DEPRESSION MIXED WITH ANXIETY, SOMATIZATION, AND DISORDERED EATING - RELATIONSHIP WITH GENDER-ROLE-RELATED LIMITATIONS EXPERIENCED BY FEMALES

In several previous studies, females who reported that they felt limit ed by responses to their gender or viewed their mothers as having been limited in this way, exhibited higher prevalence compared to other fe males or to males of depression accompanied by anxiety, somatic sympto ms such as headaches, disordered eating, and poor body image/preferenc e for thinness (''anxious somatic depression''), but not higher preval ence of depression unaccompanied by these other symptoms (''pure depre ssion''). In this study of high school students, females whose mothers scored high on a scale measuring their feelings of having been limite d by traditional gender roles reported much higher prevalence than oth er females of anxious somatic depression, but not higher prevalence of pure depression. Mothers' reports of depression were not related to d aughters' anxious somatic depression.