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“Female Preponderance” of Depression in Non-clinical Populations: A Meta-Analytic Study
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...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5023676/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27695433 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01398 |
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author | Wang, Kui Lu, Han Cheung, Eric F. C. Neumann, David L. Shum, David H. K. Chan, Raymond C. K. |
author_facet | Wang, Kui Lu, Han Cheung, Eric F. C. Neumann, David L. Shum, David H. K. Chan, Raymond C. K. |
author_sort | Wang, Kui |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5023676 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-50236762016-09-30 “Female Preponderance” of Depression in Non-clinical Populations: A Meta-Analytic Study Wang, Kui Lu, Han Cheung, Eric F. C. Neumann, David L. Shum, David H. K. Chan, Raymond C. K. Front Psychol Psychology 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. Frontiers Media S.A. 2016-09-15 /pmc/articles/PMC5023676/ /pubmed/27695433 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01398 Text en Copyright © 2016 Wang, Lu, Cheung, Neumann, Shum and Chan. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Wang, Kui Lu, Han Cheung, Eric F. C. Neumann, David L. Shum, David H. K. Chan, Raymond C. K. “Female Preponderance” of Depression in Non-clinical Populations: A Meta-Analytic Study |
title | “Female Preponderance” of Depression in Non-clinical Populations: A Meta-Analytic Study |
title_full | “Female Preponderance” of Depression in Non-clinical Populations: A Meta-Analytic Study |
title_fullStr | “Female Preponderance” of Depression in Non-clinical Populations: A Meta-Analytic Study |
title_full_unstemmed | “Female Preponderance” of Depression in Non-clinical Populations: A Meta-Analytic Study |
title_short | “Female Preponderance” of Depression in Non-clinical Populations: A Meta-Analytic Study |
title_sort | “female preponderance” of depression in non-clinical populations: a meta-analytic study |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5023676/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27695433 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01398 |
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