Sexual Status and Psychiatric Symptoms

Abstract

This paper is concerned with testing the hypothesis that women will report more psychiatric symptoms than will men with an equal number of physical illnesses. Our hypothesis arises from an assessment of the societal definitions of what is appropriate or inappropriate behavior for someone occupying the status of male or female. In our view, men are expected to be less expressive than women in their emotional behavior. Analysis of data collected from a sample of 278 adults in 1965 and 1966 provides strong support for the hypothesis. On two indices consisting of what are judged to be psychological and psychophysiological symptoms, a greater percentage of women than men have high scores. Two other indices, containing physiological and ambiguous items, show a tendency for men to have slightly higher scores. Since the first two indices contain 15 items and the other two only 7, not unexpectedly women are higher than men on the over-all mental health inventory. This pattern is revealed in the analysis of data for both 1965 and 1966, and is also shown in analysis of turnover during the one-year period. A further finding is that women are more likely to seek medical care than are men with the same number of physical illnesses and similar psychiatric symptoms.