Depression: rates in women, men ... and stress effects across sexes.

Researchers have consistently reported that women in the United States suffer from major depression at roughly twice the rate men do. Extensive international data now indicate that in many other countries, depression similarly afflicts more women than men, although absolute rates of depression vary greatly from one country to another.

Depression rates peak at two points in women's lives, asserts Myrna M. Weissman of Columbia University. The childbearing years of the late twenties to the early thirties usher in the first sharp rise, followed by a comparable crest in the postmenopausal years of the late forties to early fifties. Men display no pronounced jumps in depression rates during adulthood, Weissman says.

Postmenopausal depression hikes were observed in women born from 1925 to 1940, she says. Future work will look for this effect in women born later. Depression rates have increased substantially in women and men born since 1945, the New York scientist notes (SN: 12/5/92, p.391).

Weissman's data come from 10 population surveys completed during the 1980s in Canada, Puerto Rico, Germany, Italy, France, Lebanon, New Zealand, Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 64 and completed interviews that probed for symptoms of depression.

In all countries, separated and divorced men exhibited much higher rates of depression than their married counterparts. In general, separated and divorced women suffered only slightly more depression than married women, while in Korea and Taiwan, their depression rates were identical.

A related study, based on data from the same U.S. survey that Weissman used, finds that Jewish men suffer from an elevated rate of major depression, comparable to that for Jewish women. The usual doubling of depression rates in women held true for non-Jews, whether religious or not, contends Itzhak Levav of Brown University in Providence, R.I.

About 13 percent of Jewish men experience major depression in any given year, around the same proportion as in Jewish and non-Jewish women but more than twice the rate in non-Jewish men, Levav reports. He and his coworkers analyzed community surveys taken in Los Angeles and New Haven, Conn.

Jewish men show low levels of alcoholism, perhaps accounting for their higher depression rate, Levav proposes.

. . .and stress effects across sexes

Some investigators theorize that women have high depression rates in part because they are more sensitive than men to stressful personal experiences. In some women, severe stress may cause rumination and worry that triggers depression up to 6 months later, they argue.

A greater number of women than men encounter stressful events in the months before a bout of major depression, contends Ellen Frank of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. But women show no special sensitivity to stress, she argues; both sexes get depressed in response to the same types of upsetting family and personal incidents, usually within 2 months.

Frank and her colleagues studied 39 men and 96 women undergoing treatment for major depression. Participants listed stressful events in their lives from the 6 months before becoming depressed. The researchers then rated these incidents for severity.

Depressed men and women responded similarly to divorce, romantic breakups, and other types of severe personal stress, Frank says. Half of the women reported at least one such event, compared with one-third of the men.