If women are twice as likely as men to suffer from depression, are women also twice as likely as men to become depressed as a reaction to life events?
This is a complicated question. Approximately 70% of episodes of major depression are preceded close in time by a stressful life event, so we know that stress plays some role in triggering depression. And there is evidence suggesting that women and men may differ in their behavioral-and even No Iframes biological-responses to stress. Therefore, researchers are investigating the mechanisms by which stress contributes to depression and the role that gender plays in this. Some evidence shows that women and men differ in the life events they perceive as highly stressful, and there are some studies indicating that women develop depression following a greater range of stressful events than men. For example, one study found that women and men are likely to report events as stressful that occur to their immediate family, but women also are adversely affected by events occurring to a range of people in their social network. Differences, then, in “stress potential” of different events also may c
