GENDER DIFFERENCES IN DEPRESSION ACROSS THE LIFESPAN

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Women are about twice as likely as men to report high levels of depressive symptoms and to be diagnosed with a unipolar depressive disorder. Many different explanations for this gender difference in depression have been proposed. The proposed study will test the hypothesis that the gender difference in depression is attributable primarily to two factors. First, the societal conditions women face lead them to experience periods of distress more frequently than men. Second, women tend to have a more ruminative and passive style of responding to their own distress than men, which exacerbates and prolongs the periods of distress that arise for women, and interferes with women's ability to overcome the negative events they face. The first goal of the study proposed here is to test this explanation of the gender differences in depression against alternative explanations that other theorists have proposed. Participants in this study, all of whom will be adults, will be interviewed two times, one year apart, by clinically trained interviewers to determine their levels of depressive symptoms and whether they meet criteria for major depression or dysthymic disorder. In these interviews, we will also assess the number and types of negative life circumstances participants have encountered and their styles of coping with their distress over these circumstances. This will allow us to test our primary hypothesis that women will report more negative life circumstances and a more passive and ruminative coping style than men, and that these two factors together will account for the gender difference in depression in both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. We will also test two alternative explanations of the gender differences in depression: that women have more self-defeating attributional styles compared to men, and that this accounts for their greater rates of depression, and that the presence of premenstrual depressive symptoms inflates the apparent levels of depression in women compared to men. The second goal of the study is to determine whether and how age interacts with gender to influence vulnerability to depression. We will gather basic data on the relative size of the gender difference in depression in three adult age groups, early adults (ages 25-35), middle adults (ages 45-55), and older adults (ages 65-75). Then, we will examine whether different factors are associated with the gender difference in depression at different ages, and whether women and men become depressed over different issues at different ages. The significance of this study is that it will provide basic data on the factors associated with women's and men's depressions at important points in life. These data will suggest what specific risk factors should be targeted in interventions for women and men at various points in the lifespan.