ARTICLES
Emergence of Gender Differences in Depression During Adolescence: National Panel Results From Three Countries

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ABSTRACT

Objective

Although the gender gap in depression among adults is well established, the age at which this phenomenon appears during adolescence is less clear. To address this, the authors present a cross-national examination of the emergence of the gender gap in depression during adolescence using national longitudinal panel data from Canada, Great Britain, and the United States.

Method

The two-wave, 1994–1996 Canadian National Population Health Survey uses a diagnostic measure across a 24-month interval, providing 12-month prevalence rates of major depressive disorder. The British Youth Panel measures depressive symptomatology across five annual waves beginning in 1995. The two-wave, 1995–1996 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health uses a measure of depressive symptomatology across a 12-month interval.

Results

Females have significantly higher rates of depression for each sample overall. When samples are decomposed by age, the gender gap in depression consistently emerges by age 14 across all three national samples, irrespective of the measure used or whether categorical cutoffs or untransformed scale scores are used to assess depressive symptomatology.

Conclusions

There is a consistent pattern in the onset of the gender gap in depression at age 14 across all three countries and measures. This consistency provides important etiologic clues concerning underlying causes of depression and identifies at what age diagnosis, treatment, and intervention strategies should be directed.

Section snippets

Samples

National Population Health Survey—Canada. In a two-stage, stratified, random sampling procedure designed to ensure adequate representation across major urban centers, smaller towns, and rural areas in all provinces, 19,600 households from across Canada were initially selected in the first wave of the National Population Health Survey (NPHS) (Statistics Canada, 1996;Tambay and Catlin, 1995). Wave 1 data were collected between June 1994 and June 1995; wave 2 data were collected between June 1996

RESULTS

Table 1 illustrates the commonly observed gender gap between males and females across all waves for each survey regardless of which measure was used. In the NPHS, females were twice as likely to report an episode of MDD within the past 12 months in wave 1. This increased in wave 2, with females being 3 times more likely to report an episode of MDD. Among respondents in both the BYP and the AddHealth, females were more than twice as likely to score in the top decile across all waves and had

DISCUSSION

In support of previous work (Baron and Joly, 1988;Cairney, 1998;Hankin et al., 1998;Kandel and Davies, 1986;Peterson et al., 1991), this analysis identifies differences in depression between males and females emerging by age 14. The emergence of this gender gap is captured by both diagnostic instruments and categorical cutpoints of depression scales, consistent with studies of adult depression (Kessler, 1998;Nolen-Hoeksema, 1987;Nolen-Hoeksema and Girgus, 1994;Wade and Cairney, 1997, Wade and

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    Data come from the National Population Health Survey conducted by Statistics Canada, the British Household Panel Survey conducted by the Institute for Social and Economic Research, and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health conducted by the Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The authors thank Marie P. Beaudet and Colette Koeune at Statistics Canada for their assistance with the NPHS.

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