How to read a press release: Case studies from the Daily Mail and the Guardian
Research has recently been produced from the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, which has found that a third of Europeans are suffering from a mental disorder in any one year. Further still, women suffer disproportionately from depression, which has seen an increase over the last four decades.
The story in the Guardian picked up on the gender theme by quoting Hans-Ulrich Wittchen, one of the authors of the published research, saying:
It had been linked, he said, to changing social patterns: women were increasingly taking on marriage and a family as well as a job, and divorce was becoming more common. It tended to be those who felt they were not coping well with caring for their children who were driven into depression.
The author, here, is collecting data which undeniably highlights an issue of gender, but anything beyond that (namely that this is caused by women juggling families and careers) is speculative – even if seemingly true.
It’s what I refer to as “gay worm scientific comment” – namely, an un-reviewed opinion from a data analyst relating to a quantitative study. It is named after Erik Jorgensen, scientific director of the Brain Institute at the University of Utah, who, on realising he could control the sexuality of a female worm by altering a gene in its brain, commented that this doesn’t explain human sexuality because “we have free will”. It’s a very lazy explanation of human sexuality, which has been given some credibility, erroneously – in my opinion – because it has come from a scientist.
Even so, the Guardian haven’t been too opinionated beyond highlighting the numbers revealed, and then quoting the researcher involved.
The Daily Mail on the other hand have taken a different approach – titling their article on this research: “Depression in women doubles since the 1970s as they ‘try to have it all’.”
Throwing all caution to the wind, Sophie Borland, writing for the Mail, has it:
Women are twice as likely to suffer from depression compared with 40 years ago because they are trying to juggle families and careers, researchers claim. (My emphasis)
No cautious message describing what it could be linked to, just straight in there with the concrete judgement – and I hold comment on the offensive suggestion that because women want “it all”, they are likely to be depressed as a consequence.
Lastly, Borland says the research:
concluded that the women who try to do it all are more likely to feel like failures.
The Mail have provided no quotations that say “do it all” or “have it all” in that precise wording, from the researchers themselves, and appears more like personal opinion than rooted in the university’s press copy.
One thing the Mail did leave out, funnily enough, that the Guardian quoted, appearing at the end of Professor Wittchen’s “changing social patterns” comment:
Marriage, he added, was bad for women, although good for men.
Journalists try to draw the “obvious” conclusions, but the data doesn’t back them up. There are plenty of equally plausible reasons for the study’s results. Try this one:
In ye olde days, everyone put up with depression: men because they had a stiff upper lip and women because that was their lot in life as a social underclass. Men still keep the stiff upper lip and self-medicate (usually with alcohol). Women, on the other had, are more likely to go to their doctors because feminism has (rightly) taught them that they don’t have to put up with this shit, so they get into the statistical analysis while men don’t. When I got divorced, one of us went to the doctor for some happy pills and one of us bought a few more bottles of wine. Guess which?
Why has depression doubled since the 70s? Probably because we’re aware of it as a condition. It doesn’t mean that anyone is more depressed; they just think they should do something about it.
I’m not saying I’m right; just that this explanation is equally plausible. Also, we should be suspicious of a study that lumps anxiety in with multiple sclerosis, as if they were in any way comparable.
And this is why you are the angry subeditor – or just clued up on tailoring press copy to any possible conclusion
Indeed. But I use my powers for good.
done!
If modern life, as in balancing work and family, was driving women to depression, one has to wonder what led housewives to the use of tranquillizers like Valium, in such large numbers, back in the 50′s and 60′s.
ha well yes indeed. Mind you, the Mail might have reported it thus: “There you have it, conclusive proof that women are fu**ed if they do, and fu**ed if they don’t”.