We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 August 2009
By 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO, 1997) has predicted that depression will be the “second leading cause of global disability burden” and that as many as one in four women will suffer from a mood disorder during their lifetime.
Women have an increased vulnerability to depressive disorders during their child-bearing years. During this time, they are also more likely to experience sexual and domestic violence, social and financial inequities, and often to undertake many different roles with attendant responsibilities. The child-bearing years are associated with specific hormonal changes related to menstrual cycle variations, contraception, pregnancy and the postpartum period and the menopause. Increasingly there are also the iatrogenic hormonal manipulations associated with contraception and assisted reproductive technologies.
Clearly, these sex-specific factors deserve special consideration in the understanding and management of depression in women. The reader is also referred to Chapter 1 for an overview of depression in adolescence, Chapter 9 for a more detailed discussion of mood disorders in pregnancy and postpartum and Chapter 11 for a review of mood in the menopausal period.
Epidemiology
Worldwide, major depression is at least twice as common in women as men (Weissman et al., 1993), accounting for 41.9% of the disability from neuropsychiatric disorders among women compared to 29.3% among men; these data appear consistent with current UK figures (Office for National Statistics (ONS), 2001).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
