Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre (MRC).
Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London.
Psychol Rev. 2019 Oct;126(5):787-789. doi: 10.1037/rev0000158. Epub 2019 Aug 5.
Sex differences in the prevalence and presentation of mental illnesses are well documented. Women are more likely to experience common mental health disorders (e.g., anxiety and depression), and when they experience these conditions, they often present differently to men (e.g., women are more likely to report somatic complaints). Periods of physical and hormonal change (e.g., adolescence, pregnancy, and menopause) are particular risk periods for the development of mental illness in women. In this article, we advance the proposal that interoception (the perception of the body's internal state) is one mechanism that might explain sex differences in vulnerability to mental illness. We argue that known sex differences in interoception, whereby women, compared to men, report heightened attention to internal signals coupled with worse interoceptive accuracy, may result from the increased amount of physical and hormonal change women experience across development. Given links between interoception and mental health, we propose that sex differences in interoception may partly explain sex differences in the prevalence and presentation of certain mental illnesses. Further scrutiny of this proposal may aid our understanding of sex differences in mental illness with implications for assessment, early intervention, and the development of novel treatment approaches. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
性别差异在精神疾病的患病率和表现中得到了充分的证明。女性更有可能经历常见的心理健康障碍（例如焦虑和抑郁），而且当她们出现这些情况时，往往与男性表现不同（例如，女性更有可能报告躯体症状）。身体和激素变化的时期（例如青春期、怀孕期和更年期）是女性精神疾病发展的特定风险时期。在本文中，我们提出了一个观点，即内感受（对身体内部状态的感知）是解释女性易患精神疾病的性别差异的一种机制。我们认为，内感受方面已知的性别差异，即与男性相比，女性报告说对内部信号的注意力更高，同时内感受准确性更差，可能是由于女性在整个发育过程中经历了更多的身体和激素变化所致。鉴于内感受与心理健康之间的联系，我们提出内感受的性别差异可能部分解释了某些精神疾病的患病率和表现方面的性别差异。进一步研究这一观点可能有助于我们理解精神疾病中的性别差异，并对评估、早期干预和新型治疗方法的发展产生影响。（APA，所有权利保留）。
