- One in five women will experience depression at some point in her life.
- Biological, psychological and environmental factors explain this gender difference with respect to depression.
- It also increases because it is associated with feelings of loneliness, caregiver burden syndrome, physical illnesses, cognitive decline, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Women are twice as likely as men to experience a depressive episode in their lifetime. This gender bias, evident from puberty, is maintained throughout the different stages of a woman’s life. Likewise, one in five women will suffer from depression at some point in her life, according to experts gathered at the 2nd Lundbeck Mental Health Press Day entitled “Depression and gender, in feminine and plural”.
This bias is confirmed in Mexico, where depression ranks first in terms of disability for women and ninth for men. In our country, this disorder is a major public health problem, affecting 15 out of every 100 inhabitants. This figure could be higher because some people have never been diagnosed and they live up to 15 years without knowing they have this condition.
This is explained by Dr. Edilberto Peña de León, a neuropsychiatrist and director of the Nervous System Research Center (CISNE Mexico), who stated that “in the case of women, the underdiagnosis occurs to a lesser extent than in the male gender, since it is more culturally accepted that they communicate their emotional disturbances to a greater extent than men. males”.
Based on the gender data for this behavioral disorder, doubts arise as to whether being a woman is a risk factor for suffering from depressionwhy there is this gender bias in depression and what weighs more, biology or social conditioning and the gender gap.
To explain this gender difference in depression it is necessary to resort to a biopsychosocial model in which biological, social and personal stressors intervene. Thus, Dr. Jacqueline Cortés, psychiatrist and president of the Mexican Psychiatric Association (APM), assures that there are “multiple determinants, from the biological ones that have to do with their hormonal changes (adolescence, pregnancy and climacteric), to the cultural and social (such as violence against the female gender), as well as the emotional experience of vital events and their communication to others”.
Among the biological factors, several processes are involved in women’s propensity for depression: a genetic predisposition, hormonal fluctuations and a inappropriate sensitivity to hormones in brain systems that mediate depressive states. When it comes to hormones, the incidence of depression in women is known to increase around times of hormonal transitions: adolescence, pregnancy, and menopause.
Along with biological factors, social factors associated with gender are added, such as the maternal role, cultural demands related to the body and beauty, professional role or job discrimination, as well as factors linked to different life stages more frequent in women such as sexual abuse, stress due to infertility, gender violence or empty nest syndrome, among others, without forgetting personal factors.
depression in older women
We might think that, once the menopause and hormonal fluctuations had passed, the gender bias in depression would disappear. But research suggests that this is not the case: a review showed that 81% of studies on the gender difference in the elderly have found that older women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression or a greater number of symptoms depressive compared to older men.
According to Dr. Peña de León after the climacteric, “the decrease in estrogen affects neuronal communication, in addition to the social and cultural factors that have to do with that age, the empty nest syndrome, retirement from work and the reunion with the couples when the children leave. Without forgetting, in addition, chronic-degenerative diseases and the death of peers”.
In conclusion, the expert assured that depression “must be treated in a personalized way, see the prudence of where to start management, what priorities are the most important and how to solve all the problems to be successful.”