Gender, social relations and mental health: prospective findings from an occupational cohort (Whitehall II study)

Gender differences in social support tend to suggest that women have larger social networks and both give and receive more support than men. Neverthel ess, although social support has been identified as protective of mental he alth, women have higher rates of psychological distress than men. We examin e the prospective association between social support and psychological dist ress by gender in a cohort study of middle aged British Civil Servants, the Whitehall II study. In this sample we found that women have a larger numbe r of close persons than men although men have larger social networks. We al so found that the effects of marital status, social support within and outs ide the workplace and social networks on subsequent occurrence of psycholog ical distress were similar for men and women independently of baseline ment al health status. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.