The association between female college students' reports of depression and their perceptions of parental attitudes regarding gender

This study related female college students' (n = 377) reports of symptomatology to their reports of parental attitudes suggesting limitations inherent in being female. Young women completed a scale measuring their perceptions that their fathers would have been prouder of them if they were male, and a scale measuring their distress over the limitations experienced by their mothers. Respondents who scored high on either scale exhibited much higher prevalence than other respondents of self-reported depression accompanied by anxiety, somatic symptoms including headaches, insomnia, dyspnea, fatigue, disordered eating, and poor body image/preference for thinness (labeled anxious somatic depression). Compared to men (n = 191), women exhibited much higher prevalence of anxious somatic depression, but not higher prevalence of depression unaccompanied by the other symptoms.