Study Analyzes Women’s High Depression Risk

Women are twice as likely as men to suffer from major depression, for reasons more often cultural than biological, according to results of a three-year study released Wednesday.

Poverty, unhappy marriage, reproductive stress and sexual and physical abuse are stronger factors than biological conditions in accounting for the difference in depression rates between men and women, the American Psychological Assn. researchers reported.

Depression afflicts about 7 million American women, leads to 30,000 suicides annually and costs society an estimated $16 billion a year, the researchers said. The illness has been known to strike women disproportionately, but some experts have claimed that women simply are quicker to report emotional distress and more willing than men to seek treatment.

“This argument says women are not really more depressed, they just say and think so,” said Ellen McGrath, director of the Psychology Center in New York and chairman of the research group. Evidence gathered by the researchers suggested, however, that the differences between the sexes in the incidence of depression were real, and that women’s particular problems have been unappreciated by the medical profession.

“The task force found that women truly are more depressed than men, primarily due to their experience being female in our contemporary culture,” she said.