Gender and depression

• The gender difference in depression through the life span.
• An emphasis on the emergence of the gender difference in adolescence.
• Cognitive vulnerabilities and stressors as predictors of the gender difference.
• The role of stress generation.
• Research is needed to test how well existing models explain the epidemiological data.

This paper briefly reviews several recent lines of psychosocial research on the gender difference in depression. By the middle of adolescence and continuing at least until age 55, females are about twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression and exhibit twice as many depressive symptoms as males. Researchers have recently begun to propose models that specify complicated relationships among variables to explain the gender difference in depression and why it emerges in adolescence. These models need to be tested empirically and new models need to be formulated based on the data that emerge. Additionally, research is needed to explore whether there are gender differences in the chronicity and recurrence of depression as well as in initial episodes and whether the models that explain the gender difference in depression during adolescence also explain the continuing gender difference in young and middle-aged adults.