Major Depressive Disorder and Gender Differences

DOI

10.2991/978-2-494069-97-8_199How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Major depressive disorder; depression; gender differences

Abstract

Major depressive disorder (MDD) has been a persistent mental health issue around the world. The fact that MDD has a higher prevalence in women has been a robust finding in the research literature and an unresolved problem. Therefore, this paper reviews the related literature and summarizes the main findings of gender differences in a variety of aspects, such as symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment. For instance, women usually have an earlier onset of MDD and report more symptoms and comorbidities, while men tend to have alcohol issues and negative attitudes toward MDD. Then, the paper explores the possible explanations that contribute to the gender gap through the lens of biology and socio-cultural elements. The biological aspect is examined through the elements of genes, brain functioning, and hormone. The socio-cultural explanation discusses the connection of MDD with socially constructed concepts of masculinity and femininity and women’s social role conflicts. For example, while masculinity ideologies may restrict men’s emotional expression of sadness and vulnerability, femininity sends the message that women should be caring and empathetic and should not express “masculine emotions” such as anger. This emotion suppression may influence them to mask their true emotions, which is associated with mental negativity. Lastly, implications and further research directions are suggested, given the current uncertainty in the literature.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Qinchun Zhu
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/02/13
TI  - Major Depressive Disorder and Gender Differences
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 4th International Conference on Literature, Art and Human Development (ICLAHD 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1551
EP  - 1559
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-494069-97-8_199
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-494069-97-8_199
ID  - Zhu2023
ER  -