender differences in depression, and in depression symptom
profiles, represent a difference in amount, not kind, suggesting that the range
of depressive experiences is similar for men and women overall. This is not in
line with the “women are from Venus – men are from Mars” kind of theories, which
posit overarching differences between men and women. This is another example of
research findings which tend to show that within-sex differences can be quite
large while between-sex differences are quite small.
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