The Relationship Between Sex Roles, Marital Status, and Mental Illness*

In modern Western societies women have higher rates of mental illness than men. In this article it is suggested that this difference can be attributed to the role of married women. More specifically, it is shown that married women have noticeably higher rates of mental illness than married men. In contrast, it is shown that when single women are compared with single men, divorced women with divorced men, and widowed women with widowed men, these women do not have rates of mental illness that are higher than their male counterparts. In fact, if there is a difference within these marital categories, it is that women have lower rates of mental illness. In a recent paper Gove and Tudor (1972) looked at the proportion of men and women who were mentally ill in modern industrial societies as indicated by community surveys, first admissions to mental hospitals, psychiatric treatment in general hospitals, psychiatric outpatient clinics, private outpatient psychiatric care, and psychiatric illness in the practices of general physicians. All of these sources indicated that women are more likely to be mentally ill than men. As most studies indicate that never married and formerly married persons have higher rates of mental illness than those who are married, one might expect that the difference between the rates of men and women could be attributed to unmarried women having extremely high rates of mental illness. This would conform to the stereotype of the carefree bachelor and the rejected spinster (or former wife). However, in this article I will indicate that this expectation is incorrect and that it is the relatively high rates of mental illness in married women that account for the higher rates of mental illness among women. Furthermore, I will attempt to show that it is the roles confronting married men and women that account for the high rates among women and not some other factor such as women being biologically more susceptible to mental illness.