Sex and gender role differences on stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms in response to the COVID-19 pandemic over time

Maryse Arcand; Alexe Bilodeau-Houle; Robert-Paul Juster; Marie-France Marin

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1166154

Sex and gender role differences on stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms in response to the COVID-19 pandemic over time

Front Psychol. 2023 May 3:14:1166154. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1166154. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Maryse Arcand^{1

2}, Alexe Bilodeau-Houle^{2

3}, Robert-Paul Juster^{1

2}, Marie-France Marin^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Département de Psychiatrie et d'Addictologie, Faculté de Médecine, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada.
² Centre de Recherche de l'Institut Universitaire en Santé Mentale de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada.
³ Département de Psychologie, Faculté des Sciences Humaines, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada.

Abstract

Introduction: Stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms have been reported during the pandemic, with important inter-individual differences. Past cross-sectional studies have found that sex and gender roles may contribute to the modulation of one's vulnerability to develop such symptoms. This longitudinal study aimed to examine the interaction of sex and psychological gender roles on stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms in adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: Following the confinement measures in March 2020 in Montreal, stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms were assessed every 3 months (from June 2020 to March 2021) with the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale among 103 females and 50 males. Femininity and masculinity scores were assessed with the Bem Sex Role Inventory before the pandemic and were added as predictors along with time, sex, and the interactions between these variables using linear mixed models.

Results: We observed similar levels of depressive symptoms between males and females, but higher levels of stress and anxious symptoms in females. No effects of sex and gender roles on depressive symptoms were found. For stress and anxiety, an interaction between time, femininity, and sex was found. At the beginning of the pandemic, females with high femininity had more stress symptoms than males with high femininity, whereas females with low femininity had more anxiety symptoms 1 year after the confinement measures compared to males with low femininity.

Discussion: These findings suggest that sex differences and psychological gender roles contribute to heterogeneous patterns of stress and anxiety symptoms over time in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: anxiety; depression; gender role; long-term stressful event; sex differences; stress.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Fonds de recherche du Québec—Santé (FRQS), under Grant numbers 251601 and 265447, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) under Grant number 169080, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) under the Grant number RGPIN-2018-06082.