Gender Differences in Perception of Health Status

Background: Studying the inability to perform activities that are usual in a healthy person, the emergence of new distressing phenomena is important.

To assess gender differences in mental health or psychological well-being among users of primary health care.

Method: A quantitative, analytic-correlational study with a sample of 1172 patients (average age= 46,25 years; sd=17,77 years). The questionnaire is composed by socio-demographic and General Health Questionnaire-GHQ28.

Results: Men have a higher somatic symptoms (t = - 4.394; p= 0.000) more anxiety/insomnia (t=-4.936 p=0.000), and less social dysfunction (t=2.416; 0.016 and more severe depression (t= -2.447; p=0.015) and worse values for global scale (t=-4.583; p= 0.000) than women. The difference between males and females is significant for all subscales and overall value (t = 0,409, p = 0.000).

Conclusions: We need to implement strategies to promote mental health, with psychological intervention in primary health care.