Scientific essay

Mental illness difference between men and women

 

1. Introduction

Nowadays most of people in society are suffered from mental illness. There is certain surprising point in mental illness statistics. Most of statistics women have more probability about mental illness than men. I raise a question about this. Why women are more suffered from mental illness? I don’t know how biological difference about gender makes this result in detail, but there would be some several effects.

 

2. Difference between men and women

There are some biological difference between men and women in three aspects. Gene, hormone and behavior.

 

1) Gene

Basically, men and women have different chromosome. Men have Y chromosome which have less genes than X. SRY(Sex determining region of Y chromosome) in Y chromosome makes men have traits like men.

[Schizoprenhia working group of psychiatric genomics consortium 2014] 

 

This graph is about manhattan plot of schizophrenia. Like above graph one mental illness are related to many genes. We cannot sign certain some genes are critical in mental illness. We guess genetic difference between men and women makes different statistics of mental illness, but it is not easy to prove.

 

2) Hormone

Generally men and women have different ratio of sexual hormone. Men have more androgen than women, women have more estradiol than men. This steroid hormone affect to gene expression. Men and women have different phenotype through sexual hormone regulating gene expression. Actually men are more suffered from some diseases because of male hormone. Perhaps difference ratio sexual hormone makes mental illness difference.

 

3) Behavior

Gender have more social meaning than sex. Actually men and women have different social role. Therefore men and women experienced different life because of their gender. Generally mental illness are caused from social and individual experience. In many countries people studied or experienced something because they are women or men if they do not want. Perhaps society force immoderate role for women. This part is the least probability of three aspects because in many different countries, people have many different social role and experience, but statistics about mental illness are quite similar.

 

3. Result

Nowadays mental illness are more common than before, so many scientist research about this part. However mental illness is so complex and there are many several reasons about one disease. By the way more women have mental diseases than men actually, it may be related to genetic difference or hormonal difference. If we can be know about reason why women and men have different tendency of mental illness, it can be key for curing mental illness.