The gender gap in adolescent mental health: a cross-national investigation of 566,827 adolescents across 73 countries

Abstract

Mental ill-health is a leading cause of disease burden worldwide. While women suffer from greater levels of mental health disorders, it remains unclear whether this gender gap differs systematically across regions and/or countries, or across the different dimensions of mental health. We analysed 2018 data from 566,827 adolescents across 73 countries for 4 mental health outcomes: psychological distress, life satisfaction, eudaemonia, and hedonia. We examine average gender differences and distributions for each of these outcomes as well as country-level associations between each outcome and purported determinants at the country level: wealth (GDP per capita), inequality (Gini index), and societal indicators of gender inequality (GII, GGGI, and GSNI). We report four main results: 1) The gender gap in mental health in adolescence is largely ubiquitous cross-culturally, with girls having worse average mental health; 2) There is considerable cross-national heterogeneity in the size of the gender gap, with the direction reversed in a minority of countries; 3) Higher GDP per capita is associated with worse average mental health and a larger gender gap across all mental health outcomes; and 4) more gender equal countries have larger gender gaps, with better mental health in males associated with greater gender equality and inconsistent associations with different mental health outcomes in females. Taken together, our findings suggest that while the gender gap appears largely ubiquitous, its size differs considerably by region, country, and dimension of mental health. Findings point to the hitherto unrealised complex nature of gender disparities in mental health and possible incongruence between expectations and reality in high gender equal countries.

The Interplay Between Adolescent Friendship Quality and Resilient Functioning Following Childhood and Adolescent Adversity

“…These findings further support those of poorer mental health in adolescent girls (Thapar et al, 2012). In line, a recent cross-national study on 73 countries worldwide reported that adolescent girls report lower life satisfaction, hedonia and eudaemonic wellbeing as well as more psychological distress (Campbell, Bann & Patalay, 2020). Despite having lower resilient functioning, we did not find evidence for differential friendship quality at age 14, or age 17 in boys vs. girls.…”

Mental Health and Life Satisfaction in Students from Northern Chile

“…A detailed analysis that considers the contribution of each item in each dimension, through an analysis of structural equations, is also a possible contribution of this study. A comparison between 73 countries found differences in life satisfaction of adolescents being greater in males than females (Campbell et al, 2020). This is consistent with previous studies (Fernández-Pintos et al, 2019;Kaye-Tzadok et al, 2017;Soares et al, 2019).…”

Trajectories of adolescent life satisfaction

“…The literature investigating adolescent mental health changes has highlighted the need to account for gender differences when probing such wellbeing trajectories (Chui & Wong, 2016). For instance, multiple studies suggest that adolescent girls do significantly worse than adolescent boys in terms of subjective wellbeing and internalising mental health (Campbell et al, 2020;Goldbeck et al, 2007;González-Carrasco et al, 2017;Kwong et al, 2019;Moksnes & Espnes, 2013;Uusitalo-Malmivaara, 2014). This "gender gap" hypothesis has been supported in recent work that included measures of life satisfaction and examined participants from 73 countries (Campbell et al, 2020).…”

“…For instance, multiple studies suggest that adolescent girls do significantly worse than adolescent boys in terms of subjective wellbeing and internalising mental health (Campbell et al, 2020;Goldbeck et al, 2007;González-Carrasco et al, 2017;Kwong et al, 2019;Moksnes & Espnes, 2013;Uusitalo-Malmivaara, 2014). This "gender gap" hypothesis has been supported in recent work that included measures of life satisfaction and examined participants from 73 countries (Campbell et al, 2020). It is unclear, however, how life satisfaction develops longitudinally, whether and how these trajectories differ between genders and if these gender differences persist into adulthood (Joshanloo & Jovanović, 2020).…”

“…Empirical evidence concerning gender differences in mental health problems during adolescence suggest robust differences in prevalence of mental health problems in this time of life, with females having a higher incidence of internalising problems such as depression and anxiety (Goldbeck et al, 2007). Indeed, many have suggested that there is a "gender gap", where females score systematically lower on subjective wellbeing questionnaires than males (Campbell et al, 2020). Such a gender gap hypothesis is supported when our adolescent data is examined cross-sectionally: yet longitudinally it becomes apparent that the gender gap closes later in adolescence and does not reappear across the lifespan.…”