Researches found that women are 40% more likely than men to develop mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. According to Professor Daniel Freeman’s study, women are approximately 75% more likely than men to report having recently suffering from depression, and around 60% more likely to report an anxiety disorder. Men, on the other hand, are not totally safe either. Men are more likely to report substance misuse disorders – around two and a half times more frequently than women.
The result is based on analysis of 12 large-scale epidemiological studies carried out across the world since the 1990s, for Freeman’s new book The Stressed Sex, published by Oxford University Press. The analysis used only large-scale studies, which looked at the general population, to control for men being less likely to seek help for psychological disorders than women.
Freeman found these conditions reported by genders were interesting:
“There is a pattern within – women tend to suffer more from what we all ‘internal’ problems like depression and sleep problems. They take out problems on themselves, as it were, where men have externalizing problems, where they take things out on their environment, such as alcohol and anger problems”.
He felt that physiological and biological factors were not the only ones to be blamed for these conditions, but society plays a role in it too. “Because mental health problems are extremely prevalent, if you do see an imbalance, it’s an imbalance that concerns millions of people, so it’s a major public health issue. The initial things we need to do is establish this fully in the UK, but also crack the issues of why,” he said.
“Mental health issues are complex, they do arise from a range of factors, but we should highlight the environment, because we know discrepancies are greatest where the environment has the greatest role,” he said. “Where we think it has an effect is particularly on women’s self-esteem or self-worth: women tend to view themselves more negatively than men, and that is a vulnerability factor for many mental health problems.” (Source)
So, are our hormones to be blamed for this? Well, even if it is, there’s always chocolates to help us curb the anxiety, right?
