“Female Preponderance” of Depression in Non-clinical Populations: A Meta-Analytic Study

Abstract

Clinical observations and research suggest a female preponderance in major depressive disorder. However, it is unclear whether a similar gender difference is found for the reporting of depressive symptoms in non-clinical populations. The present meta-analysis was conducted to address this issue. We searched for published papers targeting non-clinical populations in which the 21-item Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was used. Eighty-four papers (91 studies) published between 1977 and 2014 were included in the final meta-analysis, which comprised 23,579 males and 29,470 females. Females in the general population reported higher level of depressive symptoms than males (d = -0.187, corresponding to 1.159 points in the 21-item BDI). This pattern was not found to influence by years of publication, socioeconomic status, or version of the BDI used. Using age group as a moderator, studies with adolescents and young adults were found to show a smaller effect size than studies with older participants. Our results appear to confirm the “female preponderance” in the level of self-report depressive symptoms in the general population, and support the social gender role theory in explaining gender difference over biological susceptibility theory and evolutionary theory.

DNA Methylation of DLG4 and GJA-1 of Human Hippocampus and Prefrontal Cortex in Major Depression is Unchanged in Comparison to Healthy Individuals

“…The DNA methylation levels were found to be very low (1% to 3%) for these selective sites ( Figure 1C). Moreover, it has been argued that women have stronger tendency towards depression than men [25], but in our analysis no difference was observed among male and female subgroups, indicating that gender has no impact on DNA methylation levels for these particular genes in depression phenotype. In conclusion, DLG4 and GJA-1 did…”

Influence of Individual and Contextual Perceptions and of Multiple Neighborhoods on Depression

“…The purpose of this step was to simultaneously examine the fixed and random effects, corresponding to the three types of neighborhoods. Thus, as shown As widely reported in the literature, women are at greater risk for depression, and have more negative perceptions of residential neighborhoods, than men [5,[15][16][17][18][19][20]52]. We therefore performed a gender-stratified analysis (models M1W and M2W for women, and M1M and M2M for men).…”

“…The proportion of individuals with depression varied between a minimum of 0.9% and a maximum of 33.1% for the 50 residential neighborhoods in the SIRS survey ( Figure 2). Depression was reported more frequently in the most deprived neighborhoods (those with a yearly household income <€6004 by consumption unit on average), which are located in the northern part of the study As widely reported in the literature, women are at greater risk for depression, and have more negative perceptions of residential neighborhoods, than men [5,[15][16][17][18][19][20]52]. We therefore performed a gender-stratified analysis (models M1W and M2W for women, and M1M and M2M for men).…”

“…For instance, several studies show that they likely experience higher levels of socioeconomic disadvantage, resulting in more severe and chronic depression [15][16][17][18][19]. Additionally, it is widely reported in the literature that women are at greater risk for depression than men [15,16,20]; they also have more severe and longer episodes of depression than men.…”

A comparison of psychological well-being and quality of life between spouse and non-spouse caregivers in patients with head and neck cancer: a 6-month follow-up study

“…Wang et al 31 carried out a meta-analytic study to examine the female preponderance in depressive disorders and discovered that women in the nonclinical population reported higher levels of depressive symptoms than men. Other studies have previously reported that unemployed adults were at an elevated risk of developing major depression.…”