Women as the ‘Madder’ Sex

Abstract

Until recently, it was widely believed that women were more prone to mental illness than men, as indicated by their higher visibility in most statistics on mental illness. This numerical predominance of women in psychiatric statistics confirmed stereotypical notions of women as ‘mad’, and led to extensive debates on the reasons for the greater vulnerability of women both to the experience of mental health problems and to treatment in a psychiatric setting (for discussion, see Chapter 7). In recent years, however, this belief has been increasingly challenged. This is particularly the case in the USA, where a number of empirical studies have found a notable increase not only in the number of men reporting psychiatric symptoms but also in terms of their use of institution-based mental health care. Examples of these empirical studies, which have been discussed in earlier chapters, include the ECA and the NCS, in which men reported higher levels of mental disorder over their lifetimes than did women (Kessler et al., 1994; Robins and Regier, 1991). Studies on institution-based care, particularly those examining statistics on involuntary (compulsory) admissions, have also found this pattern. For example, men formed the majority (58 per cent) of the 2,200 patients admitted on an involuntary basis to hospitals in Philadelphia in the early 1990s (Sanguineti et al., 1996).