University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
J Health Soc Behav. 2022 Jun;63(2):283-300. doi: 10.1177/00221465211055993. Epub 2021 Nov 22.
Depressive symptoms are disproportionately high among women and less educated individuals. One mechanism proposed to explain this is the differential vulnerability hypothesis-that these groups experience particularly strong increases in symptoms in response to stressful life events. We identify limitations to prior work and present evidence from a new approach to life stress research using the UK Household Longitudinal Study. Preliminarily, we replicate prior findings of differential vulnerability in between-individual models. Harnessing repeated measures, however, we show that apparent findings of differential vulnerability by both sex and education are artifacts of confounding. Men and women experience similar average increases in depressive symptoms after stressful life events. One exception is tentative evidence for a stronger association among women for events occurring to others in the household. We term this the "female vulnerability to network events" hypothesis and discuss with reference to Kessler and McLeod's related "cost of caring" hypothesis.
抑郁症状在女性和受教育程度较低的人群中不成比例地高发。有一种解释这种现象的机制被称为差异性脆弱性假说，即这些群体在面对生活压力事件时，症状会特别强烈地增加。我们指出了先前研究的局限性，并提出了利用英国家庭纵向研究的新方法进行生活压力研究的证据。初步研究中，我们在个体间模型中复制了先前发现的差异性脆弱性。然而，利用重复测量，我们表明性别和教育的差异性脆弱性的明显发现是混杂因素的结果。男性和女性在经历生活压力事件后，抑郁症状的平均增长相似。一个例外是，在家庭中发生在其他人身上的事件与女性之间存在更强关联的初步证据。我们将其称为“女性对网络事件的脆弱性”假说，并参考 Kessler 和 McLeod 的相关“照顾成本”假说进行讨论。
