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Affective Disorders and Gender Differences

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Psychopathology in Women

Abstract

Women are typically from two to three times more likely to develop depressive disorders than men are. The gender difference emerges earlier than previously thought, at the age of 12. It peaks in adolescence and declines in adulthood, remaining stable until senescence, when a small peak occurs.

Depression is a multifactorial disorder so, its etiology cannot be dissociated from the socioeconomic and cultural environment, having a great importance on the current gender construct. Despite the fact that genetic vulnerability and sex hormones have been considered the main causal factors of this difference, nowadays some other factors are taken into account, such as emotion regulation strategies (women are more likely to ruminate, while men tend to suppress or avoid their emotions) and changes in the classical personality features attributed to men and women (“depressive temperament”) and in the sex role (chronic stresses associated with traditional female roles lead to a higher prevalence of depression).

Attending to the way of presentation, depressed women are more likely to exhibit “atypical” symptoms and more anxiety and somatization.

Great differences have not been found regarding to the response to pharmacological treatment according to gender. In the case of psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioral treatment has been most empirically demonstrated to be effective on both sexes.

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  1. Alava University Hospital, Vitoria, Spain

    Patricia Pérez Martinez de Arrieta & Jon Gaviña Arenaza

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Pérez Martinez de Arrieta, P., Gaviña Arenaza, J. (2019). Affective Disorders and Gender Differences. In: Sáenz-Herrero, M. (eds) Psychopathology in Women. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15179-9_26

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