Dissertations and Theses
Date of Award
2023
Document Type
Thesis
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Brett Silverstein
Keywords
Major Depressive Disorder, Somatic Depression, Gender Role Stereotypes
Abstract
Evidence suggests that two distinct disorders are currently being diagnosed as depression. One, somatic depression, involves depression plus several somatic symptoms while the other, pure depression, involves depression without as much somatic symptomatology. Somatic depression has been hypothesized to afflict women who view themselves non traditionally and thus do not agree with traditional stereotypes of women. Measures of agreement with negative stereotypes of members of their own group have been found in several groups to be positively related to depression. This may apply among women to pure depression. Thus, women who exhibit pure depression are hypothesized to exhibit agreement with negative stereotypes of women whereas women who exhibit somatic depression are hypothesized to exhibit disagreement with such stereotypes.
The goal of this present study was to create a scale measuring the extent to which women agree with gender role stereotypes and to understand the role played by this agreement in predicting the type of depression exhibited by women. Participants of the current study were participants who identified as female, attending The City College of New York (CCNY). Participants reported how much they agreed or disagreed with the gender role stereotypes and self reported somatic depressive symptomatology. Significant differences were observed between those with no depression, pure depression and somatic depression. The post-hoc analysis was done to see where the significance is coming from within the chi-square analysis. These analyses found no difference between women reporting somatic depression on the stereotypes scale compared to those who are not depressed. Somatic depressed women were not less likely to be highly stereotyped compared to non-depressed women. Women with somatic depression were found to be significantly less likely to agree with traditional stereotypes of women compared to women exhibiting pure depression. These results provide support for the hypothesized distinction between somatic and pure depression.
Recommended Citation
Miselevich, Michelle, "Internalized Gender Role Stereotypes Within Young Women and The Presentation of Somatic Symptomatology of Major Depressive Disorder" (2023). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/1099