Gender-related explanatory models of depression: A critical evaluation of medical articles

Hammarström, A.; Lehti, A.; Danielsson, U.; Bengs, C.; Johansson, E.E.

doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2009.09.010

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Volume 123, Issue 10 , Pages 689-693, October 2009

Gender-related explanatory models of depression: A critical evaluation of medical articles

A. Hammarström
- Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Division of Family Medicine and Umeå Centre for Gender Studies – Medicine; Research Programme Challenging Gender, Umeå University, SE-901 85 Umeå, Sweden
- Corresponding author. Tel.: +46 90 785 35 47; fax: +46 90 77 68 83.
A. Lehti
- Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Division of Family Medicine and Umeå Centre for Gender Studies – Medicine; Research Programme Challenging Gender, Umeå University, SE-901 85 Umeå, Sweden
U. Danielsson
- Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Division of Family Medicine and Umeå Centre for Gender Studies – Medicine; Research Programme Challenging Gender, Umeå University, SE-901 85 Umeå, Sweden
C. Bengs
- Department of Sociology, Umeå University, SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden
E.E. Johansson
- Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Division of Family Medicine and Umeå Centre for Gender Studies – Medicine; Research Programme Challenging Gender, Umeå University, SE-901 85 Umeå, Sweden

Received 12 November 2008; received in revised form 15 July 2009; accepted 16 September 2009. published online 26 October 2009.

Summary

Objectives

Although research has consistently shown a higher prevalence of depression among women compared with men, there is a lack of consensus regarding explanatory factors for these gender-related differences. The aim of this paper was to analyse the scientific quality of different gender-related explanatory models of depression in the medical database PubMed.

Study design

Qualitative and quantitative analyses of PubMed articles.

Methods

In a database search in PubMed for 2002, 82 articles on gender and depression were selected and analysed with qualitative and quantitative content analyses. In total, 10 explanatory factors and four explanatory models were found. The ISI Web of Science database was searched in order to obtain the citation number and journal impact factor for each article.

Results

The most commonly used gender-related explanatory model for depression was the biomedical model (especially gonadal hormones), followed by the sociocultural and psychological models. Compared with the other models, the biomedical model scored highest on bibliometric measures but lowest on measures of multifactorial dimensions and differences within the group of men/women.

Conclusion

The biomedical model for explaining gender-related aspects of depression had the highest quality when bibliometric methods were used. However, the sociocultural and psychological models had higher quality than the biomedical model when multifactoriality and intersectionality were analysed. There is a need for the development of new methods in order to evaluate the scientific quality of research.

Keywords: Public health, Depression, Gender, Explanatory models, Bibliometric methods, Intersectionality, Multifactoriality