ABSTRACT
The criteria for a major depressive disorder, as diagnosed by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) (American Psychiatric Association, 2000), are shown in Table 13.2 . The critical feature of a major depressive disorder is the experience of a set of depressive symptoms for a period no
Before we examine the incidence of depression in women and men, we must distinguish between depressive symptoms, which all of us experience to some extent at one time or another, and major depressive disorder or clinical depression, which is a diagnosable mental health problem. Instruments that measure depressive symptoms include
TABLE 13.1 CENTER FOR EPIDEMIOLOGICAL STUDIES IN DEPRESSION SCALE (CES-D)
weakness of this methodology is that depression is measured by self-report instruments, which are vulnerable to demand characteristics. If men are less willing than women to report depression, community surveys may underestimate men’s levels of depression. Information on clinical depression is typically obtained from treatment facilities. The strength of this methodology is that depression can be evaluated with more sophisticated measures employed by trained clinicians. The weakness is that respondents are not representative of the population. To the extent that men are less likely than women to seek help for depression, studies of people in clinics also may underestimate men’s rates of depression.
