“Female preponderance” of depression in non-clinical populations: A meta-analytic study

• Main Authors: Kui Wang, Han Lu, Eric Cheung, David L Neumann, David Shum, Raymond CK Chan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2016-09-01
• Series: Frontiers in Psychology
• Subjects: Depression; age; Gender difference; BDI; economic status; Social gender
• Online Access: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01398/full

Clinical observations and research suggest a female preponderance in major depressive disorder (MDD). 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.