What You Can Change _. And What You Can't - Martin E. Seligman [53]
This trend toward more depression at a younger age continues into the 1990s. Dr. Peter Lewinsohn of the Oregon Research Institute recently interviewed 1,710 adolescents, half born between 1968 and 1971, the other half born between 1972 and 1974. The older ones have an alarming rate of depression: By the time they were fourteen, 4.5 percent had had a full-blown episode of depression. The younger ones were even worse off: By fourteen, 7.2 percent had had an episode. It is shocking that Americans, on average, may be victims of unprecedented psychological misery in a nation with unprecedented prosperity, world power, and material well-being.6
In any case, this is enough to warrant shouting “epidemic.”
Women and Men
Study after study has found that across the twentieth century, depression strikes women more often than men.7 The ratio is now two to one.
Is it because women are perhaps more willing to go to therapy than men and thus show up more frequently in the statistics? No. The same preponderance shows up in door-to-door surveys.
Is it because women are more willing to talk openly about their troubles? Probably not. The two-to-one ratio manifests itself in both public and anonymous conditions.
Is it because women tend to have worse jobs and less money than men do? No. The ratio stays at two to one even when groups of women and men are matched for the same jobs and the same income: Rich women have twice as much depression as rich men, and unemployed women twice as much as unemployed men.
Is it some sort of biological difference that produces more depression? There may be some biological differences that contribute, but probably not enough to make for a two-to-one ratio. Studies of premenstrual and postpartum emotion show that while hormones do affect depression, their effect isn’t nearly big enough to create so large a disparity.
Is it a genetic difference? Careful studies of how much depression occurs among the sons versus the daughters of male and female depressives show that there is substantial depression among the sons of male depressives. Considering the way chromosomes are passed from father to son and from mother to daughter, there is too much male depression in this study for it to be true that genetics causes the lopsided sex ratio. While there is some evidence of a genetic contribution to depression, genetics probably does not cause the lopsided sex ratio.
Is it sex-role pressure? Probably not. There are more conflicting demands on women than on men in modern life, and a woman nowadays not only has the traditional role of mother and wife but often must hold down a job as well. This extra demand could produce more strain than ever before and therefore more depression. Sounds plausible, yet like many ideologically congenial theories, this one dashes against the rocks of fact. On average, working wives are less, not more, depressed than wives who do not work outside the home. So sex-role explanations do not seem to account for the female preponderance.
This leaves three plausible explanations:
The first is learned helplessness. In our society, it is argued, women receive abundant experience with helplessness over the whole of their lives. Boys’ behavior is lauded or criticized by their parents and their teachers, while girls’ is often ignored. Boys are trained for self-reliance and activity, girls for passivity and dependence. When they grow up, women find themselves in a culture that deprecates the role of wife and mother. If a woman turns to the world of work, she finds her achievements given less credit than men’s. When she speaks in a meeting, she gets more bored nods than a man would. If despite all this she manages to excel and is promoted to a position of power, she is seen as being out of place. Learned helplessness manifests itself at every turn, and learned helplessness reliably produces