Qian Yue, Fan Wen
Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Department of Sociology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA.
Br J Sociol. 2024 Jan;75(1):38-47. doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.13067. Epub 2023 Nov 17.
The COVID-19 pandemic precipitated a wide range of public health, economic, social, and political shocks, setting in motion life events that reverberated to affect individuals' mental health. Moving beyond a checklist approach, this study drew on individuals' own words to identify both conventional and novel sources of stress during COVID-19 and examine the role of stressful life events in producing gender disparities in depressive symptoms. Drawing on a 2021 U.S. nationally representative survey, we coded text responses to an open-ended question on stressful life events and conducted descriptive and regression analyses (n = 1733). The analyses revealed three key findings. First, men were more likely to report having experienced no stressful life events or else mention politics as a source of stress. Women, by comparison, were more likely to report the following as stressful-inability to socialize, paid work, care work, health, or the death of loved ones. Second, for both women and men, respondents reporting no stressful life events had the lowest, and those reporting finances as the most stressful life event had the highest, depressive symptoms. Third, women had higher depressive symptoms than men, and mediation analysis showed that stressful life events explained approximately a third of the gender gap in depressive symptoms. The findings indicate that policies attending to people's financial stress are important for mitigating mental health risks in turbulent times. Interventions that reduce women's exposure to stressful life events are also crucial to bridging gender disparities in mental health.
新冠疫情引发了广泛的公共卫生、经济、社会和政治冲击，引发了一系列生活事件，这些事件反过来影响了个人的心理健康。本研究超越了清单式方法，利用个人自己的话语来确定新冠疫情期间传统和新出现的压力源，并研究压力性生活事件在导致抑郁症状的性别差异中所起的作用。我们利用2021年美国全国代表性调查，对一个关于压力性生活事件的开放式问题的文本回答进行编码，并进行描述性和回归分析（n = 1733）。分析得出了三个关键发现。第一，男性更有可能报告没有经历过压力性生活事件，或者将政治作为压力源。相比之下，女性更有可能将以下方面报告为压力源——无法社交、有偿工作、护理工作、健康问题或亲人死亡。第二，对于女性和男性来说，报告没有压力性生活事件的受访者抑郁症状最低，而报告财务状况是最具压力的生活事件的受访者抑郁症状最高。第三，女性的抑郁症状比男性更高，中介分析表明，压力性生活事件约占抑郁症状性别差距的三分之一。研究结果表明，关注人们财务压力的政策对于在动荡时期减轻心理健康风险很重要。减少女性接触压力性生活事件的干预措施对于弥合心理健康方面的性别差异也至关重要。
