Revisiting Gender Differences in Depression: Accounting for Anticipatory Stressors

• In Event: Gender, Sexuality, and Health

Abstract

The social determinants of women’s elevated depressive symptomology and higher rates of major depression remain an open empirical question. In this study, we advance the perspective that dominant structural explanations can be complemented by social psychological insights regarding anticipatory stressors—or people’s worries about the future predicated on personal and vicarious experience. Using national survey data (n=1,815), we find that women are more likely than men to worry about future victimization, discriminatory treatment, familial bereavement, and economic security. Anticipatory stressors have more sizable associations with depression than a wide array of stressors more prominent among women, including abuse-related traumas, relationship strife, death events, economic insecurity, and strains linked to the cost of caring. After accounting for these tangible sources of strain and women’s greater general worry, anticipatory stressors explained approximately one-tenth of the female-male gap in depression, trailing behind only abuse-related traumas in explaining this discrepancy.

Authors

• Matt Grace, Hamilton College

• Jane VanHeuvelen, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities