Anxiety and Depression - Sex DIfferences

Doctor Daniel Pine discusses explains that anxiety is more common in girls and women. Depression is also more common in women, but only after puberty. Anxiety may predict depression.

There is a very important relationship between sex and many different kinds of emotional problems. There is a higher rate of depression in women than in men and we really only see that difference after puberty. Before puberty depression is pretty rare, but when it happens it tends to happen equally likely in boys and girls. Anxiety is in some ways similar to depression, but in other ways it is different. The way that it is similar is that we do see higher rates of anxiety in girls than in boys. It is different from depression because we see that increase in girls even before puberty. So, from really very early on in the early school age years, anxiety tends to be more common in little girls than in little boys – that is not true of depression. By the time boys and girls become adolescents and go to high school or college, both anxiety and depression are more common in girls, and those findings have led some people to think – well, maybe anxiety comes before depression and maybe one of the best ways to understand who is at most risk to become depressed is to understand how people become anxious.