 Depression in women
Tuesday 3 May 2005
Depression in women
Issue 09: 2 May 2005
Source: Metabolism Clinical and Experimental 2005; 54(suppl 1): 49-52
The higher prevalence of depression in women compared with men comes under the spotlight in a newly published review paper, which looks at prevalence data at various lifetime stages and presents possible explanations.
In his paper in the journal Metabolism Clinical and Experimental, Rudolf Noble from the Cathedral Hill Research Institute in San Francisco, California, USA, cites 1993 data from the National Comorbidity Survey, which found that the prevalence of major depressive disorder was 21.3 percent in women and 12.7 percent in men. Similar ratios have been observed in different countries and in different ethnic groups, he adds.
Such data, Noble writes, indicate that these sex differences in prevalence first appear around the age of 10 years and persist until midlife then disappear.
He describes several biological processes that have been implicated in predisposing women to depression. These include “genetically determined vulnerability, hormonal fluctuations related to various aspects of reproductive function, and an undue sensitivity to such hormonal fluctuations in brain systems that mediate depressive states.”
From menarche to menopause?
In the review, Noble discusses in detail current knowledge on depression in women at various life stages: associated with the menstrual cycle, during pregnancy, in the postpartum period, and during the menopause.
The author concludes: “Because the serious mood disorders that sometimes accompany these syndromes cannot be explained by changes in sex hormone balance alone, increasing attention has been given to the notion that women who develop these disorders are, for various reasons (psychosocial and/or metabolic), especially susceptible to changes in hormonal balance, which in turn are believed to affect the activity of certain neuronal systems (particularly the serotonin-specific ones).”
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